JEFFERSON CITY, MO, DEC. 21, 2022 - JEFFERSON CITY, MO, DEC. 21, 2022 - Keith Bertels, an environmental manager with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Environmental Quality, has been selected as the department’s 2022 Team Member of the Year. Bertels was selected for his dedication to the department and for his efforts to design and create useful data metrics for reports and dashboards. He also was the department’s Team Member of the Month in March 2022.
As part of his usual duties, Bertels is responsible for ensuring department data metrics are properly tracked and for the production of 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 reports that are important for inspectors and managers. He goes the extra mile to follow up and make sure the products he produces meet the needs of those who use them and makes 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 and adds them to the regular report schedule where warranted.
In addition to his usual duties, Bertels is a tremendous resource for other department team members. A recent sunshine request required a file search that would have taken days for someone in each regional office to complete. He applied his expertise to use the Enterprise Data Warehouse application to generate a report with the needed data to satisfy the request, saving many hours of work for several team members.
Bertels is always willing to lend a helping hand when others are trying to solve a data-related issue. He is quick to share his knowledge and spends the time necessary to explain what needs to be done to solve a problem so there is no confusion or delay, and so that the final product fulfills 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, one of five colleagues who nominated Bertels 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.