Why You Should Join PW.NET
By Carl Quiram, Public Works Director, Goffstown
Today, finding information (or avoiding recreating the wheel) has become a breeze through the use of pw.net. Pw.net is a listserv sponsored by the UNH T2 Center. Users send an email to pw.net asking a question that they don’t have time to research, or to get a different point of view. Pw.net has been one of the single greatest communication advances that I have known in our business, we are all very busy and do not always have the time to do a lot of research on our own. In the past, we relied on word of mouth to solve problems or have waited for a workshop or newsletter article.
After sending a email message to pw.net, usually very quickly, many colleagues, who have probably already dealt with a similar issue, will point you in the right direction. I’ll describe a personal example.
This past spring, after Town Meeting, we were approved to purchase a new sewer vacuum truck. The last one we purchased was in 1982 so we needed to develop an entirely new RFP. Our mechanic was rather intimidated by the daunting task of how to write a spec for this piece of equipment. I inquired of PW.Net if anyone had any such RFP and within 3 hours I had 8 different RFP's sitting on my desk to draw from. It saved me a great deal of time and got us a great truck that will certainly do the job for us. Being able to quickly ask for and receive information from peers is a valuable tool for today’s fast-paced workplace.