Customers love the convenience, reliability and affordability of clean-burning natural gas furnaces, stoves and other appliances. What they might not be as fond of are piles of dirt and concrete in their front yards, upturned landscaping around their homes or their new brick sidewalks in a heap. This can become an annoyance, especially in densely populated urban areas like Washington, D.C. It’s up to utilities to minimize these disruptions when doing major project work and to keep the community informed.
The District of Columbia enjoys a population of 693,972 people living in only 68 square miles in 21 distinct neighborhoods. Like many major cities along the East Coast, the District of Columbia is full of historic residential neighborhoods where people seek to maintain their properties in their original conditions. Many neighborhoods consist solely of homes attached to each other on both sides—commonly referred to as row houses. These row houses are two to four stories tall, and many are being used now as condominiums or apartments. On a large construction project, that means more people to schedule work with and to notify with preconstruction literature. It also means more people affected by parking restrictions and impeded traffic flow. But most importantly, it means more people to satisfy.
When Washington Gas received approval of its accelerated pipe replacement program—known as PROJECTpipes—from the District of Columbia Public Service Commission in 2014, we knew we would have to approach our work program carefully to be successful. We knew we needed to enhance education on our construction projects in the community to reach more than just our customer base—and that we needed to do it more frequently. After a year in operation at a fast pace throughout the city, we took a close look at the complaints we had received on our projects.
We realized that one of the best ways to minimize these complaints was to go directly to the source and the resolver of the complaints—our construction and paving contractors.
Like many utilities throughout the country, Washington Gas chose to contract out its PROJECTpipes construction work. This added to the number of construction crews working actively in the city each day. Using contractors for this long-term project enables us to keep our company field crews focused on the normal daily operation and maintenance of our system, as well as responding to and performing emergency work. However, our contractors now have become additional “frontline” workers for Washington Gas, making them an important daily connector for us with our customers and the community.
Just like newcomers moving into a neighborhood, to coexist amicably, we have learned that our contractors, some of whom are new to the area, need to become acclimated to the communities where they are working. There needs to be an understanding of and a respect for the community’s culture—its inhabitants’ way of thinking and their expectations. This is the intersection where the utility company meets one of its most valued pillars—the community it serves.
With our construction contractors as the “face” of Washington Gas in the community, not only must we as the utility be vigilant about their activities to protect our brand, but we also must provide support to them while they are working.
We found that one level of support is to equip each of them with a toolkit of information. This toolkit contains door hangers and printed cards describing our PROJECTpipes program, the restoration process and contact information. It also contains a checklist of issues the contractor must discuss with the home or business owner. This checklist is signed and submitted to Washington Gas for the project file.
However, we do not rely solely on providing toolkits to contractors. Last year, the PROJECTpipes Community Education Team developed a short but substantive customer sensitivity training presentation. We presented it first to our internal field supervisors, then to our contractor crew foremen. This year, we are focusing on rolling out the presentation to all contractor field personnel. It cannot be assumed that construction field crews automatically have the requisite skills and personalities to interact successfully with all types of people, their requests and their expectations. Field crews are hired based on their knowledge and training in construction and not necessarily on effective communication skills, knowledge of cultural and economic diversities, or the art of negotiation.
Our goal is to provide our contractors with well-rounded sensitivity training. So, we begin with an overview of local government. It is important for our contractors to know that while many construction complaints come to Washington Gas directly, some constituents choose to contact their elected officials. They learn about the different wards in the district; main attractions in each ward; and the economic, educational and cultural makeup of the neighborhoods. They also learn about interests that may be unique to residents and businesses in various neighborhoods. For example, some neighborhoods prioritize pedestrian safety or historic brick, while others say that avoiding lane closures or limiting parking restrictions are their top concerns.
On the communications side, the training provides our construction contractors with skills development on how to approach a concerned customer, a resident who uses English as a second language, or the senior citizen who lives alone and might require additional explanation as to why we are there.
The training also reminds contractors of their ability to set and maintain a positive tone by speaking with their colleagues and customers on-site with courtesy and respect. In addition, we reiterate that crews should implement good maintenance practices, including using their vehicles or public space for taking breaks and leaving the work site and private property free of trash and construction debris. Also, they should remove parking restriction signs in a timely manner. Good and consistent work practices are quickly noticed and appreciated by the public. These actions help build trust with the community and develop solid relationships with residents that could help get issues with the project resolved more easily if they arise later.
It is difficult to track the actual impact of training contractors in this manner since it’s impossible to know the number of potential complaints that were avoided. However, we can quantify that we are not seeing an appreciable uptick in complaints, which could have reasonably been expected given the amount of work happening throughout the district. Thus, we believe this incremental investment in robust customer sensitivity training exceeds its value in the long run. We are going to be in these neighborhoods for a long time, and we want to make sure that we maintain positive relationships with the customers and communities we serve.
Doreen C. Hope is community district manager for PROJECTpipes at Washington Gas, a WGL company.