I'm John Torek. And I'm Danny Sullivan. When construction comes to your street for a water main replacement, the technical side is only half the challenge. On the next episode of speaking of design, we'll meet the people responsible for communicating with residents in New York City. Their work took on added significance during COVID nineteen as they initiated a multi language public outreach
plan for a predominantly Chinese speaking community. So you're basically replacing these pipes that have been surveyed the communities for well over a hundred years. One of the bigger challenges when we go into a neighborhood and we say, hey, by the way, we're coming into the neighborhood. This is what's gonna happen. This is what to expect. One of the responses was, well, how come you're gonna shut off our water during the pandemic? Everybody was home. Grandma, babies,
moms, dad, everybody was home. But somehow, they worked with us because we were honest with them. I will explain to them, it's better to have a scheduled through shutdown than to have a water main break. You can kinda tell their body language and their tone of voice from their responses that it definitely helps to bring the communication in their native tongue. I speak Mandarin. My wife speaks Cantonese. So a lot of times, I would check with them if they speak English or do
you speak Chinese. And sometimes they'll say, you know, I speak a little English, but mostly Chinese. And then if that's the case, I would do my best to communicate. As an engineer, in my equation is, timely and clear clear communication equals no surprises. You inform the community in advance. You keep them constantly abreast of what's going on, and you're just being straight just totally honest with them. Nine times out of 10, the community will be
very receptive on what you're doing. Coming up on the next episode of Speaking of Design.