|
|
A monthly employee publication of the Bonneville Power Administration
July 1998
|
|
|
A monthly employee publication of the Bonneville Power Administration
July 1998
Judi Johansen’s swearing in as BPA’s 12th administrator was graced by the presence of an active two-year-old daughter. Anna’s participation in the ceremony was carried over the audio hookup through occasional beeps and dings, sounds that might have puzzled field employees. They were part of the “essential tools” kit former administrator Randy Hardy presented to Anna.
The dings were from the egg timer (for those occasions when mom says “Just a minute.”) and the beeps were from Anna’s very own (toy) cell telephone (so she will always be able to reach mom).
Anna’s activities complemented a swearing-in ceremony that managed to be high minded and light hearted.
Jack Robertson hosted the ceremony during his last minutes as acting administrator. Johansen was welcomed to her new position by John Engber of Sen. Patty Murray’s office; by Aldo Benedetti, an elder statesman of the Northwest power industry; and by Hardy.
Engber read a letter of welcome from Sen. Murray who stressed the historic importance of the agency to the region.
In his remarks, Benedetti offered high praise of Johansen: “Judi doesn’t need this position, but the position needs the likes of Judi Johansen.” He said Johansen “has the personality, knowledge, [and] leadership skills” for the position and can offer the proper balance between the competing interests in the region.
Before Hardy presented his essentials to Anna, he offered five pieces of “gratuitous” advice to Johansen: accept change, it is inevitable; make decisions that make business sense and are politically sustainable; maintain bipartisan support in the Northwest congressional delegation; let BPA staff help; and trust her instincts.
After taking her oath of office from U.S. District Court Judge Ancer Haggerty, Johansen acknowledged a group of “special people” who have helped her. She noted that the person “making the greatest sacrifice” as she assumed the role of administrator is her husband, Kirk.
Johansen then offered “messages” to the region and offered her vision of BPA’s future.
To the other regional decision makers, Johansen said “I’m grateful I’m not here alone,” and said she would work closely with the tribes, the states, the Northwest legislators, the Northwest Power Planning Council and the other federal agencies in the region.
To the people of BPA, Johansen offered several messages: that they are “first-rate people,” that she is proud to be one of them again, that she will “strive to make this a wonderful place to work,” that she wants to reward what goes well and to have compassion when things don’t go quite right, that she wants to retain and attract good people and that she wants to continue to learn from employees.
To the citizens of the region, Johansen said she was “humbled and honored” to be the administrator and urged the citizens to offer constant communication so she can know what is important to them. She acknowledged that BPA’s value to the region is its public trust responsibilities.
To BPA’s customers, she offered thanks for their support, and said that, in return, she wants to assure that BPA will continue to be an efficient, cost-conscious, customer-focused agency. She noted that BPA and its customers must work together to define BPA’s role for decades to come.
With a nod to former BPA vice president Walt Pollock, who was in the audience, and a chuckle over their history on the subject, Johansen said that she does indeed have a vision. Johansen said that “BPA is here to serve the region, not to preserve the institution.” She insisted that the region must “maintain control of regional assets” that are the economic engine of the Northwest. She asserted that, as long as she is the administrator, “power will be sold at cost and below market.” This means, she said, that BPA must be efficient, and she reasserted that she is a “cost hawk.”
Johansen said BPA has an obligation to hand off a cleaner environment to future citizens, so BPA will advocate for and invest in renewables and conservation. That investment must, however, mesh with the recommendations of the Comprehensive Review of the Northwest Energy System that BPA not be the central funder of generation acquisition.
And she spoke of her passion. She said she is “frustrated and angry when I reflect on the Columbia River.” She suggested that the region “must take a step back and take stock of where we are.” She questioned what the region has gained from the billions spent on fish recovery. “We cannot run recovery with multiple, diffuse objectives and plans,” she said. “I am going to be all over this issue; we have to have a single plan.” She said that she intends to prove that a healthy environment and a healthy business climate can go together. She said that BPA will be a “significant funder of fish” but that must be funding for a single framework and a single set of objectives.
In conclusion, Johansen said she was “humbled” by the support she had received and honored to be entrusted with the position. She said she looked forward to “being your public servant.”
About that time, Anna’s timer went off and the ceremony was over.
Long boring corridors, a drab post office-like setting. These are gloomy features BPA office buildings will never have to face because of an extensive art collection that has been donated and purchased since the late 1980s.
Thanks to BPA’s former art committee, created in 1987 and disbanded in 1997, glass works and wood carvings are on display in BPA buildings all over the region. According to Suzy Sivyer, architect in the Transmission Business Line, the original eight-person team was selected to collect art pieces and find appropriate places for displaying them. “The eight of us were picked for our experience, knowledge or artistic talent. Each of us had a unique specialty that we brought to the team,” Sivyer says.
Over its life span, the BPA art committee had seventeen volunteer members. The eight founding members were responsible for the bulk of the collection while those who joined in later years maintained the art and added to the collection when money was available. Over the years, the committee members took field trips to galleries and artists’ homes where they discovered new techniques and trends. Most importantly, the committee members shared their experiences with all employees by bringing back artwork by nearly 90 different artists.
BPA owns over 150 different art pieces from Northwest artists. The artists represent many cultures and a diverse blend of talent, prestige and style. Some of the more renowned artists include Don Smith Lelooska who carved “The Raven Totem,” which stands across from the Portland headquarters cafeteria. Portland artist Robert Bibler has several paintings in BPA’s collection. His mixed media painting, “A Certain Window Space” hangs in the front lobby of the Dittmer building at the Ross Complex.
Most of the pieces have appreciated beyond expectations, and BPA has one of the most desirable corporate art collections in the Portland metropolitan arena.
The committee started by renting art pieces from local dealers and circulating them through the Portland headquarters building. Once agency funding was established, the art committee started releasing works to other BPA sites. A key criteria for the collection was to feature artists from the Northwest, so the committee made sure it had representation from such Northwest masters as Paul Horiuchi and Guy Anderson. Anderson, who recently passed away, was a resident of La Connor, Wash. In 1988 the art committee traveled to Anderson’s home to purchase the “Beach at Evening.” Today it is BPA’s most valuable painting. “Beach at Evening” can be found hanging near the Portland headquarters cafeteria entrance.
BPA’s artwork can be found in the Portland headquarters building, at Ross and at agency offices in Seattle, Walla Walla, Spokane and Eugene.
Throughout the years, the committee sponsored several activities and projects to encourage employee interaction with the collection and to promote employee artistic expression. Among those activities were employee art shows, kids art shows for employees’ children, textile shows, photography seminars and numerous brown bags.
By involving employees with hands-on art activities, the committee was able to raise employee awareness of the arts and the collection.
One activity the art committee enjoyed holding was a courtyard drawing day for all employees and day care children. According to Sivyer, employees were given a piece of chalk and they could stake out some courtyard cement on which they could draw anything they wanted. “It was great. We had employees coming back all week to check out their work,” says Sivyer. “It allowed the employees to have fun with art.”
A BPA art catalog shows all the artwork BPA owns. The entry for each piece consists of a picture, a description of the piece, background on the artist’s life and, in some cases, a brief summary of the medium or technique. Two copies of the catalog are in the library at the Portland headquarters building.
BPA does not purchase art anymore. Purchases stopped a few years ago as the agency entered into serious cost cutting. As the art committee phased out, responsibility for establishing a procedure for reviewing the content of visiting displays was assigned to Diversity Management and the Pluralism Council. Facilities Management is in charge of hanging the art.
BPA’s art collection is substantial enough without new purchases. “We don’t need to buy new art,” says Sivyer. “We just need to have fun with the art we already have.”
If three fortune tellers each had a crystal ball, would they all see the same events in the future? And which future view would be the most believable? And which the most accurate?
In looking at BPA’s future financial condition, there are two major elements to consider — revenues and expenses. While all parts of the agency are focused on cost cutting, another part is looking at the other side of the equation — revenues.
Forecasting the price of electricity behind those revenues is an “enigmatic blend of art and science,” according to the Market Forecasting Team lead Rob Anderson in Power Product, Pricing and Rates. To try to manage that blend, his team is taking a double-edged approach to forecasting.
For the scientific view, Anderson has gathered some of BPA’s best analysts to conduct an in-depth review of several computer models of electric power markets. For the sake of art, his Market Forecast Team is fostering an open discussion, both within BPA and beyond, of expert opinion on the evolving future of the electric power industry and the prices that will result.
“We want a technical discussion about the quality of the models,” Anderson says, “but we also want a more wide-ranging discussion about other developments that models are weak in predicting.” For example, Anderson says, “Models are not good at capturing transitional periods.” And that includes electricity market restructuring, a current reality that cannot be ignored.
The rate case provides the raison d’être for this project. The rate case will be setting rates for BPA’s posted-rate products as described in the power rate schedules. These posted-rate products are specifically defined products available to customers who request requirements service. BPA also will offer other products whose features and prices can be customized as subscription contracts are negotiated. The revenues BPA expects to get from these products will depend in part on the information gained from the market forecasting effort.
“We’re doing this for two specific reasons related to the rate case,” Anderson says. “One is to inform prices that are used to develop the revenue forecast for the bulk hub. It’s important because that money factors into our revenue requirement. The money we make from bulk power sales offsets the amount we need to recover from posted-rate products.”
The other purpose of the market forecast is to provide input to help shape the seasonal and daily prices of the posted-rate products and to forecast the value of capacity. BPA currently has power rates that vary by season and by hour of the day. Rates that vary by time period provide price signals to BPA’s customers and can cause changes in their purchases, so these decisions are important.
Still to be decided is how future rates should change over a year and during a 24-hour period. The spot market prices that come out of the models will not become BPA’s new power rates, but the seasonal, daily and energy/capacity relationships may hold. “It’s still unclear exactly how it’s going to play out,” Anderson says.
Part of this uncertainty stems from the public involvement that is occurring early in the development of the 1998 power rate proposal. The Rates staff recognized from their re-engineering process that it would save time and tempers during the hearings process to have more discussion before BPA makes its initial proposal. So Anderson had an informal meeting with some of BPA’s customers and other interested parties on May 19 and plans to have at least one more meeting this summer.
According to Anderson, the view emerging so far is for increasing prices and also for great price volatility. Driving this forecast are a wide range of factors that will influence prices: the overall level of economic activity, natural gas and coal prices, weather conditions, technological advancements in generation and end-uses and even such esoteric factors as consumer tastes.
Of course assumptions about these factors affect the price forecast, and everybody has an opinion about what to assume.
If only crystal balls were still in style.
An employee from the Power Business Line stopped at the Dittmer guard desk, showed a BPA employee badge and was asked to sign in. The guard issued a conspicuous, bright yellow visitor’s badge and called for an escort. The visitor was seated upstairs in a common waiting area away from the office where the visitor’s meeting would be taking place. Welcome to the Transmission Business Line?
“That’s the kind of thing that’s hard on people,” admits Chuck Meyer, vice president for Transmission Marketing and Sales. “We’re making it feel less friendly by adding guards and doors. It’s a challenge to treat PBL employees as customers rather than as coworkers.”
“We want to treat PBL well,” Meyer adds. “After all, they’re our biggest customer.” Yet the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission standards of conduct have resulted in BPA separating the Power and Transmission business lines. “It’s been really hard in some ways,” Meyer says. “We can’t do anything that gives the PBL an advantage over any other user of the transmission system.”
“It’s an interesting relationship,” says Al Paschke, a customer account executive on the Transmission Marketing and Sales team. “We’re joined at the hip in many ways. But, people are becoming more aware of the requirements of the standards of conduct. After a couple of years, people are realizing that separation is something we have to do.
“The Power Business Line is like any other customer; they can be very tough and want to look out for their interests like any other customer. We want to provide good service to the PBL and their customers, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Paschke came back to Transmission from a job in power contracts just about the time the PBL and TBL separated and the first account executives were appointed. “From the outset I served as Transmission’s account executive for the PBL,” he says. “The PBL needs so much transmission I’ve signed lots of deals with them over the last couple of years. They’re a big company, TBL’s biggest customer by far.”
“The account executive is responsible for the customer relationship,” Meyer says. The account executive is part of a customer service team the TBL had to build from scratch as it separated from the Power Business Line. The team includes staff from contracts, scheduling, engineering, operations, environment and billing from within the business line. In addition, groups from Corporate provide services to the TBL, particularly legal services.
Paschke has spent the last two years working with the PBL to develop the transmission business relationship. “It is very complicated,” Paschke says, “and there are a bunch of uncertainties connected with the 1998 power rate case.” Questions concerning which business line bears certain transmission-related costs was a topic of discussion in Issues ’98 and will come up again in the rate case.
Meyer’s strategy for the Transmission Marketing and Sales team is to assign each account executive more than one kind of customer. “I want the account executives to be able to understand all customers’ points of view,” says Meyer. “When an issue comes up, I want all AEs to have a stake in it.” For example, while Paschke’s largest customer is the PBL, he also has a number of other customers, including a municipality, a public utility district and a direct-service industry. In addition to providing exposure to many kinds of customers, assigning accounts by geographical area minimizes costs and maximizes efficiency.
Meyer is proud of the way the marketing and sales team came together and cites scheduling as an example. “That was close to the single biggest challenge for me,” Meyer says. “It is a new marketplace, with new rates and tariffs and new people.” He praised the teamwork of his staff and their hard work as they tripled the number of people working on transmission scheduling to handle over 10 times the number of schedules, 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Transmission today manages about 2,000 schedules per pay; the number was near zero two years ago before deregulation and business line separation.
The Transmission Marketing and Sales team provides customer service in areas besides transmission. “We also have active fiber and wireless programs,” Meyer says. That means fiber optics and personal communication services, also known as cellular telephones. The TBL leases its excess fiber optics capacity to communications companies and leases space on BPA facilities for wireless antennas.
“We’re on the cutting edge of the revolution,” Paschke says.
A day of community service changed a lot of roles: electricians and craftsmen became carpenters, and BPA and Portland General Electric/Enron stopped competing and cooperated.
The occasion was Utility Day, May 27, at the A.C. Gilbert House, a children’s museum in Salem, Ore. A.C. Gilbert, who was born in Salem in 1884, invented the Erector Set in 1911. The A.C. Gilbert Company formed later and made the first chemistry sets and first American Flyer trains. The museum named after him now includes the world’s largest Erector Set, which reaches 50 feet high.
A host of Transmission Business Line employees from Chemawa District Headquarters headed to downtown Salem to help in the last week of a community project that had been underway since April 5.
Electricians were well represented as Barry Boman, Jake Taasevigen, Ken Canon and John Butler worked alongside PGE/Enron employees in a joint effort setting utility poles to support walkways in A.C. Gilbert’s backyard. Rick Stone, Doug Goldsmith, Bruce Mazell and Don Ohrn worked on the amphitheater’s benches. Alex Eubanks and Bill Madden had to redo some rafter work on the amphitheater.
U.S. Rep. Darlene Hooley was seen working in the vicinity of Power System Control craftsman Steve Tanner and district engineer George Sarsfield. And retired Protection Maintenance craftsman Ed Heberlein was sighted putting in some volunteer work.
Taasevigen brought the Chemawa electricians together for the event. Vicki Smith, SPC craftsman, rallied the other crafts to join in. Lineman and operations crews were out of the district and missed the chance to pitch in.
Bob Kiser, Eugene regional manager for Transmission Field Services, approved the project. “Crew members brought the idea to me and I thought it was a good one. Fred [Johnson], Harvey [Spigal], Jack Robertson and other managers have encouraged us to participate more in our communities and this seemed to be an appropriate opportunity to do so.”
On June 3, Dittmer employees had a run-in with an uninvited visitor. A Oregon junco somehow got inside Ross Complex’s Dittmer building. Employees arriving early were surprised to find the bird taking flight from one corner to the next of the second floor. The bird seemed particularly at home around supervisor electrical engineer Ed Chittester’s office. It is surrounded by plants. Facilities maintenance worker Mike Rackham unsuccessfully spent some time trying to capture the bird with a fish net. It was computer specialist Jan Wojciechowski, whoever, who calmly walked behind the then tired bird and gently grasped him to set him free outside the east entrance. It is unknown how exactly the bird entered the building, but security guards have been warned to be wary of similar visitors trying to enter the building without proper identification.
The young woman in the gear is a student getting totally engrossed in a “Shocking Experiences” workshop.
Kim Howell, Snohomish Substation chief operator, and Tina Cobb and Christine Lindner, both operators at Snohomish, put on the workshop twice for girls in grades seven though nine. The workshops were part of a conference called Expanding Your Horizons that was sponsored by the American Association of University Women in the Seattle area.
The point of the conference and of the workshop was to have women in careers that use math and science demonstrate those skills. The careers represented included firefighting, medicine, zookeeping, flying and operating substations.
“The number of women going into math and science fields is decreasing,” says Lindner. “We want to encourage girls to go into professions they might not have thought about.”
The BPA workshops got as interactive as possible. “After showing the girls a video of a substation,” says Lindner, “we described out jobs, how we got here, what math and science did for our opportunities, how we enjoy our jobs. And then we gave them some hand-on activities.” That included dressing them up and showing them safety protection, electrical work equipment and the tools used by substation operators and maintenance and line crews. The BPA women also showed the students fuses ranging from those used in small cars to those used in BPA substations.
“They left knowing that math and science can be interesting and that exploring can lead to more possibilities and opportunities than they ever thought they had before,” says Lindner. “We left tired by we sure did enjoy ourselves.”
It looked like a celebrity mob scene. And BPA’s Mary Rose Kerg was the center of attention.
“People stormed the table, asking questions and carrying away every piece of information,” she says.
The scene of the action was Washington, D.C., where Kerg, management analyst in Records Management, had gone to pick up BPA’s Best Practices in Records Management award from the National Archives and Records Administration. NARA added a new category this year, organizations outside Washington, D.C., and BPA won hands down. The U.S. Patent and Trade Office won the award for the locals.
The real action started after the awards ceremony when she was part of a panel that explained what those practices are. It’s one thing for a national organization to say that a program is the best; it’s another for a room of one’s peers to so vigorously demonstrate agreement with the honor.
The award confirmed what was obvious in the records management fraternity. “The word has been out,” says Rose Ann Ranft, manager of Information Services. “For the last five years, we’ve been told that BPA has the best records management program in the government, if not in the U.S.”
“It has withstood the test of time,” says Jim Assuras, manager of Records-Directives. “And that,” says Ranft, “is because it was so well designed.”
One of the key design decisions was made in the early 1980s — BPA’s records were organized by function rather than by organization. All it takes is a quick glance at the number of reorganizations BPA has been through in recent years to realize the significance of that decision. “Organizations change,” says Assuras, “but functions go on for ever.”
The heart of the program is the ability to identify official records, attach identifier codes to them, decide how long they must be kept and store them in a way they can be retrieved. BPA methodology for doing that, its retention schedule, is recognized as the best in the business. The BPA Records Manual, which covers the program, is the foundation for the records management programs at untold organizations that have based their programs on BPA’s work. The manual is not only online internally for BPA employees but is also on BPA’s external Web site and on the NARA Web site so others can see it.
The award came not only because of the retention schedule but because of the customer service the group has performed. When it developed its program, members of the group went out and interviewed employees to find out what was needed. Then they launched awareness and training sessions. In the early days, those training sessions were broad-based. As budgets have shrunk and reorganizations have taken place, the staff mostly does one-on-one training with groups who have identified needs. Records Management has continued its outreach with an information fair, displays throughout the agency, posters and the like.
The group is looking at the future by investigating the role of E-mail and electronic documents in records management and by pursuing electronic records storage.
And redefining best practices for the future.
Rose Ann Ranft smiles when talking about the sophisticated aura surrounding one of the current buzzwords at BPA and elsewhere — benchmarking. “Back when we were designing the current Records Management program, we called it ‘asking what others are doing.’ We contacted private and government organizations and asked them how they did records management. The answers were put in a matrix.”
And, BPA’s record management program is now a national award winner as another buzzword — a best practice. That means, says Ranft, “other people want to adopt what we do.”
Best practices and benchmarking are hot concepts that are popping up everywhere. Every reorganization talks about them — and they are major concerns of the Human Resources/Diversity Management and Information Technology redesigns. The enterprise software solution is based on them.
Ranft knows of what she speaks. She is a member of the Information Resources redesign team and one of the people behind BPA’s winning the best practices award for Records Management.
Perhaps the present approach is a little more sophisticated than what Records Management did, but the basics are the same.
According to Mark Roberts, team lead of the Benchmarking/Continuous Improvement Team in Transmission and leader of the Human Resources/Diversity Management redesign team, benchmarking is comparing similar business processes across organizations and then thoughtfully evaluating differences in cost, practices and results. In the case of HR redesign, that might include the ratio of HR employees to other employees or how employees gain access to HR information.
“There has been resistance in BPA to doing benchmarking,” says Roberts. “People tend to say that what other organizations do is irrelevant to us because we are unique or because we are the government. But we can learn a lot from benchmarking.”
Benchmarking does not mean just doing what other businesses do. It means looking at what they do and then evaluating what will work at BPA. For instance, Ranft and her staff created BPA’s program, they did not just adopt the Tennessee Valley Authority’s records management program. Says Ranft, “We looked at what the other organizations were doing and then factored in BPA’s costs and resources and figured out what would work here.” The “what would work at BPA” is now recognized as a best practice. “We created a system that withstood the fundamental changes in the organization — it works for us,” says Jim Assuras.
BPA hired Price Waterhouse to do some evaluation of industry best practices in the IR field. It compares what Price Waterhouse identified as the best practices in seven areas with BPA’s practices. The IR redesign team is now faced with the task of determining how those best practices can fit at BPA.
And there is an element of being able to measure benefits in terms of dollars saved or efficiencies attained by changing practices.
Whatever the recommendations finally adopted by the shared services board, they will be based on what was learned from benchmarking and examining best practices in other organizations. The goal is to reproduce in the HR and IR arenas the kind of success that Records Management has attained.
Several Bonneville people won’t soon forget The Alamo (left). They visited San Antonio, Texas, in April to perform with Portland’s One More Time Around Again Marching Band at the Fiesta Flambeau festival. The group included (standing, l-r) Mike Miller, Bob Sinclair (retired), Marie Torrillo, Mike Street, Linda Krugel, Jon French and (kneeling) Audrey Perino. Jan Keiski and Harold Grappe also made the trip.
On May 30, the band played in Portland’s Starlight Parade, an event that was preceded by thousands of joggers who ran through downtown Portland in the annual Starlight Run. Among the athletes were about a dozen BPA runners, many of whom wore their BPA SuperShirts, including (above) Syd Berwager, Martha Swain, John Baugher, Pat Zimmer, Crystal Ball, Ken Kane and Joe Bebee.
(Editor’s note: There have been rumors of a sighting of BPA SuperShirts at Spokane’s Bloomsday Run on May 3 . . . but, unfortunately, the Circuit has been unable to uncover photographic evidence! If you or a BPA group plans to participate in a community activity this year – especially in your SuperShirts – take a snapshot and send it to the Circuit - ACC-7. It could end up right here!)
During his lunch-time talk with BPA employees on June 2, Eric Sten sounded more like a potential customer than a Portland City Commission member.
Sten covered three topics in the highly interactive talk: electric energy deregulation, the steelhead listing as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and the sources and supply of Portland-area drinking water. Of these, the first had particular appeal to BPA employees.
Sten’s view of deregulation reflects his orientation toward residential and small consumers: “I don’t think we need to restructure.” He pointed out that Portland residents currently have a good deal on electricity and that he doesn’t see any benefits coming to residents from restructuring — especially for low-income citizens and for people who support conservation and renewable energy.
His preferences aside, Sten says, “I’m convinced we will restructure.”
With restructuring as a given, Sten’s goal is to be ready for deregulation and to do the best he can for the citizens of Portland. With work from the staff of the Portland Energy Office, the Portland City Council is pursuing a set of principles to help guide the city in the current “crazy environment.”
The first principle is to try to ensure that everyone gets the benefits of choice. Sten, among others, worries that the benefits of restructuring and choice will only go to industries that have huge buying power. His goal is to ensure that residential customers retain low rates, reliable service and such public benefits as low-income subsidies. If rates cannot go down, Sten argues, then at least the number of public benefits should go up.
The second principle is to find the best system that protects small users and the environment. The third is to create a system that provides the most benefits to Portland as a municipality. He assumes that the city can negotiate a good rate because it is large and uses a lot of power at off hours, such as the load for streetlights.
An approach that meets these principles and, at the same time, meets the current rules of the game (which, Sten noted, “change constantly”) is for the city to become an aggregator, or, as he calls it, a community power buying group.
In theory, the group would buy power for the city and for all residents who don’t want to choose a supplier. The group would negotiate with suppliers to get the best deal. At one point, Sten characterized the role of aggregator as “a ton of work to get what we have now.” The point of the work, however, is to assure local control “when utilities are few and international.” Along with local control would come delivery of public benefits, that is, services that local citizens value. Sten noted that public benefits from local investor-owned utilities are less than half what they were before competition.
When asked his opinion of BPA, Sten said that it was “generally good.” He also said that he saw BPA as a potential partner, saying at one point: “I want access to low-cost federal power for Portland residents.”
“If we want to turn the agency around in terms of diversity, we need to pay attention to what we can do, not what we’re doing wrong,” according to Susan Bailey, who was a member of the Pluralism Council until she retired in June.
The Pluralism Council decided to do just that by recognizing managers who serve as role models. The council asked members of the various resource groups to nominate managers who are practicing good diversity skills. Once the nominations were submitted, the council members talked with the nominees’ supervisors, peers and staff to find out what the managers were doing right. Criteria for the award included strong communication, team-building, mentoring and coaching skills. The award recipients were also chosen based on their ability to deal equally and fairly with all races, nationalities, cultures, disabilities, ages and genders.
In the future, the council plans to solicit nominations for the award from all employees. Employees will be able to submit written nominations declaring why a manager should receive the award.
The first four recipients of the Managing Diversity Progress Award are Deidre Meaney, Patrick Timm, Kimberley Howell and Denis Sjoquist. The council will present the awards to them at an employee meeting in Portland on July 8.
Meaney is acting manager of Information System Development in the Power Business Line. She currently supervises eight employees but has had as many as 16 employees reporting to her in the past. Meaney says she is honored, but surprised, to receive this award. She says treating people well should be a given. “It’s the right thing to do,” she says.
Meaney has worked with many managers in her 22-year career at BPA. She has seen a variety of management styles as her career has taken her from the training office to public involvement to intertie access policy to power contracts to power billing to her current position. Meaney has tried to model herself after the managers who treat employees well.
Meaney says diversity is about “people in all their uniqueness. Everyone is unique. Everyone has value. It’s important to care about the people as well as the work. We can’t lose the human aspect of the equation.”
Pat Timm says he was speechless when he was told he received the award. “I don’t think I do anything special. I just treat people fairly,” he says. Timm has been at BPA for 28 years and is a team lead in Electrical System Parts in the Transmission Business Line. His group responds to emergencies and he can be paged anytime, day or night. “My group works together – I recognize the whole team, not just individuals,” he says. “As a manager, I treat everyone’s needs differently. We are all different but equal as human beings. We all deserve to be treated with respect.”
Timm says a good manager gives people an opportunity to develop by recognizing each person’s potential. “We’re all just a spoke in a big wheel. If we polish and strengthen each spoke, we can make the wheel turn efficiently, enabling us to accomplish our goals,” he says.
Kimberley Howell is a chief substation operator III in the Snohomish District. She supervises six substation operators. “I am excited and honored to receive this award,” she says. But Howell doesn’t do things for recognition. She does it for satisfaction – because it makes her feel good. “That’s the best motive of all,” she says. “My employees are awesome!” she says.
Howell began her BPA career as a clerk-typist twenty years ago. She moved into the apprenticeship program two years later and has been an advocate for women in nontraditional jobs ever since. But she’s quick to point out that her goal for the last 20 years has been to work to change roles not only for women but for minorities as well. “It’s my life,” she says. “Managing diversity is critical to the success of BPA and all the individuals in the agency.” She is a spokesperson at conferences around the region where she encourages employers to give women and minorities an opportunity to pursue jobs where these groups are underrepresented.
Howell says the number one role of managers is to support employees in any way they can – by providing opportunities and challenges, even if it leads them to other occupations. “Having an employee advance to a new occupation is a success for me,” says Howell.
Denis Sjoquist considers his award quite an honor. He says, “Diversity means bringing together the differences in people to better understand each other and benefit everyone.” As the Snohomish regional manager for Transmission Field Services, he strives to develop and maintain a positive work environment for all employees in his region.
His responsibilities are cover a lot of area. He travels frequently between three districts – Snohomish, Covington and Custer. Sjoquist works hard to be a good manager by listening to employee concerns and understanding their issues. When decisions are made, he takes the time to explain why the decisions were made so employees see the complete picture.
“A good manager is supportive and removes obstacles so employees can accomplish their work,” says Sjoquist. “We have excellent, dedicated employees at BPA. We need to give them latitude and freedom to do their jobs.”
There’s a rumor that the nursery rhyme about the old woman in the shoe is about the Ross Complex — that employees are stacked on top of one another and more are coming.
According to Charles Fleisher, project manager for the Transmission Business Line move to the Ross Complex, there is no need to be concerned. Planning for the move is continuing and the needs of employees are being considered. Many TBL employees already have been co-located at Ross and the ones who remain at headquarters will transfer when space is available.
According to Fleisher, four strategies are being considered to create more space at Ross. One option is to renovate existing Ross structures by remodeling several of the major buildings, some of which have been around since World War II. That would create an organized setting for TBL employees to work close to each other. The project could take about 18 months to complete and would leave around 100 employees still working at the headquarters building in Portland.
The second option is to build a new structure, something similar to a suburban office building. A site for this project has been discussed, but nothing will be set in concrete, literally, until funding is available. “The idea is in the budget process,” Fleisher says. This approach has some support, but it also would require a lengthy construction period.
A third possibility is leasing space in Vancouver. This option would provide enough room for all TBL employees currently in Portland and give BPA time to consider a more definite solution at Ross. Fleisher notes that competition for rental properties could be intense. “The lease market is very tight right now,” he says.
The fourth option is to leave things the way they are. This option would be implemented only if none of the others is workable.
It is clear that moving all TBL employees to Ross would accomplish several important objectives: complete the steps necessary to meet the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission directives to separate the two business lines, satisfy BPA’s co-location goals from the re-engineering effort and help save the agency some dollars in the longer term. If all the Transmission employees were to leave the Portland headquarters building, space would become available in the building. This would make it possible for other Power Business Line employees and corporate services people to move back into headquarters from leased space.
The decision on which option to pursue should be made soon. The goal, Fleisher stresses, is to make the right move as quickly as possible but to move people only once to minimize disruptions.
Near the break of dawn on a chilly Saturday late last year, nine high school girls parked on the shoulder of Highway 30. The students made their way through two gates and over railroad tracks to get their first glimpse of BPA’s Burlington Bottoms, a protected wetland environment they would study in depth for the next six months.
The students from St. Mary’s Academy in Portland culminated their research this June with a presentation to BPA employees. Tom Morse, BPA fisheries biologist and project manager of Burlington Bottoms, was there. “The presentation was excellent,” says Morse. “They have gained an appreciation of the problems associated with working in a limited area and understand the complexity of the habitat at Burlington Bottoms.” Morse added that, while this was a learning experience for them, it has certainly helped BPA.
BPA purchased Burlington Bottoms in 1991 as a wetlands mitigation site and has established it as a wildlife refuge. While use by the general public has been restricted, the students were allowed to study it for over 100 hours.
The students were responsible for gathering data about the habitat and about wildlife use of the site. The researchers also made recommendations about human use. The group built on the insights of a 1996-97 team from St. Mary’s and was able to put together a computer map of the area that BPA will use in its own studies.
Allison Van, who just graduated from St. Mary’s, said she appreciated the opportunity to study Burlington Bottoms. “It was very interesting for me to work in the field,” she said. “I learned a lot about applying the concepts of biology and ecosystems.”
The field research gave Van a different feeling from classroom work. “I could actually smell the rain and see the little changes in the habitat I hadn’t seen the week before,” she said.
Van plans to study environmental biology at the University of Washington beginning this fall. She thinks it’s great that BPA has set aside Burlington Bottoms to enhance the wildlife populations here in the Northwest. “Burlington Bottoms has a real future as a permanent home for many types of animals,” she said. “I’ve already seen them begin to build their homes there.”