Make It Clear: Why You Can't Just Flush and Forget
Make It Clear: Why You Can't Just Flush and Forget
Reflections on the Journey: Saying Farewell to Tristian Bounds
In this heartfelt farewell podcast, Angela and Shawn sit down with Tristan Bounds to reflect on his journey at Orenco. They discuss his most enjoyable experiences, the challenges he faced, and the memories he cherishes. Tristan shares insights about the company's culture, the pride in their quality products, and his future endeavors in the engineering field. The conversation highlights the importance of relationships and the impact of a strong company culture.
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00:08
Angela: Hello and welcome to Make It Clear, a conversational podcast about all things related to water and wastewater. I'm your host, Angela Bounds, and I'm joined by my co-host, Shawn Rapp. In each episode, we'll tackle a relevant topic with facts and expert opinions and make things clear. Hello and thanks for joining us again. Today, we're doing another goodbye podcast or, well, for me, it's not goodbye.
00:38
probably couldn't say goodbye if I wanted to. But Tristan Bounds, who is my not so little brother, is also leaving the company. So we wanted to sit down and talk to him about his history here. It's long and vast. So Tristan, thanks for joining us one last time.
Tristian: Of course. Well, hopefully this isn't the last time.
Angela: I know. I was just thinking that when I said it, I was like, no, he's not...
01:08
I mean, he's going, but he's not going, right?
Shawn: I’m pretty sure there's a lot of kinds of things we could probably interview and move out in the future.
Angela: Right, right. Lots and lots of things.
Tristian: I'll probably be reaching out to you guys to help me promote things.
Angela: Hey, can we talk about… that's great. Shawn and I are always looking for ideas and people to be on the podcast. Any of you out there who would like to be on the podcast, please reach out to…
Shawn: Drop us a note.
01:36
Angela: srapp@orenco.com.
Tristian: Nice plug. Nice plug.
Shawn: Throw me into the bus there.
Angela: Oh, all right. So let's jump into the list of questions that we have. So Tristan, what is the most fun that you've ever had working at Orenco?
Tristian: I think the traveling for a long time.
02:05
it gave me the opportunity to see a lot of the world, lot of different communities and different infrastructure and cultures. And, you know, I enjoy traveling a lot and, I enjoy seeing new places and meeting new people from different cultures. So, yeah, I'd say that that's probably been the most fun that I've had at the job. You know, I've traveled through very remote parts
02:33
of Alaska and Canada to New Zealand and South America and all over the Caribbean. You know, places that I wouldn't have seen, beautiful places that I wouldn't have had the opportunity to travel to or likely wouldn't have had I not been working and had projects to go visit, communities to work with in those areas. You know, there's a lot of beautiful, beautiful places and beautiful people in this world.
03:03
And, you know, I found it very valuable and enjoyable to have the opportunity to do that.
Angela: It's interesting that that's your most fun because the minute that you said that I had anxiety.
Tristian: Yeah.
Shawn: About travel?
Angela: Well, because he has also traveled to some places that, you know…
Shawn: Yeah.
Angela: were a bit dangerous.
Shawn: He's had some very interesting travels in his career.
Angela: Dangerous for him and anxiety inducing for me.
03:32
And everybody actually at the business. All right. So it doesn't surprise me that travel is the most fun that you had. You do love to travel. So what's the hardest thing that you've ever did or have done here at Orenco?
Tristian: Also travel, right? You know, the reasons that you've mentioned being away from family, being in very
04:02
uncomfortable situations and in varying in various environmental conditions, you know, where it's 45 below zero and extremely uncomfortable and dangerous working conditions to traveling through the Middle East and, you know, having situations that I had to deal with that were life threatening in Iraq and…
04:31
Yeah, I would say the hardest thing, not that they, not that there wasn't, I think, some great experiences that I had that were from that hardship, but definitely, you know, difficult times dealing with some various situations and various environments that I had to travel through.
Angela: How far were you from that?
Tristian: Far from, what do you mean? How far was it?
Angela: Not flee, but when you had to,
05:01
You had to get out the last time.
Tristian: Well, I was, if you want the whole story, we can go through the story.
Angela: I think the story would be great. Yeah.
Tristian: I spent many, many weeks in Iraq, commissioning treatment facilities for geotechnical exploration camps. And they were mobile wastewater treatment systems that Orenco had manufactured, packaged wastewater treatment systems that required
05:31
commissioning and trainings. I was on my fifth deployment, if you will, in Iraq. And I had been working on a facility in a place called Kirkuk, which is a little north of Baghdad and a very heavily populated location. And we were working in Kirkuk when we caught wind of
06:00
Mosul. I always pronounce it improperly, but ISIS had formed and taken over the city of, I call it Mosul, but I know I'm not pronouncing it properly. And so, you know, we were put on alert and a little on edge, if you will. It was about three hour drive between the two cities. And our work was almost done. So the next day, we or that
06:28
that evening, we actually traveled to the east to Sulaymaniyah, which is close to the Iranian border. And on the way to Sulaymaniyah, we were in a big van, a bunch of people and military protection security. And we got stopped at a checkpoint and the checkpoint was way backed up. You know, we've been sitting there for maybe 15 minutes or so and came over the communication comms
06:59
walkie talkies or whatever that's that this group, which at the time we didn't recognize that their name would eventually become ISIS. But we had been sent a message that they had been at another checkpoint and they had pulled out a bunch of drivers from their cars and lined them up in a row, 15 or 20, I think it was. They lined them up in a row and executed all of them. And we're here sitting at a checkpoint.
07:28
Right? And so, obviously there was a heck of a lot of anxiety through the bus at that point. We got through the checkpoints and got to Sulaymaniyah, which is actually quite a nice town, college town. And slept through the night, woke up the next morning to find out that this group ISIS had taken over Kirkuk. And at that point, we recognized and the group had grown, I believe it was something like 50 to 100 people.
07:57
the day before and it had grown to almost like thousand overnight somehow. weren't sure how it had happened. So obviously there was a lot of phone calls that were made regarding rebooking flights because I wasn't supposed to leave for another number of days. I was supposed to go, think, to another job site. yeah, so obviously that caused a lot of anxiety with my family, with Angela and Terry and my wife.
08:25
Angela: I was hosting the webinars at that point and Grant was giving a webinar and I get a news alert on my phone about Mosul, I believe. And like my face went white. Grant just, Grant's doing this webinar and my face goes white and I'm like, I gotta go. Like I didn't say it. I mouthed, gotta go to him. And I like,
08:55
had to go find my dad, try and figure out where my brother was, try to call him, like, what's going on? You gotta get out of there. Like, you gotta get out of there. And he didn't go back.
Tristian: No, no, you guys wouldn't let me go back.
Angela: The entire board was like, that's not happening again.
Shawn: Right?
Angela: I mean, the board is...
Tristian: The client asked me to come back a number of other times.
Angela: Nope.
Tritian: But yeah, that was that was not in the cards, I think, for any of my family members.
Angela: Nope.
09:25
Tristian: Yeah, so I ended up being able to book a flight back out of Erbil, which was a little north. And the interesting thing was Erbil is like a three hour or so drive from Kirkuk and Mosul, but it's in the Kurdish territories. It's really the center hub for the Kurdish military. so was, what we expected was a relatively safe place. We didn't expect that they would go up and try and take over that area. But we obviously, every single ex-pat
09:53
in the country was trying to get out of Erbil at that time. Another like little interesting thing that happened was when we're on the plane, we didn't know if the airport had been taken over in Mosul and whether they had military rockets or anything like that that could shoot planes out of the air or whatever. And we had to fly from Erbil over Mosul in order to get to Europe where we were heading.
10:21
And yeah, so it was a good hour and a half into the flight before we all, before you felt this tension in the airplane just completely, you know, released. was a wild couple of days, no doubt. Yeah, a little terrifying. little terrifying.
Angela: It was stressful. So that can definitely be the hardest thing.
Shawn: Right.
Tristian: At some point, if anybody that's listening to this podcast or you guys want to hear
10:48
the story, a different story about Iraq where I was staying in a rundown hotel that had this circus in the back of it. It had been run, it had been run down for about, I don't know, 15 or 20 years. So it looked like a horror film. there's a lot more to that story. But yeah, if anybody ever wants to hear about that, can share that story.
Angela: Funny, funny. He doesn't tell us about that
11:16
until after everybody refuses to let him go back.
Shawn: Right?
Angela: And then he's like, well, you should hear this too. Oh my gosh. Because he would never tell us that before going back over there because he would have all been like, no, what are you doing? Oh my goodness. Working with family. It's always fun. All right. So what is your favorite Orenco memory?
Tristian: In the early days,
11:44
We just had such a tight group in engineering and sales. The employees would get together on a weekly basis and play ultimate frisbee. And gosh, we just had so much fun together barbecuing and hanging out. it was a small group of people. There was maybe 15 of us that, you know, we're, working in engineering and sales very closely together. And we just became really, really
12:13
tight and close friends with each other for a long time. It was a tight bond. And that bond really poured over into the passion that we had for the work that we were doing. Additionally, as far as, you know, favorite specific moments go, I took a road trip once with Robert Miller and Chris Helliwell in which we traveled by car together.
12:42
It was actually, actually, they let me bring Juliana, my wife, with us. And so, because, you know, we were all just so close that bringing one of our wives was cool. It was great. Gosh, we just drove around Oregon and Idaho. I think we came back through Washington, if I remember right. You know, we just had great conversation and we played golf together and we just spent a week on the road just hanging out and visiting clients and projects and
13:11
that memory has always definitely been at the top of my experiences with Orenco and the people.
Shawn: Nice.
Angela: The road trips.
Shawn: Right?
Angela: Yeah. Yeah.
Shawn: It's funny because that's a common theme, I think, with your dad had talked about that. Jeff had talked about that.
Angela: Yeah. I think that if we did these for every person that retired on the sales and engineering side, that the OGs will
13:40
talk about the road trips. And those early days. Jeff talked about being on the road with Bill. Which I mean, if you know Bill Cagle, that can be entertaining just sitting in a room with them sometimes. And dad talked about he and Hal.
Tristian: The early days.
Angela: the early days. I think that…
14:09
So, my first car was that red Accord, a little red Accord. And it was not, it was like two years old, I think, when he gave it to me, two or three. And that thing had almost 200,000 miles on it by the time he gave it to me. And that was just in the span of three years. it was his company car. He bought it brand new and it was three years old. Yeah.
14:37
Tristian: My first car was Eric Ball's company car.
Angela: Yep.
Tristian: And it was a teal Civic.
Angela: Yep.
Tristian: And I think that it had 150,000 miles on it or something as well. hand down company cars.
Angela: Hand down company cars that have hundreds of thousands of miles on them within a couple of years.
Tristian: Yeah.
Angela: Because that's what they did.
Shawn: Yep.
Angela: All right. What are you most proud of?
15:05
Tristian: I'm proud of the high standard quality products that we provided. Additionally, the way that Orenco supports its clients is really, I think, outstanding. We go above and beyond sometimes to our own detriment and pocketbooks to make sure that the clients are really provided
15:34
what we have promised in the quality of equipment and the quality of support. And Orenco has a reputation that provides people trust in what we offer because of that.
Angela: Right, right.
Tristian: You know, from academics to regulators, they trust Orenco stand behind the products and stand behind the service to a very, very high level. And I think that that is something that we all should be proud of.
Angela: Strive for. Right.
16:03
Tristian: Yeah.
Angela: So what are you going to miss the most?
Tristian: I'm going to miss the people, of course. I mean, I'm sure that's been everybody's…
Angela: Yeah.
Tristian: Everybody's answers, the people and the culture and the vibe of being an Orenconian. You know, yeah, you don't you don't I don't think that you truly feel or grasp what it means to be in an Orenconian until you step outside of
16:31
the bubble of Orenco that we work in every single day and you go to a conference or you go out to meet a dealer who set up a training or something like that. And you, you hear from others in the industry, the type of respect that they have for the work that we do and the passion that we have for that work and the service that we provide.
Shawn: Yes.
16:56
Tristian: there's a vibe that you get from that. once you start seeing that on a regular basis, there's this level of pride that you get to walk around with, just because you know that you're doing the right thing. It becomes a part of the culture at Orenco as well. knowing that we're producing products that are of the highest quality and providing people
17:25
and communities with solutions to solve real world problems and protect and restore the environment. I mean, who wouldn't be proud of that? And I'm going to miss that, you know, that elements associated with it. I think that culture really kind of changes you as well. If you're not already altruistic,
17:54
when you are hired on at Orenco, you eventually begin to understand that there can be a higher purpose in the work that you're doing. It's because of the people and the culture that was developed early on by the founders that that happens. You know, the people and the culture have helped me personally become not only a better engineer, but a more grounded human being. You know, one that knows
18:24
that good work done honestly and well ripples outwards in ways that, you know, may never fully be seen, but, you know, that we can be very, very proud of.
Shawn: Yeah. Yeah.
Angela: When you, when you stand behind what you're doing, when you're doing the right thing, like you don't have to, you don't have to question it, right?
Tristian: Right.
Angela: You don't have to wonder.
18:54
When you do the right thing, everything just falls into place. It just works and you feel good about it. You can sleep at night.
Tristian: You can sleep well at night. And I think that, you know, the way that it has changed me is leading me to future endeavors that are going to provide that same purpose in life. You know, my goals now
19:23
are to continue on with that culture and that same vibe in the work that I'm doing to provide solutions to do good work honestly and well and to really focus on protecting the environment, protecting our communities and on top of that, doing the right thing as often as we can because that's what really I think
19:53
drives me now is you know, that dopamine rush that I get from doing the right thing and doing it well and knowing that I'm doing it to try and protect the world that we live in and to protect communities as best that I can.
Angela: in perpetuity. It's not just an immediate need, it's not just like okay well right now I'm doing that.
20:22
It’s something that will go on hopefully way beyond us or have an impact way beyond us. Yeah.
Tristian: Right. Right.
Shawn: It's funny. I feel kind of like I've been spoiled for lack of a better word, working for Orenco in the fact of culture and the aspect of culture of the company, just because I've worked for several other companies in the past. Of course, that was 20 some odd years ago, but I feel like the culture here has somewhat spoiled me in that
20:51
We have a concrete vision. have a concrete purpose at Orenco. And that has not changed because we are here to help improve the world's water and clean it up and return it to the environment in a much better state than we found it.
Angela: Right. Right.
Shawn: And the other places I'd worked before, there was no such, it was kind of cloudy and murky and it's like, we're here to help the customer. But what does that mean?
Angela: Right.
Shawn: But here we don't have that.
21:20
Tristian: It's also, I think, quite fun to be an early adopter of things like that, right? When this particular sector distributed decentralized water, which we talked about in the past in a couple of podcasts, is just growing so rapidly. And to be one of the early innovators, one of the early adopters of the need for this particular side of the industry, I think is quite
21:50
exciting and again, you know, something that we can be proud of that we foresaw this issue being a major issue and started to, you know, provide solutions. And now it's getting more and more and more recognition. And eventually it's going to become more widely accepted as, you know an appropriate alternative for certain situations.
Shawn: Yeah.
Tristian: Yeah. I think that there's definitely something that you get out of being that early adopter.
22:20
a type of a feeling of success in, you know, moving an industry towards a more holistic approach to the way that we collect, treat, reuse water.
Angela: Yeah. Well, good. All right. So, it is not goodbye. Everyone will see you around. You will be at WEFTEC. You will be
22:50
around the industry, you are serving on boards, you are involved.
Tristian: I have an engineering firm that is, you know, focusing on distributed water infrastructure projects and I'll be designing wastewater treatment systems, Orenco systems in the future. I'll be designing with Orenco equipment and, you know, supporting the cause, designing Orenco collection systems and attending WEFTEC. Yeah, I'll be
23:20
sitting on the CLC board at WEFTEC and yeah, growing an engineering firm with a similar purpose to what I've learned and grown up seeing Orenco do.
Angela: Yeah. Yeah. Good. All right. Well, thank you for all your time. Thank you for everything that you've contributed to Orenco and continue to contribute to the world.
Tristian: Thanks for having me again. I look forward to the next time.
Shawn: Thanks, Tristan.
23:49
Angela: and thank you all for listening.
