Meet Our Team: Q&A with Loss Control Consultant Troy Walsh

Troy Walsh has served as a loss control consultant for the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust for over 10 years and is committed to limiting risk and helping cities maintain safe, healthy work environments. Troy came to the League with a plethora of experience in fire service and public works and remains a trusted resource for cities’ public safety and public works departments.

Do you have a question about workplace safety in your city? Troy and the loss control team are here to help!

Please describe the work you do.

I am a loss control consultant with the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust. I’m one of six consultants on the insurance trust side.

I’ve been in this position just 10 years and five days. Sunday was my 10-year anniversary.

The stuff that we get involved in is everything from street, sewer, water, snow, to cybersecurity, to elected officials and properly running meetings, and communication, to facilities, to fire trucks, ambulances. We help cities navigate and manage anything that the city has risk and liability in.

The easiest way that I explain our role to city administrators is that they know finance, they know budget, they know how to work with elected officials and politics. But they may not know how to put water on a fire and the ins and outs of city risk. That’s where we get to come in. They can manage the city, they know the city, they know how the city works and operates. Our job is to really look at the risk liability and ask how can we assist you when those concerns, questions, or those things that keep you up at night. How can we help manage that risk to either reduce it or eliminate it?

How often are you working on-site with cities and how often are you working from home?

All six loss control consultants have around 100+ cities that that we visit on a once-a-year basis. We are able to schedule visits depending on specific needs, but we also go to cities on request. I might visit a city four times a year, once for our annual sit-down to review how things are going, what we can help with, and discuss any concerns they have. I’m typically on the road 2-3 days per week, on average.

What work experience and schooling did you have before joining the League’s Insurance Trust?

I kind of came through it sideways. Risk management and loss control was not something that I strived and aimed for. I kind of fell into this job by accident or fate.

I previously worked for a municipality. I worked in their public works department so I learned everything from sewer to water, street maintenance, facility maintenance, parks, all that fun stuff. When I was working for the city, I really got involved in the safety committee. When I started with the city, we were a little old school so we didn’t have a lot of written policies or a lot of written documentation at the time.

I used to sit on the other side of the table when the LMCIT loss consultants would come out for annual visits, and they would go, “Hey, you know, what’s the city doing? Here’s your risk. Here’s your previous claims, and do you have these things?” And we would have claims just like every other city. Loss control would come back and go, “You should really have a sewer maintenance policy.” The boss kind of looked at me and said, “Looks like a great job for you to develop this policy for us.”

So, I sat down, started learning a lot more about the League, the resources, the tools. I’d beg, borrow, and steal stuff from other cities and developed some of those necessary policies for the city that I worked for. I got to work with some of the League folks a little bit more one-on-one during that time.

I have a water license and sewer license so I have some of that outside training, and I’m still maintain that. I also have a degree in fire science technology.

My other experience was in the fire service. I’ve been in the fire service a little over 26 years. I would do fire inspections in some of our facilities, fire alarms, sprinkler systems, and fire investigations. I kind of got involved in the process of finding a problem, looking at the rules and fire codes, and developing solutions for the property owners.

In 2014, a position opened up and the League was looking for some people with specific backgrounds—public safety being one of them, and public works being one of them. Well, having some of those experiences, not knowing exactly what my role one hundred percent entailed at the time, I thought, ‘Hey, I have that background. I have some of that knowledge. I have some of that experience.’ And through the interview process, they decided to settle for me, so I’m glad they did.

How has your previous experience working for a city helped in your current role?

I think dramatically. I just did a wastewater presentation yesterday, talking about sewer maintenance and liabilities and stuff, talking to a bunch of public works people. I’ve been in that seat listening to other people talk, and I think we’ve all sat in that conversation where I don’t think this presenter knows what they’re talking about, they went to school, got a degree, and they are telling me how to do my job. But I can share experiences.

I will say openly that the job has changed in the last ten years, but I can also tell people that I’ve been in the bottom of lift stations. I’ve been in the bottom of manholes.

What are your top priorities this time of year?

As a loss control team, we have annual initiatives and this upcoming year’s initiative is cybersecurity. We’re trying to wrap our heads around how we are going to meet with our cities and talk to them about cybersecurity. I have to talk to Mankato much differently than I have to talk to Comfrey, Minnesota. Completely different realms, completely different staffing models. So, it’s the same information, they both have risk, it’s just one’s much larger ones, much smaller ones, more controlled and one may not have anything.

Otherwise, previously we’ve done wellness initiatives. Last year we focused on what cities are doing to improve health and wellness of their employees, and some of that really relates back to the work compensation stuff. You know the happier and the healthier employee is, the less likely they’re to get sick or injured and be out of work.

Winter is around the corner, so we think about snow plows and back safety with public works drivers, what a city is doing with sidewalks, and salt, and parking lots. The great majority of our cities do a wonderful job at maintaining those aspects, but it’s always those concerns of how can we regrease the thinking model when those things start to come undone. Do we have a plan in place?

What is one thing you wish members knew about your team?

One of the misconceptions I think people have about our loss control team is they think we’re enforcement, and we are definitely not enforcement.

 One of the things that I try to tell our members as much as possible is that cities are only so big, cities only have so many resources. We in loss control are essentially a free service. The cities pay their premiums for their insurance coverage to pay for fire trucks and buildings and flood and sewer backups and all that stuff. But on the loss control side, we’re the ones that are looking at how can we help reduce and minimize those risks, look at policies, best practices. How can we look at your city and maybe fit something in there to reduce that risk or that loss, and we don’t charge for that service. I can come to your city 6, 10 times to help do things, inspect things, review things, write reports. We don’t charge for that service and we’re not going to enforce it when we find something that’s wrong or that needs improvement.

Now for major safety things, we will encourage the city to fix those things right away. If we find stuff that needs improvements, it doesn’t meet OSHA standards, we might put that in a report, but it’s not going to change your premiums. It’s not going to change your insurance costs. It’s really giving you the tools to make some of those decisions to make improvements to reduce risk and liability. We don’t charge, and we aren’t enforcement.

Also, sometimes I feel like cities don’t utilize our resources until it’s too late.
How can cities be proactive and utilize our resources instead of being reactive after something happens?

There a lot of times I’ll go out and meet with cities and they’re like, ‘Oh, we have this problem, you know, a month ago, and I called our neighboring city and they gave me this, and I called this neighboring city, and I called our county.’ And I’m like, ‘We have resources for that.’

Call or shoot me an email and let me know how I can help you.

Why do you do what you do?

City government is all I’ve known. From the time I was in high school, I worked part time for public works. I only had two years of private sector jobs. Otherwise, I’ve worked for a municipality all my life. From the time I was 18, joining the fire department, to 16 working part-time for the city, this is what I know.

The other part of it is that when I worked for a city, I worked for a fast-growing community, so I learned a lot of things as the city grew, maintaining the old stuff, watching the new stuff go in. But I was able to be a part of how technology has moved into certain parts of the department, and I have seen how cities have grown and changed.

On the loss control side of things, I’ve had meetings with cities and they’re like, ‘We don’t have that in the budget; that’s something that we really can’t do going.’ I enjoy reminding people that there are real little things that you can do to make it better or easier. There are projects that cost $10,000, but there are some other things cities can do without a large budget.

My biggest reasoning behind doing a lot of this stuff is on the work comp side. You know, people chalk it up to people fall, people get hurt at work. That’s what work comp is for and that’s, you know, some of the excuses out there. While that’s correct, you do realize that the more money you pay in, the more you have employees out that are unhealthy. You’re not getting as much work done, so you’re always falling behind and it’s costing you money versus if you can keep people healthy and safe and able to stay at work.

Everyone who knows me personally know that the fire service is my hobby. I don’t fish. I’m not great at golf. I don’t play softball like I used to, so I do a lot of fire department stuff and try to learn and educate myself on what’s going on nationally and focus on sharing that with our members.