{Brief}ly Speaking about planning ahead for 2026. Municipal engineering expert Jenna Obernolte digs into the infrastructure investments that make the biggest impact, the upgrades communities often overlook, and how to turn big-picture goals into realistic, budget-smart decisions.
Originally recorded as a look ahead to 2026, this discussion covers many of the issues communities should consider as they plan for any new year. The trends, challenges, and opportunities explored here remain valuable for long-term community planning.
Mollie (Host)
Welcome back to {Brief}ly Speaking, the SEH podcast where we keep things short, sharp, and focused on what matters most in the AEC industry. I'm Mollie, your host. As we wind down the year and everyone starts eyeing those fresh calendars, it's the perfect moment to talk about what communities should be putting on their 2026 wish lists. This is the season for reflection, but it's also the season for big decisions. With aging infrastructure, evolving funding opportunities, and rising resilience needs, communities have a real chance to set themselves up for a stronger year ahead if they know where to focus. Helping us unpack all of this is Jenna Obernolte. She has spent her career in municipal engineering, helping communities plan, build, and care for the infrastructure that they rely on every day. Along the way, she served as a city engineer, leading projects, managing construction, and bringing a practical understanding of how long-term planning works when real-world budgets are on the line. Jenna, welcome to {Brief}ly Speaking.
Jenna (Guest)
Thanks, Mollie. I'm happy to be here.
Mollie (Host)
Let's get into it. We're going to talk about looking forward into the new year, which is exciting. My first question for you is when communities think about 2026, what big picture priorities should be on their radar right now?
Jenna (Guest)
I have actually two big picture priorities that I think some communities should be thinking about. The first of which is lead service line replacements and being able to get those done in a fiscally responsible way. I don't think it's a surprise to anyone out there that we've known for over 50 years that lead is not good for us as humans. And in fact, it's been illegal to use lead in our water lines. However, we're just getting into getting it out of our system. And that is making a big impact on our resources where our finances are coming from, and also how responsible we can be doing everything in a fiscal manner. My other big picture priority that should be looked at is property valuations and the impact that property taxes have, especially for outstate residential properties. As property valuations change, it really impacts how each property owner is impacted and we are seeing a trend that residential properties are taking a big brunt of how to finance how our municipalities are working.
Mollie (Host)
Lead and copper has been on our radar. Obviously we've talked about it. We have a lot of content out there just helping communities figure out each of the steps because it's been kind of a process up to this point and now it's figuring out the replacement piece of it. we had to figure out where they all were. Now it's the next step. So that was a great answer to that one. I actually live in a very old home and have a little lead service line handout here on my desk because I definitely have lead. What essential infrastructure, kind of talking the same vein there, upgrades tend to get overlooked but can offer huge long-term value.
Jenna (Guest)
When it comes to infrastructure upgrades, I think your biggest long-term value comes into knowing what you have, how it's working, and what your future needs are going to be in order to allocate a different policy. Nothing is more costly than needing to go back and redo work that has recently been completed. So if you have your system's information available to you in regards to material age, any known breaks or failures, available capacity and what your predicted future needs are. It's very helpful in making the decisions as what needs to be accomplished during a project, especially if that project might come up for an opportunity to make those replacements because of a business coming in or something that you weren't expecting. But then that area of your infrastructure is going to be impacted because of that addition to your system. So to really know what you need to take care of is the most cost-effective way.
Mollie (Host)
So it's really different for every community, right? There's not a one-answer-fits-all.
Jenna (Guest)
No, there's really not because every community has its own ranks and different ages, different materials. If you have a very good knowledge as to what's there, where your sticking points are or where your bottlenecks are in your system or where they possibly could be if your system gets expanded, you have a better understanding and capability to implement that dig once policy to take care of everything.
Mollie (Host)
I think the expansion piece there is really important because I feel like a lot of times we're looking to fix a problem right now. But and that kind of leads into my next question here is balancing short term fixes with long term resiliency. If you can have that foresight, talk to me about that.
Jenna (Guest)
A lot of times we do, we react instead of being proactive. and that sometimes comes to needs and funding availability. But if you know your system well enough to know what your long-term plan is and where any restrictions might be, you can implement a short-term fix that allows you to get by for a small time period until you do have the funding to take care of your long-term. Sometimes it is applying A band-aid to the road and waiting for when you have your study done to know that your sanitary sewer needs to be upgraded in size. So it's not going to impact your future needs. And then you don't have to break into that same area.
Mollie (Host)
That's always helpful. And like you said, cost effective for sure. So Jenna, you have been a city engineer for a while. You were an assistant city engineer mixed in there too. In your experience, what is one investment that communities either wish that they made or would wish that they would make once the next storm hits? So after, if they've either seen a storm or that, you know, to help prepare them for future ones, either it's an outage, a crisis, all those situations, what's a good investment for cities to make to be prepared for that?
Jenna (Guest)
I think a good investment for cities to have for your next storm or outage or crisis is to have a plan, but not only have that plan written out, but to make sure your team knows where it is and how to apply it. A lot of times that means actually practicing. In some communities that have flood mitigation and flood control systems. That might be every few years having your staff go out and know how to put down roadblocks in order to save your system from the next upcoming flood. And as we have overturned in staff and our infrastructure technologies and technology gets upgraded, we need to make sure those plans and procedures are also updated.
Mollie (Host)
Yeah, I think investing in planning is a huge proactive step, like you said, because it could be something different. And just having that in place, ready to go, and so there's no ambiguity is such great advice. When we're talking about a forward-looking wishlist, what role does community engagement play in that?
Jenna (Guest)
So when looking at community engagement, I know a lot of communities have difficulties getting people engaged when they are planning because it's not impact right at that moment. You get a lot more community engagement involvement when a project is right on the line. I think one way to really implement that community engagement is to not always take what your public says just in regards to that one project, but to always having an outward look as to what they're saying and being able to apply it to the entire system because that one point that they're trying to make about the road in front of their own house probably applies to somewhere else. And taking that engagement and applying it across the system instead of just that one point for that one project will really help in preparing future projects, changing future policies, and making an impact to what your system can do and how it serves your community.
Mollie (Host)
I like the idea of not thinking about the one pothole in front of somebody's house, but then hearing more of what the themes or the trends that they're saying are not the specific problem because it's probably echoed through other community members as well. We're going to switch gears here a little bit. What do you see as the biggest opportunities for technology or modernization in 2026? Our industry is starting to get more into some AI. We're seeing more tools that we can add into kind of our toolkit to help get jobs done. Communities can. What are some of the big ones that you are seeing or that you would recommend?
Jenna (Guest)
One of the biggest technology I would recommend looking into is one that SEH has partnered with is vialytics. vialytics really helps take the human questionability of assessing your pavements and your road infrastructure needs out. Currently, a lot of places have some of their staff members go out and read it. While those ratings can be based on feelings, they can be based on facts, they can be based on what they've heard about certain areas and not necessarily allowing you to compare apples to apples when it comes to what your infrastructure needs. vialytics is AI where you could get someone to go and drive your system. It videotapes the entire system, finds those potholes, finds those cracks, figures out the severity of them and how many times they reoccur to give it a rating and actually compares one street to the other in your own system so that which one is in a better shape or which one might need more attention faster.
Mollie (Host)
Yeah, vialytics is such a cool tool. And not only in the data output that you get, the usefulness of it, like you said, ranking those priority-wise, but also in the amount of time that's saved from city workers. They don't have to go out and drive it anymore necessarily, right? They can. But when you have staffing shortages, which I know is another problem that we're consistently hearing, another client pain-point there, that can be a really good option to get you that data without having to take somebody off of another job where they're needed.
Jenna (Guest)
Also that you might have two different roadways that will get the same score and then you only need to spend your time really detailing and or looking deeply into those two roadways instead of trying to spend time on a lot of your roadways, trying to figure out which one has the biggest need.
Mollie (Host)
So once you know about the projects and which one you're going to move forward with as a community, what are some funding or incentive trends communities should be keeping an eye on to be able to fund those projects?
Jenna (Guest)
Well, that's an ever-changing world, it seems. So really keeping on top of what is important to your state or at a federal level and knowing what your future needs are so you can apply those projects when funding is available. It doesn't really work to know that you want to do a project in the next year and then not know how you're going to fund it. But if you know what projects you want to happen in the next 10 to 20 years, and then keep your eye out on what fundings are available and how you could apply those projects to it, can really help you save a lot of money and get that money in place. And I will put a shout out that I think this one goes back to our November 6, {Brief}ly Speaking, and to really go listen to Alex and the tips that he gives.
Mollie (Host)
Yeah, our funding team is amazing and they do really have such a great knowledge base of not only their individual areas, right? Like we have funding experts kind of spread out, but just of the system as a whole and how to look into it. And I think that's such a resource for our listeners to utilize is chat with them, see what they can help with, or if they know of any options that maybe aren't on the current table. that they know about, that our clients know about.
Jenna (Guest)
The other big thing with them is to be open to them on what your real problems are because they might have seen it or heard it in so many different areas and maybe it's a position that should be taken to try and make it better for everybody so they can help our legislatures hear what our real problems are and just make an impact. So maybe funding could be available in the future.
Mollie (Host)
Absolutely. Those conversations are so important and especially doing it early on, like you said, can just help lay everything out nicely for the rest of the year, figuring out when projects should time out comparatively to each other. So my last question for you is a fun one. If you could wave a magic wand and give every community one upgrade for 2026. What would it be and why?
Jenna (Guest)
Well, one that's really impacting us here in southeastern Minnesota and I know is impacting other areas is our groundwater. And so with my magic wand, I would hope to be able to take out all the contamination in our groundwater so we don't have a question of where our water's going to be coming from. Our groundwater not only impacts what we use it for every day, but the entire ecosystem is impacted by what's going on with what we're pumping out and we want to make sure that we have proper resources for our future and for all of the needs that are here today.
Mollie (Host)
Yes, as a Midwest girl, I agree with that. we have all the agriculture around us and we're really seeing the effects of that on our water systems. It's something that we're hearing about consistently and it does really trickle down. I like that you thought through not only like drinking water and the engineering piece of it, but then the environmental impacts as well.
Jenna (Guest)
It comes really to heart because, you know, as I was growing up and also as I was going through my education, and everything. I never really thought the Midwest would be impacted by water scarcity. You think about it on the West Coast or like in Arizona, New Mexico, those areas. But you look at Minnesota with 10,000 lakes and well, how is water scarce here? But we are feeling impacts of it already and we need to know how we're going to be able to provide that very important resource for the future.
Mollie (Host)
Well Jenna, thank you for helping us think a little bigger and a little smarter about what 2026 could look like for communities. Planning ahead isn't about predicting the future or using your magic wand, but it is about being ready for it. And to our listeners, thank you for spending a few minutes with us today. If you found this conversation useful, make sure you're subscribed to {Brief}ly Speaking wherever you get your podcasts. And follow SEH for more quick insights on what's shaping the AEC industry.
Jenna Obernolte is a civil engineering leader, she helps guide transportation and municipal infrastructure projects from planning through design. With a focus on collaboration, project delivery, and client service, Jenna works closely with communities to develop practical solutions that improve mobility, safety, and long-term performance of public infrastructure.