439 Innovating Water for Smart Cities: Christine McHugh’s Vision
Release Date: 09/26/2025
460 Building Boiler Talent: Fundamentals, Online Training, and Better Partnerships with Eric Johnson
Scaling UP! H2O
Boilers can feel intimidating the first time you step into a boiler room—the heat, the noise, the pressure gauge, and the weight of knowing that mistakes can be costly. Trace Blackmore opens with a reminder that boilers deserve respect, not fear—and that learning fundamentals is how you replace mystique with clarity. The talent gap behind the boiler room door , Founder and CEO of , explains why boiler expertise is becoming harder to replace. He points to the shrinking pipeline of boiler-trained technicians—historically strengthened by Navy steam...
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459 From Wastewater to Resource: Water Reuse with Dr. Veronika Zhiteneva
Scaling UP! H2O
Industrial water professionals are increasingly pulled into conversations about scarcity, resilience, and “where the next gallon comes from.” , CEO and Co-founder of frames water reuse as an implementation challenge more than a technology gap—and explains where the practical starting points are when the scope feels overwhelming. Moving reuse forward when the technology already exists Waterloop Solutions was founded to accelerate implementation: clarifying end-use quality, identifying post-treatment needs on the back end of...
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458 Hiring Olympics and High-Performance Culture with J.D. Roth
Scaling UP! H2O
"Stay curious. And you only have one reputation. Guard it with your life." Hiring for judgment, not just rehearsed confidence Industrial water treatment is full of decisions made with incomplete data—on sites, with customers, and inside the business. (Managing Director and Co-owner of ) builds his hiring around that reality. His aim is straightforward: protect the team and the culture by selecting people who can think, collaborate, and lead under pressure. JD frames the organization as a group of people choosing to work toward a common goal: building a better future for...
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457 2026: A New Year with New Intentions
Scaling UP! H2O
Trace Blackmore opens 2026 with a practical reset: how to plan with urgency, sharpen the fundamentals that make troubleshooting easier, and use the tools around this podcast to keep your development moving all year. The 12-Week Year: urgency you can use Annual goals often feel “far away” until December forces focus. The 12-week year flips that dynamic by treating each quarter like a year—creating urgency sooner and giving you four chances to reset and improve. Trace walks through the structure: start with a vision (he uses a three-year example), then choose 3–5 tactical...
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456 The 12 Days of Scaling UP! H2O 2025
Scaling UP! H2O
A year-end recap is more than a highlight reel—it’s a practical reset. In this New Year episode, Trace Blackmore walks through 2025 using a “12 Days of the Scaling Up Nation” format, tying together performance, community growth, listener engagement, and the sponsor support that keeps the podcast and its companion tools available at no cost. Year-end by the numbers Trace explains how he used to track every stat closely—and how that shifted into an unhealthy measure of self-worth—so the team now uses numbers as feedback, not validation. He notes the...
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455 Mentors, Mindset, and the CWT: Owning Your Water Career with Nella Fergusson
Scaling UP! H2O
“So one thing I never do is try to start giving remediation or advice before I truly have understood and diagnosed the problem.” Mentorship and certifications don’t replace experience—but they can accelerate it when paired with the right mindset and a disciplined approach to learning. (District Manager, Southern California, ), lays out what “growing up” in industrial water treatment actually looks like: repeated exposure to real problems, strong diagnostic habits, and a willingness to keep learning long after year one. Learning that keeps...
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454 Water Recycling, Innovation, and Industry Wisdom with Dr. Kelle Zeiher
Scaling UP! H2O
Industrial cooling is one of the biggest levers industrial facilities can pull on water use—and it’s getting harder to ignore as data centers and other high-heat operations grow. Returning guest (Project Manager at ) breaks down what water reuse looks like when you move past slogans and into the realities of pretreatment, concentrate management, footprint, and cost. Cooling water reuse: the scale of the opportunity Dr. Zeiher reframes “drought” beyond rainfall, emphasizing aquifer recharge and the limits of focusing only on household restrictions. She...
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453 Water Risk, Governance, and Community Engagement with Dr. Annette Davison
Scaling UP! H2O
Industrial water professionals sit at the intersection of risk, regulation, and community trust. In this episode, (“the water risk doctor”) joins Trace Blackmore to show how disciplined governance, clear supply chain thinking, and community engagement can turn fragmented water systems into coherent, defensible risk management frameworks. Water risk from source to customer Annette starts with a simple question most customers never ask: “Where’s your water coming from?” She walks through a conceptual supply chain from source to end point—collection, transfer, treatment,...
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452 UV Innovation and Whole-Building Water Safety with Ron Blutrich
Scaling UP! H2O
Entamoeba histolytica nearly ended Ron Blutrich’s scientific career. Instead, it pushed him to rethink how we protect people in multi-family buildings, senior facilities, and dense urban centers from invisible microbiological risks in their drinking water. In this episode, he joins host Trace Blackmore to unpack what whole-building UV can (and can’t) do for Legionella, biofilm, and real-world water safety. When One Bad Cup of Water Redefines a Career In the middle of his PhD in molecular genetics, Ron drank from an under-sink reverse osmosis tap at an Airbnb and...
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451 Building a Culture of Innovation and Customer Service with Frank Lecrone
Scaling UP! H2O
What happens when you build a company around one niche, listen obsessively to customers, and never stop improving? In this episode, host Trace Blackmore finally sits down for a full-length conversation with , Founder, President, and CEO of . What started in a small 60' x 60' space in Hanover, Pennsylvania, with three employees, maxed-out credit cards, and endless Staples runs has grown into a 300+-person organization serving industrial water professionals around the world. Frank shares how AquaPhoenix became “the booth everyone wants to be next to” at...
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What happens when cities become “networked”—and water systems start telling us what they need in real time? In this episode, Trace Blackmore speaks with Christine McHugh (CEO, White Strand Development) about practical smart-city strategies for water: real-time monitoring, digital twins, and IoT/AI approaches that turn Legionella control from periodic testing into continuous risk management. Christine frames smart water not as gadgets, but as a disciplined, data-driven process that improves human health, operational efficiency, and insurability.
Building the “Networked” City: A Practical Definition
Christine defines a smart city as a networked one—linking health, energy, waste, and water through technology that measures and correlates across systems. The aim isn’t novelty; it’s safer drinking water and safer water environments via better data and faster decisions. Digital twins, decentralized treatment, and AI-enabled pattern recognition help teams move from “single point-in-time readings” to persistent trends they can act on.
Legionella Risk, Reframed as Strategy
Most water programs still sample periodically, waiting days for results. Christine argues the future is pattern-based, proactive control: track temperature, stagnation/flow, and disinfectant continuously; intervene when pattern thresholds indicate elevated risk. This lens aligns water quality, human wellness, and insurance risk reduction, encouraging property insurers and building owners to incentivize water science as part of smart-building operations.
From Sensors to Sense-Making: Hierarchy, Data Lakes, and Reporting
Adding devices isn’t enough. Christine stresses a hierarchy of sensors and data governance so operations, engineering, and ESG teams aren’t running conflicting reports from siloed sources (BMS vs. cloud dashboards). Her model: create a data lake with agreed-upon sources of truth and standardized outputs so every stakeholder “sees the same movie.”
Case Studies & What “Good” Looks Like
Christine highlights programs that combined water management plans, continuous disinfectant monitoring, and campus-scale digital twins—reducing manual tests, achieving compliance, and cutting consumption. European hospitals using IoT on hot-water systems report faster compliance and fewer manual interventions. The pattern: real-time insight + trained people + maintenance and reporting contracts = measurable risk reduction.
Cybersecurity: Close the Back Doors
Smart water raises legitimate cyber concerns. Christine’s guidance: encrypt all sensor communications, hire experts to penetration-test your own systems, and watch for unexpected bridges (e.g., HVAC or even “non-critical” devices) into critical networks. OT/IT segmentation, alert transparency, and a culture of continuous testing matter as much as the sensors themselves.
Public–Private Partnerships (with Academia)
The fastest path to adoption pairs public oversight and access to infrastructure with private-sector technology and capital—and an academic partner for research and validation. Clear performance metrics and maintained as-builts keep pilots honest and scalable.
Resilience: Droughts, Floods, and Stormwater
Smart networks matter beyond Legionella. Real-time consumption, leak detection, and pressure management minimize waste during droughts; stormwater and wastewater sensors prevent overflows that contaminate receiving waters during floods. Long-running sensor programs abroad show how a single resort area eliminated contamination events by instrumenting the system and responding to alerts.
Emerging Tech to Watch
From self-healing pipes and biosensors to drone inspections and AI-orchestrated networks, Christine sees water systems becoming more like natural ecosystems—self-regulating, adaptive, and resilient—while humans supervise exceptions and validate performance.
For industrial water professionals, the takeaway is clear: treat smart water as an integrated risk-management system, not a pile of devices. Invest in sensor hierarchy, unified data, and team training, and align the work with safety and insurance outcomes. That’s how you protect people, performance, and the balance sheet.
Stay engaged, keep learning, and continue scaling up your knowledge!
Timestamps
02:37 - Trace Blackmore kicks off the episode by reminiscing about the TV show Leave It to Beaver and how families used to watch together in the 1950s.
08:40 - Water You Know with James McDonald
09:48 - Upcoming Events for Water Treatment Professionals
12:20 - Interview with Christine McHugh, CEO of White Strand Development
13:03 - What Is a Smart City?
15:13 - Risk Reduction as Strategy
16:23 – Real-Time Monitoring: Core Controls
17:06 - Smart Fixtures & “Only When Needed” Flushing
19:28 — Duplication, BMS vs Cloud, Data Governance
25:03 — Case Studies: VT & Copenhagen University Hospital
31:59— Cybersecurity: Water Systems at Risk
40:21— City Resilience: Drought & Flooding
41:59 — Emerging Tech to Watch
Quotes
“Technology will give us real-time patterns, and… by just having that pattern recognition, we have power to be more proactive.”
“We really should be trying to break into our own system or hiring people to break into our own system… the bad guys will find it as well.”
“Creating a water system that's more like a natural ecosystem… self-regulating, adaptive, and maximizes both efficiency and resiliency.”
Connect with Christine McHugh 
Phone: 9179409383
Email: christine.mchugh@whitestrand.com
Website: White Strand Development
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-a-mchugh/
Guest Resources Mentioned
Smart Cities, Copenhagen and the Power of Data
Scaling UP! H2O Resources Mentioned
AWT (Association of Water Technologies)
Scaling UP! H2O Academy video courses
Water You Know with James McDonald
Question: What type of resin is primarily used in a sodium zeolite water softener?
2025 Events for Water Professionals
Check out our Scaling UP! H2O Events Calendar where we’ve listed every event Water Treaters should be aware of by clicking HERE.
