Page 166 - SAC - DPW - AMB 09 05 19

Suhail Kanwar

Thursday, August 22, 2019 8:39 AM

Why are you interested in the Director of Public Works position with the City of Sacramento?
Tell me a bit about what you know about the City.

It is exactly in line with what I do currently. I handle very complex projects and a huge amount of growth
for the last eleven years now as a public servant. I have a really good mix of experience to serve in this
position and succeed. I have a son who just went to college and another son who is about to go to
college. My wife and I are looking to relocate to an area with college closer to home.

Please describe your most recent position and day-to-day responsibilities.

Public Works Director and Administrator with McKenzie County - we are the largest oil producing county
in the Nation. When I started with the county my budget was $32m now it's $100m. I have five different
departments, solid waste, GIS, engineering, water. Right now we are 72 people in public works - a total
of 86 employees. There has been a tremendous growth since I started.

Day to day - summer I am handling construction and CIP and make sure we are dealing with all the
construction. Oil companies have headquarters in the area and they are very powerful people - they are
always coming to us for permits. We try to accommodate everyone. Because of the growth there is a
large need for growing in a responsible way. We have implemented quite a few regulations - planning
was not part of the County recently and we just implemented that. Lots of meetings, lots of task
meetings. My days are very, very busy. I can easily work 12-14 hours aday.

Please describe a project in which you played a major role in creating pathways for
improvement for those in your community.

There's a huge oil expiration happening right now. We need to make sure any construction we do does
not have a big impact on the environment and is sustainable. That is our mark of the community in a
way. Our transportation system - we came up with a proposal to create a grade that will have the least
amount of impact on the environment - have long-term and short-term goals. I personally led that
project - made sure we built a system that benefits everyone. One of the projects we did was a road
connection where most of the shops are - McKenzie County has the best oil fields so we were trying to
connect the shops to the fields.

In my previous project with Minnesota we were building a bike trail that would connect the largest city
with a number of parks. There were several different enterprise boards that we had to deal with. Before I
came on board they were unable to move the project forward because the stakeholders were not
aligned. I met with stakeholders and what I learned is that there were two things that were the source of
the problem. I learned that the location would have a negative impact on some people. Succeeded in
the design. Impact wise I felt really good about that project because it brought people together.

Please describe your experience in evaluating innovation and operational procedure utilized
in a City department and your approach to staying at the forefront of industry.

We are changing our fleet management that will track all of our maintenance and our locations - it's a
new program we have implemented and have been very successful. We also have a GIS inventory. We
are the largest County in the state. We have lots of miles of road to maintain. We are responsible for all
of the signs. We needed some kind of database - we implemented a GIS based program - you can click
on any sign and get information on it - like when it was installed and what it says. There are several