Azuria Water Solutions Strengthens Threat Response Across Critical Infrastructure Operations

Protecting a Growing Workforce Across Hundreds of Job Sites

For more than 50 years, Azuria Water Solutions has helped communities maintain and rehabilitate critical water and wastewater infrastructure. Founded in 1971 and headquartered in Chesterfield, Missouri, the company now employs roughly 7,000 people and operates more than 200 facilities across the U.S. and Canada. With employees working across manufacturing plants, treatment facilities, and field job sites, timely communication and up-to-date safety guidance are essential to protecting employees and keeping operations on track.

As Vice President of Safety, Chris McKee oversees emergency communications, preparedness, and employee safety across Azuria. As Azuria grew through mergers and acquisitions, the safety team needed to support a much larger, more distributed workforce with varying levels of access to company communication channels.

“The majority of our field workers are distributed throughout the U.S. and Canada,” says McKee. “Some have company phones and email, some don’t, so we really needed something employees could opt into for safety communications and threat notifications.”

AlertMedia brings Emergency Communication and Threat Intelligence together on a single centralized platform, helping Azuria identify emerging threats and quickly reach employees who may be affected.

Coordinating Emergency Response Across Teams and Locations

With employees working across hundreds of facilities and job sites throughout North America, reaching them during a critical event required more than a companywide email. Field crews often worked without access to company email, so safety leaders coordinated updates through phone calls and group text threads.

If severe weather or another major event threatened one of Azuria’s regions, the company’s COO would contact operations leaders, regional safety managers, and supervisors to understand what was happening on the ground: Where are your crews? Which locations are affected? Does anyone need help? Managers checked with their teams and relayed updates as information came in. “It could take a few days to get a response from everyone,” says McKee. “It just wasn’t the best way, and it certainly wasn’t timely.”

Those conversations usually began after someone identified a developing threat, such as a hurricane approaching the Gulf Coast or an ice storm moving across the South. “It was really tough to stay on top of where everyone was, and what was going on across different sites in different parts of the country,” says Jason Grohoski, Safety Manager for Manufacturing.

Azuria also needed visibility into threats beyond severe weather. Civil unrest, security threats, and other developing situations could affect employees or the customer sites where they work. “Many of the water and wastewater facilities we support are considered part of the nation’s critical infrastructure,” says McKee. “From a national security standpoint, these facilities are what we call ‘soft targets.’ As such, there’s a big need from our end customers for threat monitoring beyond weather-related events.”

Azuria’s safety team began looking for a system that could monitor emerging threats, identify which employees and locations might be affected, and quickly communicate with the people at risk.

Building a Scalable Approach to Threat Monitoring and Emergency Communication

Azuria evaluated several emergency communication platforms before selecting AlertMedia. McKee led the evaluation alongside the company’s IT and HR teams, while the COO participated in the final decision. The team also piloted the leading platforms with members of the safety and operations teams before making its selection. A key requirement was integration with Workday, Azuria’s HR system of record, so employee information, organizational structures, and work locations would stay up to date automatically.

“We partnered with our IT and HR teams because that integration with our HR platform is really key,” says McKee. “With so many employees, having our organizational structure and location information automatically flow from our HR system into AlertMedia was a big advantage.”

Connecting AlertMedia with Workday reduces the manual effort required to keep employee and location data current. As part of onboarding, employees are invited to opt in to receive emergency notifications, helping Azuria expand its communication network as the organization grows. That approach will also support Azuria’s upcoming integration of Inframark, a merger that roughly doubled the company’s facility footprint and added thousands of employees.

That up-to-date employee and location data becomes especially important when a threat emerges. The safety team receives analyst-verified alerts through AlertMedia’s threat intelligence solution, allowing them to identify employees and facilities in the affected area and send targeted notifications based on work location or assignment. Read confirmations and surveys show whether employees received the message and help the team determine whether anyone needs assistance. Operations leaders and executives can also view the same information as events unfold, helping them better coordinate decisions across the business.

AlertMedia has also become part of Azuria’s day-to-day safety communications. Chuck Berdine, Senior Safety Manager for Insituform Technologies—Azuria’s flagship brand—uses the platform to share flash reports after serious incidents and distribute toolbox talks. Employees can respond with questions, creating an open forum where safety leaders share guidance and reinforce safe work practices.

“We really leverage the AlertMedia platform to create dialogue with all of our teams,” says Berdine. “It gets our communications out, but it also allows for feedback. That’s the two-way communication we’re looking for to make sure our message is reaching the end user.”

Improving Employee Safety and Operational Decision-Making

Nearly 97% of newly acquired employees have opted in to receive emergency notifications through AlertMedia. McKee says the platform has been especially well received by employees, noting, “We’ve had a really positive response from the companies we’ve acquired, and that gives us confidence as we prepare to bring Inframark’s employees onto the platform.”

One of the platform’s biggest tests came when a major ice storm swept across the South, shutting down Azuria’s manufacturing facility in Batesville, Mississippi, and disrupting operations across multiple states. The facility closed for three days, and only eight of more than 150 employees were able to report on the first day. Some employees were without power for nearly a month, while roads remained impassable and schools stayed closed for weeks.

Using AlertMedia, the safety team quickly identified employees in the affected area, sent targeted updates on changing site conditions, and kept leaders across the organization informed as the situation evolved. Employees received updates via text message, while executives had visibility into the same information as the safety team. “AlertMedia gives us a one-stop shop,” says Grohoski. “We can all see the same thing and communicate not only with our employees, but also with leadership.”

That visibility helped Azuria coordinate support for employees by identifying where essentials such as water, food, diapers, and blankets were needed. It also helped leaders make decisions to keep operations moving. Since the Batesville facility manufactures materials used by other manufacturing plants and field crews, Azuria’s leaders could quickly determine whether to delay production, reroute orders, or shift manufacturing to facilities outside the storm’s path.

When tornadoes threatened the Batesville manufacturing facility and another facility near St. Louis, Missouri, safety leaders used AlertMedia to check in with employees in the surrounding areas. The team could quickly account for employees and see if anyone needed help rather than relying on individual calls and text messages.

“We all know, in any threat or severe weather event, it’s that response time that really gets the nerves going,” says Berdine. “Before AlertMedia, there was a sense of uncertainty. You’re relying on text messages and phone calls, and you’re not getting the response you’re hoping for in a timely fashion. AlertMedia essentially speeds up that response time.”

Putting People First Through Every Phase of Growth

As Azuria continues integrating Inframark, the safety team is preparing to bring thousands of additional employees onto AlertMedia. The success of previous rollouts—and the positive response from employees joining through acquisitions—has given the team confidence that its approach to emergency communication can scale alongside the business. “Anytime we have a threat that’s going to impact our employees, AlertMedia is a tool we’ll continue to rely on,” says McKee. “We want to understand who needs help and be there for our employees in a time of need.”