Valve turner earns maintenance supervisor top Gimmicks & Gadgets honors

Quick and creative thinking earned Shawn Turner, utility maintenance supervisor for Searcy Water Utility in Arkansas, first place in the American Water Works Association’s 2023 Gimmicks & Gadgets competition.

While Turner (pictured right) was with a crew performing routine valve exercises, a 12-inch main broke on a busy street. The crew discovered that the actuation head detached from the rod shaft and fell into the valve box, about seven feet below the asphalt. Normally, this would mean a costly process involving a four-person crew using a backhoe to open the street, retrieve the tool and then backfill the hole.

But while assessing the situation, Turner had an idea. He quickly returned to his shop and welded a sink wrench to the end of a valve key. The wrench was able to grasp and easily open the valve stem without the need to dig a large hole in the street. The crew was able to restore water service within an hour establishing Turner as hero for the day.

As AWWA’s top Gimmicks and Gadgets award winner, Turner received an $800 cash prize and was featured in the September 2023 issue of Opflow.

“The recognition has been really neat,” he said. “That people thought this tool was a good idea has felt good. I’ve met a lot of really neat people who are interested in learning more about the tool. I’ve enjoyed talking to them and hopefully this can help them get out of a crisis as well.”

The valve turner has remained valuable to Turner and his co-workers. It can be flipped, depending on the direction of the threads. Using the tool instead of digging up and then backfilling a street allows Searcy Water Utilities to avoid expensive digging and servicing projects and passing those costs along to customers.

“We’ve used it on all kinds of stuff,” said Turner. “It works on anything that has a stem valve. Our system is old, some of our valves are old and corroded, others are broken. The tool works really well for the vast majority of our valves.”

Turner has worked for Searcy Water Utility for 16 years, starting as a laborer and working his way up to his current supervisor role. He likes hunting, fishing and enjoying time outside with his family. Before working for Searcy, Turner worked for a gas utility.

AWWA’s Gimmicks and Gadgets award recognizes a novel and relatively simple mechanical device or procedure designed to provide a more efficient, safer, and/or simplified way to perform routine tasks or functions in the maintenance, operation, or construction of a water utility system. This year’s second-place winner is John Meyers, senior water treatment specialist with the City of Thornton (Colorado), for his Quick Filter Media Sampler. Third-place winner is Nick Hoesel, senior utility line worker with Highline Water District (Puyallup, Washington) for his Holy Roller.