Latest / The County Line / The County Line Podcast: Ep. 12

Transcript

The County Line Podcast: Ep. 12 · The County Line

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: You're listening to the County Line Podcast, production of the Tulsa County Board of County Commissioners.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_03: Hello, everybody.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_03: Kelly Dunkerly, County Commissioner, District 3.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_03: Here with me in the studio.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_03: I have several guests.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_03: We'll introduce all of them, but I want to let you know we're talking about roads, road construction, maintenance, safety, and how we get there today.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: And special guests, my Chief Deputy Darren Gance, Superintendent of Roads in District 3, Brian Malone.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: And we have Ryan Clark here, who's a newly freshly minted foreman.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: And really what the occasion is, why we're here is you know, it's very important roads and the construction of roads and the maintenance of them, but what's more critical is safety of our personnel and always making sure everyone ends the shift safely, all in one piece.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: This man's in charge of that.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: This man's in the leadership as well.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: And we're so glad because Ryan has recently become a road scholar.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: He's joined Brian Malone as a road scholar and Darren Gantz as a road scholar.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll get into that program and the LTAP program.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: We have another guest.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to have two segments.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: We got um Mr.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: Hicks with LTOP that's gonna uh join us as well.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: But right off the bat, you know, Brian, I'm gonna turn to you because you lead by example, you're a road scholar, you've been a road scholar for a number of years.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: When did you actually achieve the Road Scholar um uh certification?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_04: Well, thank you, Commissioner.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_04: Uh we started, I finished mine uh 2012.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_04: I finished it.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_04: Seemed like a very long time ago.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you've been with the county for over 40 years.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, about 43 years, yes.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_03: And what was the beginning of why you started that program and became a road scholar?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_03: Tell us a little bit of history.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_04: Well, the safety first is the main thing.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_04: Um we want all our workers to be able to go home to their families.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_04: Safety.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_04: Go home with all the parts that they came to work with, and that's the main thing.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's uh key thing.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, uh you being an example of going through this training, and um Darren and I have been involved in county government here for over four years now, and Darren thought it was so important, he jumped into the program.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: Darren, why don't you say a few words as to what dro drove you to that, why you wanted to do that, and how it's helped your understanding and mine of the road system.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think first of all, is um to better understand our employees and what they do on a daily basis is why I wanted to do it.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it didn't hurt that my alma mater, Oklahoma State University, uh, was the the the teacher behind it at LTAP, and and I'm excited to hear from Nate here in a little bit about all the different things that are coming out.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it it it was an exciting journey to actually learn each and every piece so I can better understand working with our men that are and women in our field work.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it is extremely important.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I'm a big believer in continuous learning.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: There's always something else to learn, there's always another opportunity to make ourselves better, which makes those around us better.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_03: So again, I'm gonna thank you, Brian, for the um, you know, the example you set for your team.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: But talking about Road Scholar, we're gonna get into the details of that.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_03: But number one, like we mentioned, safety.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_03: But the two other elements that are important to me is, and I want people to understand, you know, we take care of the roads and maintenance never stops.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's uh a never-ending thing, and there's all kinds of factors with maintenance, and we'll also touch on construction.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: Those two elements of of road, road maintenance are very different, and you all are involved in all of them.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: But tell us a little bit about maintenance and uh how the Road Scholar program helps you guide the team with maintenance every day.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_04: Well, our maintenance is year-round.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_04: We have a year-round maintenance say if uh snow comes down, we gotta spend our time plowing the snow when everybody else is asleep.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_04: So our guys work 10-hour shifts in the morning and 10 hours at night.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_04: We split the crew.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_04: So the snow shift when people are trying to get to work and stuff, we we're there all day trying to get the stuff done.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_04: And uh the Road Scholar, it's got a lot of things going on.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_04: We have uh like survey, we have two-day surveys that just a little part of it.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_04: Uh our class is just a little pinch of what you can learn.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_04: It's just a little in every little bit like ditching uh the setting back the ditch where the safety for the guys and for the ditch don't collapse and on the guys, is it's very all of it is safety organized.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you say it so well because it's never ending and roads.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: We we can talk about the ice and all the shifts we had this this last winter.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: We had a big ice storm, but you know, that water and that ice gets into the cracks and you know really affects the roadways.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: And even though we're you know we're involved in clearing those roadways, we ought understand this is gonna affect the roadway and we're gonna come back and probably have to do some work because of these ice and water.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, Ryan, I want to pitch to you a little bit here because you're a freshly minted road scholar for the LTAP program at OSU.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um and you know, thank you so much for taking the initiative to do that, taking on this, because this is extra time that you had to spend uh away from the barn, away from your your team at that time.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_03: But tell us uh how that learning affected you and how you think it really makes you better going forward.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: It did.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: It uh opened my horizon, it gave me a better understanding, like Darren, of what's going on out in the field, what steps that it takes to get the jobs done and do it safely and properly.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I appreciate the opportunity.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: There's nothing that I learned in any of those classes that I haven't been able to apply out in the field so far.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: So very beneficial.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_03: So well, we want people to learn, we want people to cross-train.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you were the foreman of the of the mechanic side of the of the shop recently for a couple of years, and now you've taken on the responsibility to be on more out on the road with a different crew, and tell us how that, you know, there's different sides to this job and different crews.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: And how does how does Road Scholar help you understand the difference and how they all work together?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it just opened my eyes to uh all the different aspects of it with it's being uh safe with the ditching, the stepping, shoring, all that stuff.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: It it just gave me a better understanding of what they're doing outside of the in the field versus what's going on in the shop.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: Again, training never stops.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um and what we do on the roadways, which Brian's been doing for over four years, it's a dangerous job.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_04: It is dangerous.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_04: The flaggers got it, they think that's a minor job, but that's a major job.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_04: The ones that flags traffic is the ones that takes care of our people.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, they take care of them all day long.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_04: If they if they, you know, not paying attention to what they're doing, they could get our people hurt.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_04: And it's it's a very important job.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_04: They uh most people think that job is the less job of the whole deal.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_04: But really, it's a more important job than my job, is to take care of the people that's working down there and doing the road.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's key because when you're in the leadership role, both of y'all are.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_03: Anytime we're doing uh, you know, we're working on a segment of road, you know, there's all these different parts.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_03: There's the people who are who are flagging traffic, there's people who are driving trucks, dump trucks, um, you know, they're commercial drivers, CDL drivers, they're they're coming from far away, coming into the works, delivering something or taking something away.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: You have the people in the tracco that are actually doing some of the work right there, and you got other different pieces.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_03: So there's a lot of moving parts here.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: And Road Scholar program is one that helps you, you know, manage that in a in an effective way and keep everybody safe.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, and there's a lot of moving bars.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_04: People's got to watch over for each other.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_04: We gotta we gotta work as a team, not by ourselves.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_03: Darren, Darren again took this all upon himself to say, I want to learn this because as we first started four years ago, roads were a critical part of what we felt we needed to focus on.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, you've been involved in all the different parts.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: So tell us a little bit more about how the Roads Color program helped you work with the road crew and and decide what we need to do and when we need to do it.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: First thing that came to my mind listening to everybody here was you're no greater than your weakest link.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we have to constantly be training people, we have to constantly be uh understanding who is in the work zone, why are they in the work zone, uh what con there's still traffic flow going on.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: So there's things that have to happen that we're paying attention.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: If it's too hot outside, we need to be looking at our fellow workers.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: So there's if it's too cold outside, do they have the proper uh equipment for what they're doing their job with?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, if it's somebody that's ditching, um, you know, do they have the right equipment?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Do they have the right safety guards in place?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: All those things come into play.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And from somebody who hasn't done this their whole life, that's part of why I wanted to jump in this.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the classes that I took away was uh the soil class.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize there were so many different things about soil that you could learn.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh the the different uh gravel to uh larger rock to smaller rock to to the asphalt to concrete and how we work with that and how we crack seal and all the different aspects of just building the road.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's all learned through LTAP and and through the Road Scholar program.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it helped and it it helps me when I go out and see that work being done by people who have great experience like Brian, uh, you know, and and learning from Ryan in the shop what he's doing.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we just got we've got a great crew and and Tulsa County should be really proud that uh Commissioner took it upon himself to make this a top priority in our uh district uh because there was a lot of things that needed to be done.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of you bring up a lot of points that because this this could always expand.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's we're talking about the purchasing of the right materials, and sometimes we have to make choices.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_03: We want a certain size of gravel, we want a certain quality of asphalt.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: We and sometimes they're hard to get, sometimes they're more scarce.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, this everything comes to purchasing, it's the personnel, it's the training.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but you know, when we're constructing roads, that's one process.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: When we're maintaining them, that's another process.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_03: And you all knowing the difference and how those pieces together uh come together in a right way to serve and that's the to serve our customers.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: And we were talking about a customer that uh contacted you to earlier today, which uh may not have been the happiest of uh of conversations you ever had, but we are here to serve the people.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, and it's their roadways, and we're doing the best we can with the personnel we have, the person and and the equipment that we have to make that the best possible.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we wanna we wanna make sure that taxpayers get what they paid for.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_04: We don't want to do a halfway job that we gotta come back and redo.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_04: We don't want to be five, ten years down the road and we're still driving on the road that we paved pretty well.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I appreciate you all taking time out from South Tulsa County to come up here to the headquarters, talk to us a little about this, congratulate you, Ryan, for completing the Road Scholar program.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: And again, this is the real Road Scholar.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I don't know, somebody's over in Oxford or whatever, but this is where the the rubber hits the road right here, Road Scholar program.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: I'm surrounded by three of them here, and our goal is to have more people at Tulsa County go through this process to improve all aspects of the road, every every part of the county, not just in District Three.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_03: So um thank you all for being here today.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_03: Uh appreciate what you do every day.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Ryan.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: And we will be back with our second segment with Nate Hicks from LTAP to talk about some specifics uh about the Road Scholar program.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you for being here, and we'll be right back.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome back, everybody.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: This is the second segment of our program that we're talking about roads, Road Scholar program, and safety and construction and maintenance of roads.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm glad that we're joined with Nate Hicks from the LTAP program, which is instituted headquartered out of OSU, Oklahoma State University.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: And um, you know, right off the bat, you know, he brings the orange in.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and you know, we're all about the pokes here, but uh you also have a history with OSU, and we can talk about that a little bit, but what we can all agree on is road safety.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: So you want to tell us a little bit about your journey uh educationally?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_05: Whether you're a sooner or a poke, we all share these roads.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_05: And so keeping them safe, keeping them open, efficient movement on the roads, keeping roads uh free of ice, free of debris.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_05: It's all important because we all share it and we can all get along.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: We can all get along, yes.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: On the gridiron, we we kind of have some contests from time to time.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: Here's a good sooner right here.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: I'm partial to OSU because my daughter just graduated there.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: Congratulations.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm not sure where he is, but you know, we're all Oklahomans here.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: And uh Sooner or Cowboys, uh roads are important.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: And you're you know, that tell us a little bit about the LTAP program and what what breadth of agencies come to you looking for more training for roads and safety.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_05: LTAP stands for Local Technical Assistance Program.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_05: It's uh a long-running program.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_05: It's been at Oklahoma State University for over 40 years.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_05: Oklahoma, Missouri, and Indiana, I believe, were the first three states to implement it.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_05: Now there's an LTAP Center in all 50 states, they have one.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_05: It's a combination grant from Federal Highway and Oklahoma Department of Transportation to provide training at no cost to our public works, whether that be municipalities, um, counties, tribes, and some of the ODOT people themselves will take our classes from time to time.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_05: So we reach everyone who's involved with the transportation infrastructure in the state of Oklahoma.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_05: Um I think one of the uh great things about the program is that we're able to bring a cohort of people.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_05: And in our classes, there's great discussion because you have maybe a city has done work one way where a county does it another way, and then you get into how tribes can correspond with that, or maybe the Department of Transportation, how they're how they approach jobs.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_05: So when you can build that cohort and that camaraderie, and we understand that, hey, we're all working on the same roads and we're trying to get to the same end goal of keeping our workforce safe, keeping our workforce trained, keeping the public safe.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_05: You know, sometimes we forget about how important it is that safe roads are a benefit to everybody in the state.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_05: So that's kind of where our focus is.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_05: And then we kind of have three pillars.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_05: We we focus, and and I think you guys mentioned this before, we focus on safety.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_05: Uh that's probably our number one um, our number one most trained class deals with work zone safety.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_05: And we're actually uh district one is hosting an M U T C D Part Six Work Zone Safety classes.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_05: District three, sorry.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: Well, there's a little bit of differences there, but we all work together.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: And you know what you're what I'm hearing you say is you know, relationships matter.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: And you all have relationships with all kinds of levels of government, and you know, this is this program's been going on for quite a while.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but tell us about the three, what you said, three things safety number one, number one safety, and then number two is efficiency, because we have to remember that our motoring public, our taxpayers, they have an ex they have a right to expect that their roadways are going to be free of damage, for free of uh, you know, they don't expect workers when they get up at six in the morning to go to work.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_05: And so when we're setting up work zones, we want to make traffic move efficiently efficiently, uh as efficient as possible.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_05: And then the last thing is is uh an environmentally sound because we we need to take care of the not only the people but the planet.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_05: So making sure that our work, uh our work and the way our roads drain, where whether it's storm water or ice melt or any of those things, we want to make sure that we're environmentally sound in what we're doing as well.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that's that's key about the water.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: I've learned a lot from Brian here and the crew about how how much time we spend trying to make sure that drainage is working and the training really uh uh reinforces that because water is probably the number one villain, if you want to uh say that word, that can really impact a road.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, we're all about accountability, and you say that we're accountable to the public.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, I'm gonna uh put our our friend here on the spot here because he's fresh out of the program.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_03: And could you tell us a little bit about how how how they do, how they uh um treat their their uh attendees and their classmates, and why don't you give a little a little accountability to our our LTAP friend here about how the program worked for you?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: It was great.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: I enjoyed it.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um it took me about a year to complete the program.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um got to go to some different locations and meet some different people, like you said, from different counties, different mu mun municipalities, and um I learned a lot.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: It was very beneficial.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_03: So some of those relationships you'll you'll keep for a long time because it's you know it's a counterpart of someone else who went through the program, you shared that experience, and it's good to have contacts in other places because sometimes you come across a problem you haven't seen before.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: Is that kind of what you're doing?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_03: Very, very true.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_04: And the you know, the plate keeps us accountability.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, we are we gotta keep our roads up to the what they expect them to to be.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_04: Sometimes it's very hard because everybody wants to drive on a good road.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, everybody, you know, include me.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: We want quality, and uh county roads are uh sometimes a little bit different than the municipality because the standards can be a little bit different when you've got curbs and gutters and underground water.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: That's a little different than than the county roads, but you all serve all those different uh levels of government.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_05: We we do.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_05: We we are able to, and we're very blessed that we have a uh good um a good group of instructors.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_05: A lot of them are professional engineers.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_05: We have professors from both OU and OSU who are training for us.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_05: We have bipartisan yeah, we have industry experts that have had that have years of just expertise that they bring to the table that maybe they weren't were never a professional engineer or they didn't work for ODOT, but they worked for a county or a city and they're able to bring their experience to the table.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, this is a good opportunity.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_03: We always love to have our partners who help us help train our people and the people that we interact with all the time.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, uh the LTAP program really provides uh service to us, but could you this is an opportunity for you to tell others who may not know that much about it, about the program and and how how to get involved and where who to call and how to how to start the training with your your team.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_05: And so we have we're able to train across a uh wide range of different jobs within transportation, all the way from the guy you you mentioned earlier about flaggers, uh, the guy standing out holding the stop slow paddle and making you stop so that you're safe and don't get run over in a work zone.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_05: And it keeps our workers safe, it keeps the public safe.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, so you know that maybe the guys filling potholes.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_05: So kind of that entry level, those some of those entry-level positions.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_05: We train them all the way that we have classes.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_05: We just had one here in Tulsa, uh stormwater erosion uh control, and that was highly attended by mostly engineers that were just wanting to see what's in new.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_05: And we have an incredible instructor, Dr.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_05: Shane Jamie Schusler, who comes and uh does that class for us.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_05: So we really train a large uh a large swath of people, different uh levels of transportation workforce.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_05: Then but our bread and butter, and kind of what we really come back to then is the is the work zone safeties, the things that are uh traffic incident management, uh excavation and trenching safety, motor grader um operations.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_05: And so uh we do two levels of the motor grader operations.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_05: Uh level one is for new guys that just need to get out and learn how to build crown, how to roll the material, remix all your fines and your aggregates together to have a good binding road.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_05: Um so we have that as a level one, and then at a level two, we get them into the ditches where there's some problems with pipelines and different things that you can find.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_05: So we don't try to put new guys in a ditch.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so we can come back and do a level two.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_05: We we do some uh backhoe classes, we do so it's just a really wide.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_05: We can do everything from heavy equipment to uh technical, like you mentioned, testing for soil properties, and you wouldn't know how many different types of soil.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_05: We deal with in the state of Oklahoma, but it's a it's a wide range.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_05: So different from one side of the state to the other.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_05: So there's uh oh one side of the county to the other in some cases.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it changes Oklahoma's such a such a mix of different soil types and rock down in southeastern Oklahoma, all the way up to Caliche out in the panhandle.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, red dirt, sand, blow sand.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we have it all out here.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: Well, let me ask you, you know, it doesn't just end with um Road Scholar, it's just one of the programs that you all uh focus on, and we are very, very appreciative of.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: But uh there's also, is there on on the table there may be uh an addition to Road Scholar, Road Scholar 2?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: And so people can.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_05: Of course, we're always trying to uh expand.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_05: But we do have a Road Scholar 2 that we are hoping to kick off January 1st.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_05: Well, really, we're trying to get it by October 1st, and we have about three or four of the classes ready to go.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_05: The rest of them we hope to have ready by January.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_05: And Road Scholar 2 is what we're hoping to do is build um that workforce development piece of guys like you who have just come into the supervisory role, uh, road foreman role.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_05: You're leading people, you've gone from being a great producer, a great employee, to now managing other employees.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_05: And maybe you haven't had uh a ton of uh classes on supervisory skills.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_05: So we want to roll supervisory skill, but then some more technical, a little bit higher level technical, like an advanced work zone class or uh some things like that.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_05: And so you guys keep in mind coming up March 10th and 11th, we have uh National Highway Institute with Federal Highways coming into Oklahoma to present an um advanced work zone class as a two-day class, and that'll fall under uh Rhodes Scholar as well.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: So that's fantastic.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: There's there's always another level, and you know, it kind of brings me back to um, you know, I uh Tim Gatz, one of our leaders in roadways and highways in Oklahoma, said I heard him say in uh um you know that roadways our our network is our greatest uh asset that we have for the state.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know, if you want to calculate it that way, measure it that way, it's a vast network of roads.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's taken decades and decades to build it.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: We're always trying to make it better, upgrade it, but also take care of it.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: And so this is one of the one of the prime ways that we gain the understanding, the leadership, uh, the training and everything else to to do that the best we can, which is what the public deserves.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so I want to thank you for being here today and talking a little bit more about uh Road Scholar, the LTAP program, and um it's very, very important to us.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm so glad that we've got a leader and Brian that that's been through it.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um Ryan's just started it and he's on his journey in leadership.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: So again, it's right here happening.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: And uh thank you so much for what you and your team do.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, welcome.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you for having us and letting us uh share a little bit of your day.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, Commissioner, do we have time for him to tell us a little bit about the class he's gonna give us down south?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_05: District three, yes, sure.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, district three.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_05: I do apologize.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_05: Um so we're bringing in the MUTCD, which is the manual on uniform traffic control devices.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_05: That is a mouthful to basically say this is the document put out by federal highway so that a stop sign in Oklahoma is the same as a stop sign in Florida, or vice versa.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_05: It's all the signage, it's all the lights, you know, red that you don't, you know, you you have red, yellow, green, and it's standard across the US.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_05: So this is the um document that brings that together.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_05: And we take one chapter of that document, part six, which deals with temporary traffic control, which is roughly three days or less.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_05: If you're not going to be there more than three days, you set up a temporary zone, and that may include flaggers.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_05: So we we go we'll cover flagger safety tomorrow, flagger training.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_05: Um, it covers how to set up temporary work zones when you're out and you need to just do a 45-minute to a one-hour job.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_05: What's the right way to set up the cones, the signage so that people are safe?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_05: Safety, safety, safety, always safety.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's good.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_05: So the guys will go through that.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_05: It's an all-day class and uh they'll start about 8:30 in the morning, go to about 3:30 in the afternoon, and they have to do a practical hands-on.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_05: So we're gonna take them out and say, you're gonna set up a pretend work zone, get out here, and here's the signs, here's the cones.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_05: How would you set it up?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_05: We really like to take some of the new guys and let them kind of walk through it, and then hopefully we get in that place.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_05: We always want to build um an environment where people aren't afraid to ask questions.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_05: So if they don't know, I forgot already from class this morning how to set this up, that they're not afraid then to ask a supervisor or a road form, somebody that's knows what they're doing.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_05: And so we're always trying to build those elements into trainings.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_03: Great example.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: I'm glad Brian brought that up.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: And that's tomorrow at our District 3 barn.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: Your team's coming out to give training where our workers are, and that just really expands the opportunity because it's hard to go someplace else and travel.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: But when you all are willing to come to our space and and give us training, that really multiplies the effect.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_05: And we've uh taken some measures so we've lowered the number.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_05: We only need 10 people to come and put on a class in a county or a district or a city municipality.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_05: We only need if they can bring, if they can guarantee you they'll get 10 people at the table, we'll we'll bring the training.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_05: Uh with Motor Grader, we've gone even smaller so that we can get more time with the guys uh with heavy equipment.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_05: We've gone even to smaller classes so we can get more time in the seat actually working the machinery.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and then it's easier for us to go into each district rather than a whole county.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_05: Uh sometimes machinery gets is different, different districts have different machines.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_05: So uh we let them train on their machine in their location where they feel comfortable.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's well thank you so much again for um a coming here today and talking about the LTAP program, Road Scholar, and every all the different facets to that, and how much that can help us do the right thing and serve our the public better and everybody stay safe, and also sharing with us about the LTAP program and and uh making people aware of that and how you all serve help us and you serve us and so that we can serve others better.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you for being here.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_03: You're welcome.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: You're welcome.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for having me.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you very much.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_05: I think a neat thing I heard was uh good roads cost money, bad roads cost even more.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_05: So we want to do it right the first time and keep everybody safe.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: Do it right.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you very much.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: And follow us on Tulsa County, all our social media, the County Line Podcast.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for joining us.