201906 SERC Transmission

201906 SERC Transmission

SERC Transmission Newsletter Generated Monthly for Stakeholders

June 2019

Volume 6: Issue 6

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By Jason Blake, President and CEO I am pleased to report about the great progress that we are making on numerous fronts at SERC. In a way, it is kind of difficult to decide where to begin… Certainly the official integration of Florida on July 1st is at the forefront of everyone’s mind, and rightfully so – we achieved a lot of milestones as we noted in last month’s newsletter, and the momentum has continued. We have had more great engage-

ment opportunities throughout the month of May; I was invited to attend the FRCC Board of Directors meeting; Gaurav Karandikar, Todd Curl, Mike Kuhl, and I attended the FRCC Regional Entity Committee & Compliance Forum (RECCF); and members of my executive team traveled to Florida to meet with an entity’s management team to learn more about how we will work together after the transition. As you are aware, we previously received approval for a set of Bylaws changes to accompany the FRCC integration and ensure Florida representation on our Board Executive Committee. We are also nearing completion of a second round of changes to ensure that our governance model is as efficient and effective as possible. This process includes evaluat- ing best governance practices, constructs, and approaches, while also ensuring active, balanced, diverse, and strategic stakeholder expertise and engagement. We have an important mission at SERC, and we want to make sure that our Board and its Committees are best positioned to perform oversight and help us set strategy to best effectuate our mission of reducing risks across our footprint. Astakeholder-led task force is leading this objective, and we will provide you with an update on this effort in our next newsletter. Suffice it to say, great progress is underway. We have also focused our attention on how we are internally organized as we position ourselves for the future. For the past several months, we have been evaluating our programs and our organizational structure to ensure that they are

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This reorganization has also resulted in shifting certain oversight responsibilities across my executive team to play to their respective strengths and passions and maximize their ability to make a positive impact. The focus of this reorganization has been to ensure that we are aligning our departments and work around risk; driving synergies, efficiency, and effectiveness; and maximizing the skill sets and passions of our staff. For example, we have aligned the responsibility for our reliability assessment and performance analysis functions with oversight of our vibrant technical committees, recognizing the commonalities and opportunities to further leverage the fine work occurring in both of these important areas. We have also aligned the risk assessment and mitigation functions closer to the outreach, assistance, and training functions to better ensure that our understanding and communication of emerging risks and/or proven mitigation strategies to our stakeholders is coordinated, current, timely, and intentional; and can be honed outside of the monitoring and enforcement functions. aligned around risk, focused on adding value, and are consequently effective and efficient. Our efforts have already led to meaningful change within SERC by helping facilitate an insightful and inspired reorganization of our departments, internal reporting structure, and programs.

Tim Ponseti will now oversee our ReliabilityAssurance, Engineering &AdvancedAnalytics, and Situational Awareness & Security departments. Holly Hawkins will oversee our Legal, RegulatoryAffairs, and Enforcement departments. Brian Thumm will oversee our RiskAssessment & Mitigation, Training & Outreach, and Strategic Initiatives & Continuous Improvement departments. George Krogstie will oversee our Finance and Human Resources departments.

I am also pleased to share with you that, effective July 1, John Odom , FRCC’s current Vice President of Compliance, Enforcement & Reliability Performance, will join my executive team as Principal Consultant. Among other things, John will be responsible for overseeing our integration efforts with FRCC beyond the integration date and engaging in key initiatives across our entire organization and our footprint.

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In lateApril, we had an opportunity to post several management positions in the new SERC organization. We are humbled that we had over 20 highly qualified applicants from both SERC and FRCC apply for these management roles. With this tremendous amount of talent in both organizations, we were able to fill all of the vacancies internally, and so I would like to highlight to you and congratulate several employees from within both SERC and FRCC that have now joined our management team:

AndrewWilliamson is currently the Director of Enforcement, RiskAssess- ment, and Mitigation at FRCC. Andrew will be joining SERC as the Director of ReliabilityAssurance. Andrew will report to Tim Ponseti and will lead all of our monitoring, registration, and certification functions.

Scott Knewasser is currently the Manager of O&PMonitoring at FRCC. Scott will be joining SERC as the Senior Manager of RiskAssessment & Mitigation. Scott will report to Brian Thumm and will lead all of our risk- harm determinations for violation processing, mitigation work, and continue to grow and develop our inherent risk assessments.

Maria Haney was the Program Manager of ReliabilityAssessment and PerformanceAnalysis at SERC. Maria has been promoted to Manager, Situational Awareness & Security. Maria reports to Tim and will lead our EventsAnalysis and Situational Awareness functions. She will also lead our internal IT and security functions in an effort to find synergies and foster continuous improvement in our security posture.

Gaurav Karandikar was the Program Manager of Engineering at SERC. Gaurav has been promoted to Manager, RAPA& Technical Committees. Gaurav reports to Melinda Montgomery and will lead our reliability assessment and performance analysis function, as well as oversee the engagement of our very active stakeholder committees.

Maggie Peacock was the Program Manager of Operations at SERC. Maggie has been promoted to Manager, AdvancedAnalytics. Maggie reports to Melinda Montgomery and will lead the continued development and growth of our advanced analytics function.

Stephen Brown was the Supervisor of CIPMonitoring at SERC. Steve has been promoted to Manager, CIP Monitoring. Stephen will continue to report to Todd Curl, Senior Manager of Monitoring, and will continue to be responsible for leading our CIP monitoring function.

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MaddyAlba is currently a Compliance Program Administrator at FRCC. She will join SERC as a Com- pliance ProgramCoordinator, where she will continue to support the compliance monitoring, registration, and certification programs. MilesAlbritton is currently a RiskAssessment and Mitigation Specialist with FRCC. He will join SERC as a Senior Compliance Engineer in the RiskAssessment and Mitigation group, where he will provide Operations & Planning expertise in the performance of risk/harm determinations. Serge Beauzile is currently a Compliance Engineer / Auditor at FRCC. He will join SERC as a Senior O&P Auditor, bringing valuable knowledge and continuity to our monitoring of the Florida registered entities. Rick Dodd is currently a Senior RiskAssessment and Mitigation Specialist at FRCC. He will join SERC as a Senior Compliance Specialist in the RiskAssessment and Mitigation group, where he will provide CIP exper- tise in the performance of risk/harm determinations. Joan Gue ntner is currently a Compliance Program Administrator at FRCC. She will join SERC as a Com- pliance ProgramCoordinator, where she will continue to support the compliance monitoring, registration, and certification programs. Hassan Hamdar is currently the Manager of Reliability Performance and Standards Development at FRCC. He will join SERC as a ProgramManager of Events Analysis, continuing his excellent work in the Events Analysis area across the EROEnterprise and bringing experience in monitoring tropical activity along Florida’s hurricane-prone coast. Pete Heidrich is currently the Director of Reliability, Performance and Registration at FRCC. He will join SERC as a Senior Certification & Registration Coordi- nator, bringing additional expertise in these areas. Chris Holmquest is currently the Manager of Risk Assessment &Mitigation at FRCC. He will join SERC as a ProgramManager of EntityAssistance, where he will interact directly with entities on the reduction of risk in a tailored setting. Renny Ramai is currently the Manager of CIPmonitor- ing at FRCC. He will join SERC as a Senior CIPAuditor, bringing valuable CIP knowledge and continuity to our monitoring of the Florida registered entities. Shawna Speer is currently an Enforcement Specialist at FRCC. She will join SERC as a Senior Enforcement Specialist, managing the interface between the risk assessment activities and the enforcement activities, and ensuring the timely resolution of noncompliance issues.

In addition to these three great hires from FRCC and promotions from within current SERC, we also extended offers to each of the 10 high-caliber members of the FRCC Regional Entity staff. I am thrilled to report to you that each of them has accepted a new role in the SERC organization. This will result in former FRCC staff taking on critical roles across our entire organization, reporting into subject matter groups engaged in monitoring, registration, certification, entity assistance, risk assessment, mitigation, enforcement, and events analysis, Each of these individuals bring a tremendous amount of knowledge about the Florida systems, and are subject matter experts in each of the roles they have fulfilled at FRCC. We are excited that they are going to fill equally important roles when they officially join SERC on July 1. As you can see, FRCC staff is well integrated into the SERC organization across all program areas. They bring a unique perspective given their work in the FRCC Region, and we are truly fortunate to be able to leverage their skills. My sincere hope is that these organizational changes provide great value to you and your companies as you interface with SERC. Over the upcoming months, we will be providing a spot- light on each of our executives and the risk-focused and value-driven philosophies that will be guiding each of their respective departments, managers, and staff into the future. I hope you will find these upcoming newsletter articles insightful and engaging. I have every confidence that this reorganization, along with our strengthened management team and staff, will help fulfill our vision of being (1) a trusted expert organization for you and your companies; (2) an innovative and collabora- tive leader across NERC, the Regions, and FERC; and (3) a best place to work due to our team environment and the importance of what we do.

SERC CONNECTION

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Check out the SERC Resource Library!

The Resource Library webpage contains some great reference information that you may find helpful. There are two handy Excel spread- sheets that contain links to previously published newsletter articles and outreach event presentations. These spreadsheets enable you to locate articles and presentations easily, simply by sorting or filtering by topic, date, author, speaker, event, or title.

The Resource Library also provides a list with links to eLearning training modules, Request for Information process tips, and phishing prevention posters. Additional resources will be added as they become available. We’re always open for suggestions, so let us know what you would like to see by contacting [email protected].

FOR YOUR CALENDAR

June 2019

TECHNICAL COMMITTEES

INSIDE SERC

HOT TOPICS (Cont’d)

SERC continues to support theAlign tool development and implementation. In May, SERC compliance staff participated in User Acceptance Testing for Release 1 and multiple other ERO Enterprise activities to ensure the newAlign compliance tool is ready for implementation in September. Between now and the go-live date, you will receive updates through the newAlign monthly newsletter, which will be emailed to SERC and FRCC Primary andAlternate Compliance Contacts, so be on the lookout for them. Also, a link to the latest issue of that newsletter is in the Newsroom channel box on the SERC home page, and past issues will be available in theAlign Newsletters folder on the Newsletters webpage. Here are a few Q&As about Align that you may have seen in the May newsletter. Q Why are we developing a new compliance tool? A TheAlign project seeks to provide a single, common CMEP system in a secure environment that will: • Improve documentation, sharing, and analysis of compliance work activities;

• Meet requirements under applicable professional standards and the Rules of Procedure; • Increase efficiency by aligning and consolidating CMEP processes across the Regions; • Define and standardize CMEP >Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19

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