James's Challenge

Week 1: Develop your 30-second elevator speech on what you do for a living.

Week 2: Check makeup water for phosphate.

Week 3: Clean, organize, and update your testing kit and equipment.

Week 4: Conduct an elution study on a water softener.

Week 5: Send handwritten notes to those who have helped you.

Week 6: Update your LinkedIn profile to be a calling card for the customer/prospect versus a resume for your job.

Week 7: Draw a process flow diagram complete with feed points, water meters, blowdown, pretreatment, boilers, cooling towers, chillers, etc.

Week 8: Leave the customer's lap space cleaner than you found it.

Week 9: Test boiler sulfite both immediately on a sample and again an hour later on the same open sample.

Week 10: Review all your accounts to ensure you've lived up to all your obligations. If not, develop a plan.

Week 11: Explain cycles of concentration to a non-technical person.

Week 12: Determine volume of a cooling or closed loop system by calculation or tracer addition.

Week 13: Measure pH of DPD free chlorine test after reagent addition.

Week 14: Research the Langelier Saturation Index (LSI).

Week 15: Check makeup water for ammonia.

Week 16: Learn how a chemical dosing pump works.

Week 17: Question every chemical product you use at each location to ensure they are the best choice for the application.

Week 18: Calculate Holding Time Index (HTI) of a cooling tower.

Week 19: Research Ryznar Saturation Index (RSI).

Week 20: Convert 300 mg/L Nitrite (as NO2) to Nitrite (as NaNO2).

Week 21: Use your sense of touch to determine which softener vessel is online, if chemical is pulsing through feed tubing, etc.

Week 22: Explain to a non-technical person how a compression chiller works.

Week 23: Research chlorine dioxide.

Week 24: Test free chlorine in a cooling tower immediately and again an hour later from the same open sample.

Week 25: Dig through the AWT website (www.awt.org) for resources (both members and nonmembers).

Week 26: Run a jar study on a wastewater sample (or learn how to do one).

Week 27: Use your test kit to test your home's water.

Week 28: Learn about breakpoint chlorination and perform a breakpoint chlorination test on a water sample.

Week 29: Research neutralizing amine distribution ratio.

Week 30: Install or change out corrosion coupons.

Week 31: When using the EDTA titration method for total hardness testing, add a couple drops of titrant in prior to the indicator to eliminate other metal interference (but take into account those drops in total drop count or usage).

Week 32: Research Practical/Puckorius Scaling Index (PSI).

Week 33: Calculate the softening capacity of your water softener(s) based upon incoming water.

Week 34: Test for microbiological activity in your cooling systems.

Week 35: Find and share parts per million (ppm) analogies (e.g., 1 minute in 2 years).

Week 36: Ask a colleague to audit your waster systems.

Week 37: Measure the conductivity of water entering and leaving a water softener.

Week 38: Explain to a non-technical person how an absorption chiller works.

Week 39: Look for deadlegs in your water systems.

Week 40: Celebrate Industrial Water Week! You've earned it.

Week 41: Test for aerobic bacteria in your drinking water.

Week 42: Ask your customer what you can do better.

Week 43: Perform a condensate survey throughout a facility.

Week 44: Calculate boiler efficiency.

Week 45: Using proper safety precautions while sampling, run boiler water tests on a sample collected with a sample cooler and an uncooled sample for the same boiler.

Week 46: Perform a dissolved oxygen study on boiler deaerator and feedwater.

Week 47: Learn how steam traps operate.

Week 48: Test pH of condensate immediately and then an hour later on the same open sample.

Week 49: Calculate how much heat energy goes down the drain with boiler blowdown and how much it costs.

Week 50: Thoroughly dig through your company's website.

Week 51: Make time for your family, friends, and you.

Week 52: Question everything and continuously learn.

Bonus Week 53: Final challenge is to always be improving…those who plateau will never catch up.