Riverside recently held its second-annual I3 challenge, an initiative designed to provide our employees with a mechanism to promote their ideas – ideas we know can drive change for our company and our customers. I3 stands for Inspire, Innovate, and Invest, and this challenge is an example of how Riverside lives its mission of providing excellent service for our clients as well as being an inspiring and fun place to work by focusing on innovative thinking to solve challenging water and climate-related problems.
For this year’s contest, 9 teams signed up to present 12 inspiring ideas at a brown bag event. Topics ranged from changing our internal music streaming policy to using drones in our GIS projects, and the teams had five minutes to pitch why their idea should move on to Stage 2. The top four ideas were selected by the Riverside staff, and then those teams had 48 hours (with 20 hours covered by Riverside) to develop their pitches into 20-minute presentations given over a pizza party.
The top four ideas in Stage 2 were:
- The Sky is (Not) the Limit – Drones in Water Resources (Ian Hageman)
- Forecast Product for Columbia River Basin Single Trace Procedure (Ian Maycumber, Noah Friesen, Katherine Balster, Jon Quebbeman, Paul Micheletty)
- Pi Cluster (Paul Micheletty, Jon Quebbeman)
- Riverside Consequence Assessment Tool – RCAT (Michael Crouch, Anurag Srivastava)
From there, our I3 committee selected the winner based on the innovation and beneficial impacts of the idea – and the winner was the Riverside Consequence Assessment Tool. Michael Crouch and Anurag Srivastava were presented with $250 cash, a trophy, and a commitment from Riverside to invest resources to help foster the team’s idea in 2017.
“I3 was a great platform to bring forth new ideas,” said Michael Crouch. “Even better was the fact that we got to build on what we have been developing throughout the course of our work on the Tennessee Valley Authority consequence projects.”
Congratulations Michael and Anurag!
