HomeMy WebLinkAboutStaff Report 13844
City of Palo Alto (ID # 13844)
City Council Staff Report
Meeting Date: 1/10/2022 Report Type: Information Reports
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Title: Informational Update on Utilities Operational Improvements
From: City Manager
Lead Department: Utilities
Recommendation
This report is provided to the City Council for information and no action is required.
Background
Over the past few years, staff has been considering options for improving workflow within the
Utilities Department, specifically to strengthen continuity between engineering and operations
functions. This area of focus was heightened after the City of Palo Alto’s electric system
experienced outages in March and April 2021. The first was a large-scale outage at the Park
Boulevard substation (PBS) on March 27, affecting over 7,000 customers and lasting several
hours. In this outage, a breaker was accidentally tripped by one of the City’s electricians who
was working on a maintenance project. Compounding the loss of power to customers were
issues concerning the timeliness of public communication and customer call handling.
Discussion
Following these outages, the Utilities Department and City Manager’s Office have taken several
actions to review and follow-up on corrective actions to minimize future outages. This has
included identification of key issues and regular progress meetings with City Manager’s Office,
Utilities, Human Resources, and other offices involved with follow-up. In addition, many
supporting meetings were held by senior managers, cross functional department
representatives, and utility workgroups to identify and implement preventative measures.
Staff has implemented changes to utilities policies and processes to reinforce reliability in
workflows. These improvements have been made to ensure that resources and procedures are
in place for safety, while also recognizing the importance of individual job responsibilities. A
number of utilities protocols have been updated; substation operations procedures, outage
coordination for public safety power shutoffs and curtailments of the independent system
operator (ISO). These protocols will be reviewed on an annual basis and more frequently as
needed. The development of these protocols has increased the coordination and
communication between staff members both within the utilities department and other internal
departments. Front line training of utilities personnel is also occurring with a renewed emphasis
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on safety and operational procedures. The newly developed substation procedures have been
“field tested” by substation team members to verify they are coherent and appropriate.
Staffing vacancies have also been reduced. Over the past several months the Utilities
Department has successfully hired 3 utilities apprentice system operators, currently in training,
bringing the Utilities System Operations staffing to 100% (5 of 5 filled positions). The vacant
Safety Officer position has also now been filled, following council approval to adjust the salary
of the position to reflect a higher level of responsibility. The City is also exploring an option to
supplement and expand safety-related services using consulting firms and to provide additional
expertise in electrical utilities training and assessments. Over the past several months, other
Utilities staff members have performed essential safety compliance related actions while
leveraging training support from an existing contract specific to safety training.
During the review, gaps were identified with the current Outage Management System (OMS).
The Utilities department has initiated a process to replace the existing OMS with a planned
selection in early 2022, with implementation by the end of 2022. In the interim, staff has put in
place a new outage communications protocol to improve public notifications procedures that
better integrates the cooperation between the City’s 9-1-1 center, utility system operators, and
public information staff. The call-taking functionality of the OMS has been improved to handle
higher call volumes as well as provide more immediate feedback to customers. These
improvements allow for more effective means to identify an outage and communicate to the
public.
In parallel with these efforts, the Utilities Department is proceeding with an internal
reorganization to integrate engineering and operations functions within the two primary utility
services: electrical/fiber and water/gas/wastewater. While this reorganization effort has been
planned for some time, as documented in the Utilities Strategic Plan and identified in the
FY2022 Operational Budget, it is being accelerated by this ongoing improvement process.
Management and line staff within each utility are currently involved in operational reviews and
teambuilding to ensure the new organizational units are able to provide seamless services
when the new divisions are formally implemented in early 2022.
Stakeholder Engagement
In the Spring of 2021, the City Managers’ communications team worked with the Director of
Utilities to create a blog (Linked Document) for keeping the community updated on how the
City if moving forward with the outage management improvements. Staff will continue to
provide public information as needed to apprise stakeholders of ongoing efforts.