Originally written and published by Sarah Teague for Associated Electric Cooperative, Inc. on Feb. 14, 2020. Visuals by Sarah Teague.
Relationship building is vital to Power Production’s success.
So said Sean Wright, managing director of engineering and construction. His comment follows Associated’s 2020 Engineering Summit held Feb. 6 and 7 in Springfield.
Tyler Samuel, engineer, change management, agreed. “I was amazed. Since last time I was here, there’s a significant amount of new faces, so we have a lot of new engineers that work here. So, it’s neat to — from a networking perspective — be able to make connections and put names with faces,” Tyler said.
The summit opened a forum for discussion on challenges Power Production may be facing — how to grow from those challenges — and presentations from David Tudor, CEO, power marketing’s 2020 outlook, document control updates and breakout sessions propelled by
Because Power Production employees are spread across locations, the summit provided a platform for networking, but also troubleshooting. Time was used to share lessons, best practices and strategic updates.
Alex Lewis is an associate engineer at Thomas Hill Energy Center. He’s been with Associated for about a year and said he already sees the value in taking time to collaborate across locations.
“It can prevent us from making mistakes others have made,” he said. If other engineers have experienced similar challenges, sharing solutions is key to efficiency.
“Then we’re not reinventing the wheel to have to overcome those same problems,” Alex said.
Project awareness was a talking point. Mike Statler, principal engineer (thermal performance) at New Madrid, said the summit is integral to hearing ideas and about projects from engineers he rarely sees in person.
Tyler agreed. Document control may understand projects cooperativewide, but engineers uninvolved with various projects can benefit from knowledge of ongoing operations for efficiency and compliance.
“We’ve got a lot of really talented individuals that each have their own areas of expertise, so without a forum like this, it would be easy for some of these projects to go unnoticed by people that work at other locations,” Tyler said.
Sean said the effort put into summit collaboration this week showcases Power Production’s work ethic and ability to plan for any challenges they may face.
