The King County Innovation Awards seek to honor employees within department teams whose projects, improvements, and ingenuity deliver exceptional, measurable results. These honorees have considered challenges within their delivery of services to King County residents, and developed solutions that address an important need. Through the True North values of “We solve problems” and “We drive for results,” these honorees met each challenge in a creative and forward-thinking manner.

Receiving the Innovation Award for Cost, which includes anything that is financially related and affects the County’s finances, is the Department of Executive Services in partnership with the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. Their project focused on implementing cost-effective insurance policies to help clean up the Lower Duwamish Waterway.

Due to the pandemic, the Executive and other leaders at King County congratulated the 2020 honorees by video.

The Office of Risk Management and the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office worked with an insurance archeologist, forensic accountant, and computer probability models to negotiate millions of dollars in insurance settlements at an enormous cost-savings to taxpayers.

“Risk Management and the Prosecutor’s Office ultimately recovered $97 million for the county; Money that we never expected we would have,” said Budget Director Dwight Dively. “And it appears that that will more than cover the entire cost for the County of cleaning up.”

“So through that outstanding work, we have protected our taxpayers and ratepayers from a significant cost that they otherwise would have incurred.”

View this video to see Budget Director Dwight Dively recognize the honorees for the Innovation Award for Cost. Select the time

Executive’s Performance Excellence Awards

The Innovation Awards are part of the Executive’s Performance Excellence Awards series, honoring employees and workgroups at King County for their exceptional contributions to performance, leadership, and innovation.

“As we build a best-run government at King County, these awards recognize individuals and teams who have gone above and beyond to look at how they can do things differently to better serve our customers and employees,” said King County Executive Dow Constantine.

Learn more about the King County Performance Excellence Awards here.