| Battle River REA: Buy-in from the Bottom Up |
| Featured Spotlights | |||
| Written by Ashley McGown | |||
| Monday, 31 August 2009 | |||
 Colleen Musselman and the team at this Alberta REA are working together to build a better work environment and a more efficient delivery process.
Ultimately, the change meant Battle River and other REAs (rural electrification associations) would have to amalgamate; 24 mergers occurred between 1999 and 2001, resulting in the organization that exists today. Although mergers can often prove challenging for all parties involved, Colleen Musselman, general manager at Battle River, said the amalgamations were important because they created an organization with greater economies of scale. Since that time, Musselman and the team at Battle River have used the resources available to them, working hard to improve many aspects of operation. A taskforce review in 2003 decided the organization needed to develop a unified safety program; until that point, teams at the 24 amalgamated cooperatives were each following different protocols.  Colleen Musselman, general manager “We wanted the procedures to be engrained in the organization’s culture, and if we have buy-in from the linemen, that makes it easier,” Musselman added. “Without buy-in from employees on the front-line, a safety program is really just a binder on a shelf.” A team effort Together, the linemen and the administrative team identified potential hazards and related solutions, and in the end, $300,000 was spent to develop and roll out the new program. In 2007, as a result of the organization’s efforts, Battle River received an official certificate of recognition from the Alberta government, which grants it a 20% rebate on worker’s compensation insurance. Although regulations require such organizations to be audited once every three years to maintain the certificate, Musselman and her team elect to take part annually. “We choose to be audited every year because we want to constantly improve and make sure we’re at the highest possible level,” Musselman said. “If you don’t keep your feet to the fire, you tend to slip a little.” The second major investment the team at Battle River has been deeply involved with in recent years is the installation of AMR. The Alberta government has been pushing utilities across the province to install some form of AMR for many months now, but Musselman said she and her team began the research/installation process before regulations began to shift, simply because of the cost-effective nature of the system. “For us, AMR seemed like something we had to do because it saved us money and benefited our members, and we calculated that the payback would be less than two years for us,” Musselman said. Once Battle River decided it wanted to implement a system, the next step was deciding which would be the best fit. To help sort through the details, the organization’s team traveled to California to attend an energy conference and talk to employees from various cooperatives that had recently undergone the transition. “We were able to see a lot of demonstrations, and it really solidified the decision to install an AMR,” Musselman said. “A few companies we met there came back to our facility in the following months and showed us the different capabilities they offered, what specific data could be retrieved through the systems, and what additional software was compatible.” Choosing the right one Because of the infrastructure of the service area Battle River serves, the organization is only allowed to support farmers and rural residential homes—it doesn’t support industrial organizations or any of the surrounding towns. As a result, there are many overlapping areas in which two utilities operate. The patchwork ownership grid played a key role in influencing what type of meter system Battle River selected because the grid’s design means Battle River doesn’t own the point of delivery between transmission and distribution. “If we chose AMI, as we originally planned to do, we would’ve used a line carrier instead of a radio signal, and we would’ve needed access to the point of delivery to put a receiver in,” Musselman said. “That would’ve been a huge hindrance to us, and it’s one of the main reasons we ultimately chose AMR.” Battle River began to install the new meters in October 2008. Originally, the organization’s goal was to complete the process in a two-year period, but Musselman said she expects the team to finish this November—11 months ahead of schedule. “The quick pace is really a result of the buy-in we got from our employees,” she said, noting that the $500,000 investment is now expected to pay itself off in less than two years. “The biggest challenge for us was differentiating between the choices we had and making the best decision in terms of long-term benefits,” Musselman continued. “Once we were past that, it came together great. The success we’ve seen so far is a result of the hard work our employees, administrators, and board of directors have put forward.” |
|||
| < Previous Story | Next Story > |
|---|
©2008 Energy Today - RedCoat Publishing
Other Redcoat Magazines American Executive | Inside Healthcare | Retail Merchandiser | Welcome Magazine
