What a crazy world we are living in. It is now day thirty in the government shutdown. No matter what your politics is, I think we can all agree that this is something that should not be happening, and truth be told, should never happen. This is what happens when people lack the ability to work together in any meaningful way. Watching what are being called negotiations in our nation’s capital leaves me scratching my head. Deciding that all the other side must do is agree to my terms and embrace my point of view is not negotiations. Its how children behave before they hopefully become mature adults.

The definition of compromise is an agreement or a settlement of a dispute that is reached by each side making concessions. It is the ability to listen to two sides in a dispute and devise a compromise acceptable to both. It means both sides must work together to find a reasonable solution to a problem. One side does not get everything they want.

The definition of consensus is the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned, a general agreement.

Working for the IAPMO Group is to embrace the concept of consensus. IAPMO uses the ANSI open concession process for the creation and updates of the codes and standards it writes. Every stakeholder has a voice and a vote in the final decision and every proposed change is looked at and reviewed before any final decision is made. It is not a perfect process, but it is the best one I have encountered. As the working group chairman of the last two revisions of the ASSE Series 5000 Cross-Connection Control Professional Qualification Standard, I am very familiar with the consensus process. Every proposed change or amendment to the standard was reviewed. A working group made up of stakeholders from every part of the industry worked together to reach consensus and create the best product possible.

This is what we need in the cross-connection industry. We need to work together for the common good. We need to check our egos at the door and find areas we can all agree on as a starting point for progress. We also need to face reality on issues where agreement can be found and on areas that they cannot and will not be found. We need to move past the fight about using only one specific test procedure or one specific test report form or certification program. These fights are never going to produce agreement and drain valuable resources we could use to educate the public and the industry about the importance of cross-connection control and backflow prevention. Protecting the public water supply and the public health is the place where our efforts can produce the best results.

Several years ago, I was involved with a group of industry people representing cross-connection organizations who got together to look for and discuss some of the areas where we could reach consensus and compromise. We held several one-day meetings and found agreement on training requirements for tester certification and recertification. We also agreed about when and how often backflow prevention assemblies should be tested. We put out position papers on these issues. I miss those meetings. Scheduling issues and other priorities have stood in the way of the group getting together again. Those meetings were important, and I am hoping we can restart the process again this year. Working together is so much more productive than simply maintaining the status quo.

By the time you read this editorial hopefully the government shutdown will be over. Both sides will be arguing about who won and who lost in the battle. The sad truth will be that no one won, we all are losers when situations like this arise where people work for their own self interest and not the good of the people. Working together to find common ground is what should happen. We need to get past the win at all cost attitude. The same is true in the cross-connection industry, let’s put our resources together and work to improve the situation; it is far more important that the proper protection is installed, tested, and maintained, than in maintaining a monopoly over what group certified the tester or what specific test procedure was used. When that happens we all lose. Let’s work together to get the conversation started.

About the Author

Sean is a 40 year member of the United Association Local 524 Scranton Pa. He has worked in all phases of the plumbing and mechanical industry and is a licensed master plumber. Sean is a Past President of the American Society of Sanitary Engineering. Sean is also the member of the ASSE Cross-Connection Control, Technical Committee. Sean is employed by IAPMO as the Vice President of Operations for the IAPMO Backflow Prevention Institute.