Project Management + Utilities (Sep 14-16)

E-bike Tour of Old Scottsdale and historic McCormick Ranch

Come join WEI for a guided late morning ebike tour of Old Scottsdale and historic McCormick Ranch. With over 30 points of interest, you'll see million dollar waterfront homes, Arizona lakes, views of Camelback, McDowell and Mummy Mountains, Arizona canals, major league baseball fields, 100 acres of pristine green space, fun tunnel underpasses that we ride in, PGA rated golf courses, the Grove in the exclusive neighborhood McCormick Ranch, unique Sonoran Desert botanicals, prairie dogs and even bald eagles.  But that's not everything, there's more.​​ The ride will travel on the World-Class-Gold-Level rated bike path known as the Greenbelt, no riding on the streets.  This creates a much more relaxing and stress-free vacation-style-experience.  If you like beautiful scenery, this tour is perfect for you!  

E-bike beginners are welcome, you don't have to be a skilled rider.  It is easy and fun, you can pedal as much or as little as you'd like. You and your tour guide you will easily travel between 15 – 20 miles in 2 hours and your guide will take care of you from start to finish.  You'll use their audio system to hear your tour guide's safety instructions and historical narration, and stop for interesting photo ops.

$90 per person

Join us in Scottsdale to catch-up with colleagues from across the continent and meet fellow Forum attendees.

Registration will be in the Paloma Foyer, along with coffee refills and light pastries. Hot breakfast will be provided at the Embassy Suites' Azul Clubhouse.

The conference chair welcomes the attendees to Scottsdale and the 2022 Project Management + Utilities Conference.

This presentation will provide an overview of recent energy and utility industry trends – with a particular focus around decarbonization and clean energy – along with the corresponding grid management, technology, and regulatory/policy drivers and implications.

Construction Track: Electric System Hardening: A Long-Term Wildfire Mitigation Strategy at SDG&E
Speaker: Willie Thomas, Electric System Hardening Program Manager, San Diego Gas & Electric
Since the destructive San Diego County wildfires in 2007, SDG&E has been on a journey to predict, prevent and combat wildfires within its service territory that include all of San Diego County and the southern half of Orange County.
Each year since 2007 SDG&E has focused on short, medium and long-term efforts that reduce the likelihood of another catastrophic wildfire. The longest and most ambitious is SDG&E’s Electric System Hardening (ESH) efforts that are transforming the integrity, resiliency and reliability of the electric grid, which includes replacement of wood poles with steel, replacement of old overhead conductor with new conductor, and the undergrounding of a significant portion of its 4kV and 12KV distribution network throughout its High Fire Threat District (HFTD). At the heart of the ESH effort is SDG&E’s Wildfire Next Generation Model (WiNGS) – a risk-based mitigation algorithm that helps determine the optimal hardening strategy.

PMO Leadership Track: What is Project Management?
Speaker: Jacob Reidt, Sr Manager Generation Project Delivery, Avista Corp.
How well understood is the role of project management in your organization? Do company leaders have adequate knowledge of project management to lead your project team to success? Do project team members have adequate understanding of project management to support your efforts? Is your organization following PMBOK best practices for identify the various project positions? Have project engineers been labeled as project managers with no formal training? If these questions resonate with you this track is for you!
Sponsored by Burns & McDonnell

Construction Track: Quality Assurance + Quality Control – Roundtable Discussion
Speakers: Michael Caraway, Technical Services Manager, San Diego Gas & Electric; Ray Riemann, Senior Project Engineer, PowerEngineers; Nick Cullen, Division Manager, Aldridge; Chuck Woodard, Sr. Project Manager / Estimator Major Projects, Wilson Construction
This year’s QA/QC session will utilize a roundtable approach to identify the value, lessons learned, project health, and key QA/QC collaboration points to improve your project management tool chest. Our panel features three leaders from diverse organization who will share their QA/QC insight.

IT + Analytics Track:  Accelerating Analytics Maturity Through Data Literacy Programs
Speaker: Devon Yeager, Data Strategy & Analytics Consultant, Snohomish County PUD
Come listen to how Snohomish County PUD is accelerating their corporate analytics maturity since the launch of their data literacy program: Analytics University.  Learn how education in Analytics, Data Architecture, Data Governance, and Data Science has empowered staff to bring analytics to their work groups and processes and how its popularity has it expanding in 2023.

IT + Analytics Track: Puget Sound Energy Data Enablement & Enrichment Program 
Speaker: Chaim Nel, Sr. IT Project Manager – IT Strategic Project Manager, Puget Sound Energy
Puget Sound Energy’s Data Enablement & Enrichment Program is an Enterprise program to improve our ability to manage and govern our data, establish a data-centric, data-driven culture, and enable the business to access, manipulate, and analyze data to deliver improved decision making, operational efficiencies, new insight, innovation, and opportunities. The session will discuss the governance of the program and how are we validating return of value on an ongoing basis for the program.

PMO Leadership Track: Fast Tracking Projects: Rigor without Rigidity
Speakers: David Avalos, PSEP Project & Execution Manager, Southern California Gas Company; Chris Ciaccio, Project Lead- Communications Design, Salt River Project
How do you fast track a project? During this session we will explore the idea of rigor without rigidity to meet customer driven or regulatory driven projects that are fast tracked. As utilities, we have a process to move our projects forward, but are often challenged to deliver a project on a quicker schedule to meet the needs of some of our key stakeholders. We will explore how some utilities are doing this successfully.
Sponsored by Burns & McDonnell

Construction Track: Project Showcase: Mitsubishi Power Green Hydrogen Project in Utah
Speaker: William Myers, Director of Hydrogen Projects, Mitsubishi Power Americas
Mitsubishi Power will present on the project management challenges and plan for their innovative Advanced Clean Energy Storage (ACES) project in Utah. This large utility-scale project will produce and store green hydrogen for multiple uses by industry and is the largest green hydrogen project in North America.

PMO Leadership Track: Data-backed Decision Making
Speakers: Scott Roberts, Project Management Improvement Program Lead, Seattle City Light;Travis Rogers, Senior Director, Slalom
Guts vs. data, which one should we rely on? And what happens when data presents a different perspective that what we are expecting? In this session, our speakers will share their experience on how to encourage organization to use data to inform their decisions. Some of the topics discussed will include how data is being collected and reported, improvement of data accessibility, and how data is presented to be useful. For any initiative to be truly effective, we need users to adopt and champion. We will discuss the often important, sometimes overlooked, aspect of organizational change management on how to increase adoption rate quickly.
Sponsored by Burns & McDonnell

With new EV models entering the market and the associated increase in energy demand, utilities will be faced with new challenges and opportunities regarding customer EV adoption and grid integration. Hear from Arizona’s largest investor-owned utility, APS, on how transportation electrification is shaping their strategy with the goal of optimizing the benefits that EVs can bring their customers and the communities they serve.

Reception,then dinner on your own.

Hot breakfast will be provided at the Embassy Suites' Azul Clubhouse. Coffee refills and light pastries will be provided in the Paloma Foyer.

Data used to be a decision making tool, but now it can be a weapon. The potential risk of weaponizing data is altering utility risk assessments, contractor choice, data governance best practices and even org charts. Cybersecurity measures and data governance decisions now impact day to day project management practices. Come learn more about how two utilities are wrapping security concerns into portfolio management.

IT + Analytics Track: Cyber Security
Speaker: Corbin Jarms, Principal Security Engineer, Avista
Our operational technology networks (SCADA) are becoming more of focus for cyber attacks and therefore require more protection. But they are difficult to update so effective change management can be very difficult in a such an important environment. This session will provide a basic understanding of the operational technology (SCADA) systems and address common issues with change management in a SCADA environment along with some strategies for working through those issues.

PMO Leadership Track: Our Resource Management Journey
Speakers: Krystal DeBruine, Manager, Transmission Project Management Office, Great River Energy; Anders Lam, Division Manager: Work Planning & Portfolio Services, BC Hydro
This session will share the Resource Management approach of 2-3 organizations, their experience, approach, challenges, and future vision. This session will include an interactive Q+A session where attendees and presenters can share their thoughts and challenges. An interactive attendee survey will help us get an idea of peer organization's experiences within this space and support a facilitated discussion that will help us all advance in Resource Management.
In addition to the presentations, we will wrap up with an engaging Q/A session. Last month, the planning team surveyed peer PMOs regarding their experiences in the Resource Management space. Feel free to review the survey results and bring your questions to the Q/A session: https://www.surveymonkey.com/stories/SM-bV7n4PQO1aQMr_2BDeqPxQgA_3D_3D/
Sponsored by Burns & McDonnell

Construction Track: Project Management Playbook
Speaker: Cody Jura, Sr. Construction Project Manager, Portland General Electric
The Portland General Electric (PGE) Project Management Playbook (Playbook) establishes a framework by which the Project Management Office in the PGE Transmission and Distribution (T&D) organization manages capital projects. This framework is built around seven stages in a capital project lifecycle, and defines the workflow, key deliverables, the tools, templates and forms that are used, and the roles and responsibilities of the key stakeholders in each stage.
The key objectives for this Playbook are to:
Improve PGE T&D’s ability to plan, engineer, design, construct and deliver capital projects on time, on budget and within scope and quality requirements.
Establish a project management practice, including people, process and tools to achieve this through collaboration with project management stakeholders.

IT + Analytics Track: Tools of Data Governance – The Data Catalog
Speaker: Katina Fischer, BI Data Engineer, Clark Public Utilities
In this session we will discuss what a data catalog is and where it fits within the overall structure of a data management/governance program. We will take a look at the key features of a data catalog, what typical data management issues they help address and what to keep in mind when choosing a solution platform.

Open to all attendees, especially those interested in helping to plan the 2023 Project Management + Utilities Conference. Lunch will be provided.