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“I have always felt like the luckiest person in the world my entire life. When I look at the time that I have spent here at Louisville Water and all the fantastic people that I work with, that reinforces just how lucky of a person I am.”
Louisville Water Executive Vice President Dave Vogel will retire in a few weeks with a grateful heart. And he’s leaving the company even better than when he walked through the doors in 2007.
Retirement often brings reflection.
Narrowing down his list of top achievements in 19 years, Vogel said, “My proudest thing really isn’t my accomplishment; it’s everybody’s accomplishment, but I had a role in helping to shift our safety culture.”
Vogel came to Louisville Water from LG&E where he saw up close the tragic consequences of what can happen from safety failures when working with electricity and natural gas.
“It shifts your safety culture almost instantaneously,” Vogel said.
Over the years, he’s worked with company presidents, the safety team, and operations managers to strengthen and emphasize workplace safety at Louisville Water.
“Being part of the cultural shift towards safety has been an honor for me,” shared Vogel, who freely admits he borrowed the idea from LG&E to create safety coins as a visual token for everyone.
“We helped build up the spirit of safety and the focus on safety with our employees.”
When asked if diving into the utility world of water was difficult, Vogel said, “A lot of the technologies are the same, but the way you go about doing the business has slight differences. I had to learn all those intricacies.”
Then he got to be part of the customer service transformation when Louisville Water launched its Customer Care & Billing (CC&B) database in 2015.
“Implementing CC&B was so hard. It’s the hardest thing you can do at a utility because you touch almost all the employees, but you absolutely touch every single customer.”
Validation of the tedious work and countless hours spent building the system came one year later with an award during Customer Service Week.
“We won that. I was so proud of our team and the employees who were on that team for all the hard work that they did. They invested so much time in that project and to get recognized for doing something right even in the midst of the challenges that we had was very fulfilling.”
One of the things that’s kept Vogel here this long is what makes it hard to leave.
“It’s the people,” he said. “When I joined Louisville Water, I wasn’t sure how long I would be here. Once I got here, met the people and got used to the operations, it was a comforting place and I enjoyed it. There was no real reason to ever leave.”
But the time has finally come, and Vogel is eager to have more time for things that have taken a back seat.
“Getting back to some things I used to do like reading books. I haven’t read a book in 10 years,” he joked. “There’s some home improvement lists of things I have to do.”
And he’s jumping into the driver’s seat for others.
“I have a couple motorcycle trips planned; one with [Louisville Water engineer] Mike Meyer who’s retiring the same day I am.”
Vogel also sees more trips with his wife and their three kids in the future. Wherever the road takes him, he’ll take the lifelong friendships he’s made at Louisville Water with him.
“One of the things in retirement that I’m going to really work hard on is keeping that social connection with people.”
Because if you know Dave at all, you know that’s what matters most.
