AWWA Water Champion – Keith Kohut, North Vancouver, British Columbia

Keith Kohut is a drinking water project manager and process mechanical engineer with Associated Engineering, where he started in 2004. He’s a director with AWWA’s British Columbia Section, a member of the Canadian Affairs Committee, and served on the AWWA Board of Directors, the 2030 Strategic Planning Committee and the Water 2050 Governance Think Tank.

Education: B.A. Sc., Environmental Engineering, and M.A. Sc., Civil Engineering, University of Waterloo

How did you get started in the water sector? I started in engineering interested in environmental issues. I was drawn to working with drinking water because your objective is always making sure people have water that is safe to drink. There’s no downside to that.

Describe your career path. It has been full of twists and turns and adapting to circumstances and new developments. When I first moved to the West Coast in British Columbia (BC), I had some very strong opinions on how water systems should be run. In BC we have more than 4,500 water systems and most serve fewer than 50 homes. The people running a lot of these systems stepped up because no one else will. It’s not like they have a background in it. They just want to do the right thing.

If you were to tell me when I started that I’d be keeping an eye on regulations and trying to educate people about them, I would have thought that was crazy. But that’s where some of my interests lay and where I thought we as an industry in BC could have more of a voice.

What is your proudest professional accomplishment? Two years ago, I was given the AWWA George Warren Fuller Award. It was humbling to be considered part of the team of who has been given that award.

I’ve also mentored other water professionals and seen them grow from being nervous and not very confident in their experience to becoming champions in our industry. Seeing them able to confidently share their knowledge has been rewarding.

One of the first plants I worked on was in a First Nations community. I’d visit periodically for a year after construction to check in, see how things are going, help them with any questions or problems that had come up since my last visit. The operators there didn’t know but me but took a chance in trusting me to work with them. We built a relationship over time and at the end of the program, as a token of their appreciation, they gave me some smoked fish that they themselves prepared. I very much appreciated the gesture.

Describe your experience with the Water 2050 governance think tank. It was really nice that both the AWWA president at the time (Joe Jacangelo) and AWWA CEO David LaFrance took the time to call me personally and tell me that they wanted me involved. How can you say no to that?

It was a little intimidating at first to be there, just because there are so many people who’ve put decades into this kind of work all over the world. What I really liked was seeing all these people who came from really different backgrounds, with very different starting points in their perspectives, all looking in the same direction of what we want in the future. Where would we like to be in terms of governance and regulation for water in 2050?

There was another Canadian involved (Marcus Firman from Ontario), and every once in a while, someone would ask us how relevant the discussions were to us Canadians. While the details of how regulation and governance work in the U.S. and Canada are very different, when we’re looking that far in the future, the overall structures of how we should be governing water resources and the water cycle are going to be the same no matter the details.

What did you learn from serving on the AWWA Board of Directors? I learned a lot about what other sections are doing – especially California and Texas. Just hearing about all the different initiatives they’ve got going on had me thinking whether we can apply them in BC. Even things like ideas for operator challenges at conferences, or what old water equipment looks good as a trophy if you spray paint it gold.

Similar to my Water 2050 experience, it was interesting to meet folks with very different political and cultural viewpoints with that commonality of having a passion to make sure there is safe drinking water for the communities we serve.

What was your experience with the 2030 Strategic Planning Committee? I was really surprised by just how much work and thought goes into making a strategic plan. At the end of the day, you end up with a few pages of bullet points but there’s so much discussion behind what things we think are most important. It was a lot of discussion about embracing where we want to go in the future but not losing sight of what’s important to our membership right now.

How else have you benefited from your involvement with AWWA? I think the biggest thing is the idea copying and some of the connections I’ve made. One thing that may be underappreciated is – we see Canada as a big section sometimes, but it’s a very wide country. We have a lot of sections, and I don’t think we would talk to each other as much if it wasn’t through AWWA and things like the Canadian Affairs Committee. Being able to talk to the folks in the Maritimes is not something that would normally come up in my day-to-day.

I think it’s also it’s been illuminating to learn how personal touches can impact your motivation in being involved and wanting to champion the things that groups like AWWA do. Those personal reaching-outs, even though it’s a huge association. I’ve been trying to take that back to my own local section.

Please describe your family and your hobbies and interests. My wife, Narissa, and I have a five-year-old daughter, Alyssa, and eight-year-old son, Nicholas. We love going to the beach and swimming. I also like lifting heavy things, being out in the forest or being around the mountains. Very Canadian stuff.