JEFFERSON CITY, MO, MARCH 24, 2022 - Keith Bertels, an environmental manager with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Environmental Quality (DEQ), has been selected as the department’s March 2022 Team Member of the Month. Bertels was chosen for his dedication to the department and for designing and creating useful data metrics for reports and dashboards.
As part of his usual duties, Bertels is responsible for properly tracking department data metrics and for producing graphs, charts, dashboards and reports based on these metrics. In addition, he also serves as chairman of the MoGEM and DEQ SharePoint revision groups.
Bertels is proactive in automating important reports for inspectors and managers. He always follows up and makes sure his products meet the needs of those who use them makeing revisions when needed. He also keeps future needs in mind. When new types of reports are requested, he polls others to see if the same information may be useful to them as well and adds it to a regular schedule where warranted.
In addition, Bertels is a tremendous resource for others within the department. A recent sunshine request required a file search that would have taken days for each regional office to complete. He applied his expertise using the Enterprise Content Management application to generate a report that included the needed data to satisfy the request, saving many hours of work for several team members.
Bertels always lends a helping hand when others are trying to solve a data-related issue. He is quick to share his knowledge and will explain what needs to be done to solve a problem so there is no confusion or delay, and so that the final product fulfils the need.
“The most important thing about Keith is that he is always helpful, professional and kind,” said James Helgason, an environmental manager at the department’s Kansas City Regional Office, and one of five who nominated him for the award. “Over several years, he has been tasked with numerous database, tracking or other metric-related questions and always responds immediately and works hard to resolve the issue.”
Bertels joined the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in December 1987 and resides in Jefferson City.