Shaping The Workforce In The Community

Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati (MSDGC) serves 800,000 people in Hamilton County with wastewater services. As in many older cities, MSD has a wet weather/combined sewer overflow challenge and entered into a Consent Order to mitigate the problem. In 2009, the final Wet Weather Improvement Plan (WWIP) was approved and MSD set about making more than $1.5B in improvements by 2018. MSD’s Executive Director, Tony Parrott, had a vision that this capital investment should be more than simply building projects. Mr. Parrott knew that throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks was not an approach that would get the results that he needed. MSD is reinvesting in the communities, creating job opportunities for the local residents and growing small businesses. MSD has embarked upon the future with great expectations and established Project Rebuild Workforce Collaboration Foundation, Inc. (Project Rebuild). Project Rebuild connects the business community, governmental entities, community agencies, and the workforce to the reconstruction of our nation’s most challenged wastewater and drinking water systems. The three guiding principles for Project Rebuild are to:1. Partner with public school districts to engage our future workforce2. Collaborate with Workforce Development agencies and community organizations to reach the unemployed and underemployed3. Reach out to support small, minority, disadvantaged and women-owned businessesOur goal is to establish Project Rebuild as the national model for economic stimulus to build sustainable communities, promote jobs, build small business capacity and engage our future workforce. Through the Student Intern Academy we set out to do just that… engage our future workforce. We know that most students don’t thing about working in water or wastewater plant, working for the local government in the Midwest or Cincinnati Ohio. Since the students were not coming to us, we went to them. The Student Intern Academy was established in partnership with the Cincinnati Public School District to train and educate youth in public sector careers especially the water and wastewater industry.