Today I attended the Utilitydive webinar “How Utilities Can Better Manage Grid Modernization” hosted by West Monroe Partners; generally informative and underpinned by a great survey and case for change report “Managing Grid Modernization: Integrating IT and Operations at U.S. Utilities”.
A copy of the report is available here (in exchange for your marketing details).
And really, it’s presentations and information like this that have inspired A2A – utility operations are typically risk adverse, silo’d, disengaged, archaic and continually distracted with emergency response and regulatory requests; yet there is a human desire for modernization and associated buzzwords, but thought to be achieved by propagating the existing process, skillsets, cultures and technologies.
In today’s utilities, Information Technology and HR has likely been mostly outsourced; Operational Technology (OT) is held tightly by engineering and operations – as it is seen as ‘black magic’ by much of the business and the source of cautious advancement for the technical workforce; where much of the innovation is obtained by purchasing a vendors proprietary technology, islanded and ‘air-gapped’ from other systems, for security of course.
As shown in the West Monroe report, there really is a gap in industry for OT professionals, let alone IT/OT experts, and a lack of practical information, advice and OT leadership to make it happen properly:
- Process (ie workflow, re-org, roles and responsibilities)
- Systems (ie architecture, partnerships, deliberate investment)
- People (ie redeploy, purge, upskill, recruit).
For more information and perspectives, have a browse through A2A, reach out and connect.
