The BOD Meeting for will be hosted September 17th-20th, 2024, in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The agenda and BOD packet will be sent to you closer to the meeting. The initial outline is below:

Tuesday, September 17th: Board arrivals and a casual evening reception.

Wednesday, September 18th: Board meeting (Commission members arrive) followed by a joint evening event with the Board and Commission.

Thursday, September 19th: Commission meeting (Board members are welcome to fly home and do not need to attend the C2EP meeting but are welcome to stay), followed by a fun evening for the Commission and any remaining Board members.

Friday, September 20th: Departures, except for those wanting to stay for personal reasons. 

Please indicate your travel plans on THIS survey. You can also begin booking your flights. Feel free to book travel on your own and submit an expense report for reimbursement. If you would like to book using WPI’s travel service, please follow the steps below:

1. Log into the ATC website. A “forgot password” link is available if you’ve forgotten your credentials. You can also reach out to Michael Frounfelter from ATC as a resource should you run into any major issues with the website.
2. Search for flights meeting your parameters. If you have questions on what you submitted on the survey, or need clarification on dates, please let me know.
3. After you’ve selected your flights, select the meeting titled “WPI September Board Meeting 2024, Mexico,” and use code “80659.”; complete the transaction.

WPI is pleased to announce that multiple proposals we were included in for the EPA Innovative Water Workforce Development Grant Program have been awarded funding. More information on these projects will come soon, but in the meantime, please see the official press release HERE.

In April, our team gathered with more than 30 volunteers, psychometricians, and exam developers for an Item Review Workshop. The Subject Matter Experts were involved in the intensive two-day session to work through possible item banks and correlate items based on the new Need-to-Know documents. 

We are excited to host the exam development committees in Des Moines in August. We will be continuing work started in April and will make crucial strides for the development of the new standardized exams. 

WPI has always prioritized being good stewards of member funds. We also try to be good business partners with our clients, sometimes to a fault. This allows for occasional stretching of payment windows beyond the normal 30-45 days that are typical of accounts receivables. As a result, between client employee turnover, paperwork logjams, and apathy, we had seen a buildup of past due debt.

Over the past few months, we’ve been able to cut a good chunk off older debt. As of June 20, 2024, QuickBooks shows the >6 months accounts receivables at about $17,000. The 2-6 months accounts receivables show about $30,000. This has dropped quite a bit due to a few factors. There was a big lag in some states processing our name change, which resulted in late payments. We also had a client who couldn’t sign a new contract without a governor’s commission approval. Because there was no contract, they couldn’t pay their previous debts either. This has since been cleared up and they are paid in full. We anticipate the numbers of 3+ month past-due invoices to continue to trend down.

There’s an immense amount of prep work for the two days of competition: around 20 preliminary rounds, 3 semi-final rounds, 1 final round, 2 tie breaker rounds, and extra questions in case of a rejected question during the competition.  That’s a lot of questions! WPI’s Testing Services Manager, Emily Pautsch, begins after WPI’s Innovation in Certification conference in January or February and finishes before Memorial Day. By the time mid-May rolls around, she is excited, if not a bit nervous for the competition, it’s always fulfilling to see all those months of hard work come to fruition.  

This year was a major success!  Usually, there is a question or two that the judges will decide ought to be thrown out after conferring during the competition (no matter how much double and triple checking happens, it’s just how things go). However, this year, no question was deemed unworthy.  This year was unusual for another reason- we had to do tie breaks on several rounds and ended up using all the tie breaker rounds and having to use some extra questions.  This has not happened in the four years that Emily has led the development of Top Ops!  

The teams competed with all they had and it’s always interesting to see who ultimately takes the cake (or in this case Top Ops Champs baseball cap)!  The Tulsa Terminators won this year after having competed at ACE several years in a row.  Five or so months of hard worth all done with in about a day and a half, it’s definitely a whirlwind but always exciting to see it play out!

This Spring, WPI began conducting an audit with PSI to determine any errors in fee structure and/or missing payments that may have happened on behalf of both organizations. This was a daunting task given the complexity of WPI’s billing to 49 testing clients who utilize computer-based testing through PSI. It required numerous staff hours by both organizations to review invoicing, fee schedules, emails, and spreadsheets galore.

To date, we have uncovered approximately $20,000 in pricing and payment errors (in WPI’s favor) due in part to the complexity of our members’ invoicing and contractual fee schedules. To prevent any future errors, WPI will conduct periodic audits to ensure accuracy and compliance with our contractual obligations. WPI & PSI leadership are currently discussing implementing new processes to guarantee proper implementation of updated exam rates and invoicing going forward.

PSI has been an invaluable partner to WPI over the past three decades. We have appreciated their willingness to address the concerns and their efforts to correct the errors and put new systems in place. We will continue to keep the Board and Commission apprised of our efforts on this front. 

As an environmental nonprofit, we have recently investigated our impact on the environment outside of water. According to our calculation, between in-office use and paper-based exams, our office utilizes roughly 40 trees worth of paper per year. This breaks down to 400,000 sheets, or 800 reams. While we do recognize this number “could be worse,” we also know we can do better. As time goes on, we are committed to moving to digital spaces where we can in effort to reduce our use of paper in the office. In addition, we are looking into options to give back with One Tree Planted. This gives us the opportunity to donate to reforestation, watersheds, restoration of fire damage, and more!  

We are seeing many changes in the WPI office this summer! 

Our Strategic Initiatives Coordinator, Malorie Hendrix, is currently out on maternity leave and is expected to return in late September. Malorie and her husband welcomed their first child into the world on June 26th. While she is away, our team has been prepped to assist with certification and other duties so we may operate without lag. Malorie is pictured below with baby Avery.

This summer, WPI welcomed Ainsley Menning, Project Development Intern, to the team until mid-August. Ainsley is working towards a double major in Public Health and Statistics. We are keeping her busy with a variety of projects, including a membership audit to ensure all information we have on file is up-to-date and collecting certification and training information for the individual programs.  

WPI is excited to announce the hiring of Kelly Hinners. She will be taking on the role of Operations Coordinator, expected to begin July 15^th. Kelly has a unique background that combines engineering and technology with business communications, among soft skills. She is a jack of all trades, and we look forward to seeing her develop within our organization!

Additionally, our Senior Program Manager, Kelly McCord, is no longer with WPI. We wish her the best in her future endeavors! 

You can find the draft meeting minutes from our January meeting here. 

You can review the 2023 audit  here. 

If needed, please complete the expense report below and submit to Paul, Tom, and Haley for processing.

WPI Expense Form 2024