by sylviamunson

The Aging Workforce in Energy

Cycles in business

I’ve noticed an interesting trend among my peers lately. They are retiring! I’m not ready to retire, I’m still having a lot of fun. But, as companies change ownership and leadership, others get packages and encouraged to retire.

This could have a huge impact on our businesses!  So many companies that I work with send people just like me to the key decision-making meetings.  Where are the younger staff that are being groomed to take our positions? I was fortunate, 20-plus years ago, to be brought into the heart of some of the big changes that our industry was going through. At that time, the groups were made up of a mix of young business people like myself, who had good experience, though not deep, plus senior executives with deep knowledge. We learned so much from those senior executives, so that when they retired, we were equipped to step up and fill those shoes. But I don’t see most companies, today, sending those more junior staff into the decision-making processes along with their senior staff. They are still sending the senior staff but only sending one person and not growing someone to take that person’s place.

Yes, there is a cost involved to send two or more people instead of one. But there is a longer-term cost in only sending one person – the company isn’t growing a future generation to take the place of these senior staff. This isn’t true of all companies. I have worked with a few who bring the young people into the discussions with the senior staff, but there are still more seniors in the room than there are juniors.

And yes, I agree, that the younger staff of today are not the same breed that we were 20+ years ago. I think some of those people still exist, but they might be a little harder to find and a lot harder to retain. In recent years, I sent one of my employees to NAESB meetings, technical meetings for which he was well prepared. When he came back from the meeting he told me that if he had to go to those meetings again, he would quit!  What? I agree that it is difficult to work in a group such as NAESB because there are such long established procedures in place and so many long term relationships have been established. But don’t give up on the first try! Stick with it and make it work for you. Another associate, through NAESB, picked a successor to be trained up as a replacement upon her retirement. The person kept being a no-show at scheduled meetings and then claimed to not understand the process.

When I got started in NAESB, I already had 10+ years of industry experience and it was a tough organization to be a part of. Any organization that tries to build consensus on business processes among over 100 different companies is going to have some tough discussions! But the process works! During that time of getting started in NAESB, was also at the beginning of NAESB. To get all of the work done, many of us worked multiple 16+ hour days. Some of us even worked some 24-hour days. We did whatever it took to make the process successful. We need a new wave of this type of workforce in the gas industry. People who will work hard and are passionate about doing a good job and creating a better industry. We need to find those people, retain them, grow them, and prepare them for the future of our companies.

The question then becomes – what are these young people looking for in a company and how do we keep them? Is it benefits? Is it “work-life balance”? Benefits in companies are not the same as they were 20 years ago – and when I began in this industry I knew that these companies would grow ME as a person while growing me as an employee. Is this what recruits are looking for today? Or is it something different? We need to know what the current generation requires. We need to plan for succession.

by sylviamunson

NAESB? Nahhhzbe? Nazzz-bee? Nayz-bee?

If a telemarketer calls me and they call me Ms. Mooon-son or Ms. Mun-ster, then I know they definitely don’t know me!!

The same thing happens with NAESB!

The ways that people pronounce “NAESB” are hilarious! NAESB, in case you don’t know, stands for the North American Energy Standards Board. Anyone that actively participates in the organization pronounces the term as Nayz-bee – with a long A. If you want to sound like an insider, say it the way the insiders do.  Try it out. . . . Nayz-bee – with the long A sound. Now you can sound like an insider, too.

If you want to be a real insider, check out the web page at NAESB.org and consider joining the organization. There is a lot to be learned from then.

by sylviamunson

What Can I Say?

It’s not often that I run out of things to write about.  Actually – that has never happened.  The situation that I’m in right now is that there are so many things that need to be written about that I find myself stuck – unable to make a choice and run with it.

I could spend days on the upcoming changes from Order 809.  It is potentially the most exciting set of changes that I have seen out of FERC in quite a few years.  If we don’t do our job well on this one, they could be minimal, boring changes. But I am hoping and praying that we do our job well and make some changes that positively impact our industry and our customers.

I could spend days writing about technology and the challenges that we face when met with such wonderful opportunities in technology.

I could spend days on the details of the business processes in natural gas.  I learn more every day and am regularly surprised at the new ways that companies find to do business in such an ever-changing marketplace.

I love hearing from you.  I have learned through three different people this last week that my questions to you put you in a difficult position. Often you cannot provide a response to my postings because it would be seen as a company position and you cannot afford to make that statement or, more likely, you are not permitted to make that statement. Don’t hesitate to pick up the phone and call me!  Don’t hesitate to send me an email.  I can use the information, if appropriate, by stating that “A friend told me,” or some other vague reference that points no fingers.  I promise that I won’t say “A friend that works in building X for company Y in the Z department told me…”

Sylvia

by sylviamunson

7 ways to give a natural gas scheduler good customer service

Gas scheduling is an important part of natural gas transportation. A good friend, Norm Walker, often referred to scheduling as “the center of the universe” in the pipeline business. I have yet to find any information to prove him wrong.

The scheduler is the logistics coordinator for the entire business flow of gas. A scheduler takes all of the information about what has been bought, sold and what contractual obligations and rights are in place and creates a daily plan to get the gas from all of the receipts to all of the deliveries, at the best rate, with the best likelihood to flow. Next, the scheduler has to put all of this information, via nominations, into the multiple pipelines on which the gas will flow.

Imagine a coach trying to coordinate the plays in multiple simultaneous games. That is what the scheduler is doing working across multiple pipelines. Now, add in the factor that each pipeline has different service offerings, different scheduling rules, and different web technologies. Often you will see that schedulers will focus on and specialize in a region of interconnected pipelines because of the huge learning curve for each individual pipeline.

I have seen schedulers who nominate on eight different pipelines every day. They are amazing! They know the contracts, locations, rules and idiosyncrasies of each of the pipelines they work with. It is a stressful job.

So how can we make it better?

Standards in natural gas have eased some of the learning curve, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.

1 – Make pipeline websites that work on all of the major browsers, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox.

Make the websites work on multiple older versions without any custom configuration in order to use the site. This is so important. A scheduler doesn’t have time to deal with the fact that Pipeline A only works on Internet Explorer Version 9 if patch x.y.z is installed. They don’t have time to have to have multiple versions of a browser on one desktop so that they can use version K for your pipeline and version J for someone else’s.

2 – Make the screens plain and simple.

Put the minimum amount of information on a screen, especially a data entry screen. Minimize the number of keystrokes in every way possible. It may be really cool and high tech that you can resize grids, rearrange data, etc. But if the scheduler has to do that every time, then that is time wasted for them. You may think that you are giving the scheduler really interesting extra information that they will find useful. But if they have to provide extra information or have to navigate (wade) through your “added value” data then it becomes burdensome fluff.

3 – Use the standard terms.

I don’t know how many times I’ve had this conversation. I don’t understand why people question it. You are doing your customer no favors if you choose to use interesting derived terms instead of industry standard terms for a screen or a data field. The scheduler should not have to use a nanosecond of brain translation to determine that when you say “business party” you mean “shipper”, or “agent” or something else.  In this case, the real, correct term is “service requester.”

4 – Minimize the number of fields that have to be provided.

There are a handful of fields that are always required for a nomination transaction. There are a lot of fields that are selected by the pipeline as either business required or optional. The pipeline should look for every way possible to avoid using extra fields. Every variable that is added creates a possibility for failure of the transaction. Minimize the moving parts and you minimize the failed transactions.

5 – Provide default values in as many fields as possible.

If the scheduler knows that their service requester id is defaulted from their login, that their transaction type is always defaulted to current business and that their start date is always defaulted to the next available timely cycle, then those are three things the scheduler doesn’t have to juggle. This minimizes the keystrokes required and the possibility of transaction failure and makes both parties more successful.

6 – Provide ample warning when screens change or systems change.

There are certain times in the business cycle when a scheduler’s time is pure chaos. With a timeline well ahead of the implementation date, schedulers can test the changes, receive training, and ask questions without having to do those tasks during bid week.

7 – Have awesome help files.

If a new service comes online, it would be great for a scheduler to be able to click on help and see the nomination requirements for that new service. If a new system is launched, provide thorough help files as well as web based tutorials that the scheduler can watch on their own schedule. Some pipelines have done a great job with help files in very imaginative and creative ways.

What are other ways that pipelines, as service providers, can provide good service to schedulers? These are a few ideas to get you thinking. I’m sure you can come up with more that should be considered.  I’d love your input to develop a “best practices” list.

by sylviamunson

Choose to be Creative – 6 Ideas for Consolidating the Confirmations Process in Natural Gas

FERC Order 809 occupies a large share of the time I allot to “what’s next” thinking.  There are so many opportunities inside what the FERC has assigned the industry in Order 809.

Let’s put our thinking caps on and get creative!

Confirmations

In Order 809 the FERC asked us to “. . . explore the potential for faster, computerized scheduling when shippers and confirming parties all submit electronic nominations and confirmations, including a streamlined confirmation process if necessary.”  The discussion here is the reference to submittal of electronic confirmations.  There are some pipelines in the gas industry today that have made great progress in implementation of electronic confirmations through EDI. But there are others who have not done any electronic confirmations and, generally, electronic confirmations are executed between interstate pipelines.

So what can we do?

1 – Is there an opportunity for XML to become the standard for confirmations so that it is less expensive to implement and more web-enabled?

2 – Do we need confirmation-clearing companies such as those used in trading?

3 – Do these streamlined confirmations need to cover the entire natural gas supply chain or do they only need to apply to deliveries to electric generation and their suppliers? Do electric generation suppliers only need to confirm upstream to the nearest point of on-demand supply, such as storage, park-and-loan, etc.?

4 – Is there a new on-demand service offering that would provide a service to supplant streamlined confirmations?

5 – Are there new confirmation services that can be offered to expedite the process while still providing reliable delivery?

6 – Should electric generators be allowed to submit hourly nominations and, consequently, incur hourly imbalances to minimize the number of intraday confirmations?

On September 17th the FERC issued an Order on Rehearing (Docket No. RM14-2-001) where they stated “…the Commission requests that the natural gas and electric industries, through NAESB, begin considering the development of standards related to faster, computerized scheduling and file such standards or a report on the development of such standards with the Commission by October 17, 2016.” This gives us a deadline to work toward.  Deadlines are good.  It also give us a lot of time to get the job done.  So let’s start thinking about this assignment.

by sylviamunson

Where do you Network? Is your net working for you?

It is important to network in natural gas.  Is your net working?

Why is it important? Three reasons immediately come to mind.

1 – To learn more about the job that you do. If you are a scheduler, accountant, contract analyst – it doesn’t matter.  Other people in your same position in other companies have something you can learn from.  They are dealing with the same counterparties. They are dealing with the same challenges.  Share the knowledge, share the problems and come up with smarter solutions!

2 – To learn more about the business you’re in.  There is much more to the business than your job.  Your job is a vertical position in the company – a slice of the business process.  Networking gives you the opportunity to learn what other positions do and how the holistic business process operates.  The more you know about the entire business process, the more effective you can be in your job.

3 – To become a part of the solution.  Things are always changing in the energy industry because of technology, market shifts, government regulations and IT solutions.  If you network, you can see changes that are coming and prepare for them rather than react to them.  This is when you become a part of the solution.

In Natural Gas, the FERC has asked NAESB to look at the options for scheduling gas on a more continuous basis.  NAESB will pick up that subject in early 2016 to explore the solutions.  By networking, we can get ahead of the curve, find out what each other is thinking in regard to possibilities in the business process and possibilities with technology.  We can know what the possible solutions are before we enter into those negotiations and we can know what the pain points are that we need to avoid.

Where do you network?  This week, I’ve been at LDC Forums – MidContinent in Chicago with OpenLink.  OpenLink brought me to the Forums to promote my new book – Contents Under Pressure. These folks are great at networking!  They set aside time specifically for networking and create networking venues. They hold multiple LDC Forums throughout the year in different locations in North America.  Where are the places that you network?  Share them so that they can grow and become more effective.  I’d love to get your input.