Teams race the competition clock
International water conferences are more than a place to catch up with colleagues and compare notes about the latest trends and technologies. They’re home to friendly — and intense — competitions between utility teams.
And the ACE25 conference, which drew more than 11,000 water industry experts to the Colorado Convention Center June 8-11, was no different. Read more about the conference in this TAP story.
Watch the competitions, and hear from Denver Water's teams:
Denver Water’s teams went head-to-head against teams from around North America in competitions that demanded speed, strength, skill and precision.
They assembled a water meter from a bucket of parts in just over a minute. A two-man team put together a water-tight fire hydrant in about 90 seconds. And the three-man team drilled into a cement-lined, 6-inch, ductile iron pipe and installed a tap (in the form of a copper line that carries water into a home or other building) in about a minute and a half while the women’s team clocked in at about three and a half minutes.
“They did an awesome job. I’m really proud of them. They left it all out on the floor,” said Shane Fellman, who coached Denver Water’s men’s and women’s “pipe tapping” teams and the hydrant assembly team. Fellman is also a water distribution supervisor for Denver Water.
Join the team, at denverwater.org/Careers.
Denver Water’s men’s tapping team ranked sixth in the nation with a time of one minute, 34 seconds. The women’s team ranked fifth in the nation with a time of three minutes, 34 seconds. Denver Water’s men’s hydrant team ranked sixth in the nation with a time of one minute, 37 seconds.
In the meter assembly challenge, Denver Water’s Felix Avalos, a lead pipeline mechanic and also a member of the men’s tapping team, had a time of one minute, four seconds, putting him 27th in the field. Lisa Salazar, a work planner, had a time of one minute, five seconds, putting her 28th in the field.
“It’s intimidating to be at ACE, where everyone’s looking at you and the crowd is cheering so loudly. My fastest practice run for the meter challenge is 42 seconds, but my nerves definitely got the best of me at ACE,” said Salazar, who has represented Denver Water at the national ACE competitions in previous years as a member of the women’s hydrant assembly team.
Recovering from a surgery that prevented her from being on the hydrant assembly team, this year was Salazar’s first time tackling the meter challenge, rising through regional contests to compete at ACE.
“The competitive teams we have here at Denver Water, we joke, laugh and support each other all year. It takes a lot for teams to practice because they do it on their own time,” she said.
And the competitors who make it to ACE are the best of the best.
“Everyone at the competitions is very, very competitive. They like to win. They don't like to lose,” said Jack Bowers, the “copper” member of the tapping team responsible for preparing two 6-foot-long copper sections of pipe and attaching them together, then to the water pipe. The men’s tapping team was made up of Bowers, Avalos and Miguel Escamilla, a lead pipeline mechanic.
Bowers, a water distribution supervisor who’s spent 25 years on Denver Water’s men’s tapping team, said the competitions bring to the national stage the critical work water utility crews do in the streets and ditches maintaining the network of pipes that carry safe, clean water to customers.
“They give people who aren’t in the field every day an idea of what we do. Although, at ACE it’s the polished version — it’s not always this clean and easy, or done in a temperature-controlled convention center under the lights,” said Bowers, who plans to retire from the team.
It’s also a chance to demonstrate skills practiced by water utility crews every day in areas that the general public may not know about.
ACE’s Hydrant Hysteria competition focuses on how fast the two-person team can assemble a fire hydrant, something that’s the responsibility of the water utility, not the fire department.
“We do this for fun, but we deal with hydrants day in and day out,” said Daniel Ruvalcaba, a water distribution supervisor on Denver Water’s men’s two-man hydrant competition team with Lac Nguyen, a lead pipeline mechanic.
“People think it’s the fire department, but we replace them and install new ones where needed,” Ruvalcaba said.
Teams practice their skills for months in advance of competitions, balancing practice runs with their daily work at the utility.
“I have the best teammates,” said Julie Bowers, who works in Denver Water’s public affairs and has been part of the women’s tapping team since it started in 2013.
“I’ve been on the tapping team for 12 yrs, and if this is going to be my last competition, if I’m going to retire from the team, this is who I want to go out with,” she said.
Candice Rodriquez, who works at one of Denver Water’s treatment plants, said the teamwork involved on the women’s pipe tapping team, with Julie Bowers and Emily Long who works in the safety department, mirrors the teamwork taking place across the 1,000-person organization.
“Teamwork is important here on the team. The three of us are from different parts of the organization but we’re all colleagues — and that’s how we keep the water running,” she said.
“Pipe tapping is one part of the puzzle. We’ve got a huge team working together to get water to people’s taps every single day.”
