Don Fascio (left) and Paul Buddock hold their trophies from the Rhode Island Snow Plow Rally in front of plows at the Coventry Public Works Department. Buddock has been a driver for the Coventry DPW for eight years and Fascio is a heavy equipment machine operator with 20 years under his belt.

By Jessica Selby

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

COVENTRY — It’s been some time since Don Fascio and Paul Buddock of Coventry’s Department of Public Works utilized their snow plow operating skills. When they competed in the Rhode Island Snow Plow Rally last month, however, they didn’t appear rusty at all.

In fact, Fascio and Buddock placed in the top three in two of the five events. They earned a first place trophy in the parallel parking with a compressor attached event and a third place in the snow plow slalom event.

All five of the events, according to the contestants, were quite challenging and the competition was stiff.

The contest included 15 teams made up of DPW workers from around the state. Each team of two competed in the five different events — the two already mentioned, as well as a pre-trip inspection, a spotter backing competition and a safety quiz. A panel of judges scored the contestants on each of the various challenges. 

Fascio and Buddock said they didn’t have the opportunity to really practice for the event, but many of the activities were pretty relevant to what they do on a regular basis in their everyday jobs at the Coventry Department of Public Works.

Fascio said he is a heavy equipment operator and has been working for the town for 20 years.  Buddock said he is a driver and has been working for the town for eight years.

“The tasks in the competition weren’t exactly the types of things that we do on the job because they were not real-life situations, but we are backing up trucks and towing all the time on the job, so you have to be able to do that, and, all winter, we plow, so we really didn’t have to do any additional practicing because I guess you could say every day that we come to work is practice,” Fascio said.

To make sure there was no unfair advantage, all the contestants operated the same vehicle for each of the competitions. The City of Providence donated the use of its vehicles for the competition.

The event was held in mid-October at Roger Williams Park.  It is organized by the URI Transportation Center and opened up to every department of public works in the state.  Throughout the year, the center organizes various events for the local DPW workers to participate in to fine tune or improve their skill levels in the field.

To have done as well as the Coventry team did in this event is quite an accomplishment, according to Chuck Smith, the vice president of Rhode Island Public Works and one of the judges in the competition. 

Many of the tasks are challenging and the contestants do not have much margin for error, he said.