"Internal PPE": Hydration, Fatigue, Recovery

Why hasn’t the science of mainstream sports nutrition been applied to the specific needs of the outdoor/industrial worker/athlete? Mark Paulsen, of Working Athlete, will be presenting on the Internal PPE for the employee, including:

  • What are the effects of dehydration on the job site?

  • How is mental and physical fatigue being addressed?

  • What latent issues are we missing when we look at Recovery, Fatigue, Dehydration, and baseline health?

  • What systems are in place to ensure employee physical health and safety?

Changing Operations in COVID-19

As the world is changing in response to changing COVID-19 numbers, we'd like to have an opportunity to talk through how the changes are affecting us. We're excited to have a panel to talk through some of these changes:

  • David Bowman, KnowledgeVine

  • LaRhonda Julien, Georgia Transmission Corporation

  • Sam Reno, MidAmerican Energy

  • Krystall Valencia, WAPA

  • And feedback/discussion from Community of Practice members

The Evolving Strategies and Outlooks of Human and Organizational Performance

Riz Shah, of the Department of Energy, present this afternoon: The Evolving Strategies and Outlooks of Human and Organizational Performance.

Human and Organizational Performance methodology builds a learning organization. Challenging assumptions in the regulatory landscape takes vigor and gumption. Compliance alone is not conducive to continuous improvement. Approaching outcomes with a performance and reliability lens builds a culture where organizational excellence, optimized performance, and reliable operations are encouraged, supported, and implemented by every individual at every level.

Clean Language: A New Approach to Increasing Clarity and Understanding

We tend to think about other people's influence on us. How their behaviors, actions, words affect our lives. In doing this we often fail to pay attention to the level of influence we have on others.

There are many ways influence happens. It can be as complex as the interplay of cultural and social norms or as simple as changing one or two words.

Recently there has been a lot of attention on ’nudging’. Nudging is a nice way of saying to coax or gently encourage (someone) to do, think, say, or agree to something.

As a Human Performance professional, the information received from personnel is important. There is a need to protect the authentic expression of the speaker in support of quality corrective or legal action.

Join Sharon in learning four ways we inadvertently ’nudge’ or lead our conversations and how the addition of a few simple questions can help you reduce inadvertent influence, increase rapport, and gain higher quality responses to your questions.

Critical Steps: Managing What Must Go Right in High-Risk Operations

Tony Muschara, Ron Farris and Jim Marinus will be talking about their book "Critical Steps: Managing What Must Go Right in High-Risk Operations" We're honored Tony spoke to the community several months ago to give us a preview of the book, and this presentation will continue diving into this work. 

  • If you haven't had the chance to see Tony's original presentation, please check it out here!

  • The book is here.

Human Performance in Electric Power Conference #4

NERC and The Electric Reliability Organization Enterprise, the Human Performance Community of Practice (KnowledgeVine and ResilientGrid) and our mutual partners (WECC, TexasRE, SERC, MRO, NPCC, Inc., ReliabilityFirst) are exploring the vital importance that human and organizational performance play in the reliability and security of the North American power grid. We have an exciting afternoon planned to get us started on our journey of continuous improvement together. Our speakers will touch upon a variety of topics to reduce error and risk through human performance application.

Part 1 - Human Performance’s Importance to the Organization

Speakers:

Mike Knott, Asplundh

Jay Johll, Utility Lines Construction Services

Jason Briggs, American Electrical Testing Co., LLC.

Bryan Beadle, Utilicon

Part 2 - Year In Review – A Psychological Perspective of Human Performance Topics in 2021

Speakers:

Dr. Mike Legatt, ResilientGrid

Dr. James Merlo, KnowledgeVine

Part 3 - Ordinary Heroes: A Memoir of 9/11

Speaker:

Joe Pfeifer, Retired FDNY Chief and Author

This presentation was not recorded. If you would like to purchase Joe’s excellent book, to hear his incredible story, please do so here on Amazon.

Part 4 - Human and AI Interaction

Speaker:

Dr. Katya LeBlanc, Idaho National Labs

Building impactful experiences, working with Colin Powell

Sheryl Tullis is known for challenging boundaries and scaling teams. From West Point’s first decade of women graduates to tech marketing leader, her career spans Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, and mobile experience agencies. She currently is a Partner and VP of Marketing for TA Group, a veteran-owned private equity firm and portfolio of brands.

Sheryl is a strong proponent of military veteran hiring and helped pioneer the first tech transition program for transitioning service members. The Global President Emeritus for mBolden, now She Runs It, Sheryl is a life-long champion for women leaders in STEAM. She also co-founded the mobile tech group Seattle Mobile Mixers, is a Board Member for Tilson Technology Management, and Advisor to Combat Flip Flops.

She sharpens her saw by coaxing friends & family to try a variety of adventures and enjoys hiking, biking, geocaching, and epic overland trips with her husband of 31 years, Steve. Ask her about her #50Firsts!

Human Performance in Electric Power Conference #3

NERC and The Electric Reliability Organization Enterprise, the Human Performance Community of Practice (KnowledgeVine and ResilientGrid) and our mutual partners (WECC, TexasRE, SERC, MRO, NPCC, Inc., ReliabilityFirst) are exploring the vital importance that human and organizational performance play in the reliability and security of the North American power grid. We have an exciting afternoon planned to get us started on our journey of continuous improvement together. Our speakers will touch upon a variety of topics to reduce error and risk through human performance application.

Part 1 - Applying EEI’s Serious Injuries and Fatalities (SIF) Precursors to Change Risky Behavior in the Field

Speakers:

David Bowman, KnowledgeVine

Todd Brumfield, KnowledgeVine

Part 2 - Human Performance in Cybersecurity: CyOTE™

Speaker: Sam Chanoski, Idaho National Laboratory

Part 3 - The Importance of Women Role Models and Mentors in Building Diversity in the Electric Industry

Speakers:

Jackie Peer, OMICRON

Pooja Shah, Southern Company

LaRhonda Julien, Georgia Transmission Corporation

Part 4 - Human Performance Maturity Model

Speaker: Dr. Pamela Ey, Queens University of Charlotte

Part 5 - High-Stress Communication

Speakers:

Dr. Mike Legatt, ResilientGrid

Dr. James Merlo, KnowledgeVine

Uncovering the Challenges to Safe and Resilient Operations through Data-Driven Human Performance Analysis

Dr. Jason Kring will be talking about Uncovering the Challenges to Safe and Resilient Operations through Data-Driven Human Performance Analysis. The presentation will open with a high-level introduction to Fort Hill Group’s approach to analyzing safety events, which identifies positive and negative human performance contributions, and examples of our data visualizations. Next, based on prior analyses in the aviation domain, Dr. Kring will provide concrete examples and lessons learned for two prominent human performance challenges.

First, practical drift, or gradual deviations from standard operating procedures, is a factor in numerous accidents in aviation and other high-stress industries. The presentation will illustrate how specific trends in safety data can illuminate potential precursors to practical draft and highlight areas for targeted improvement. Second, the presentation will conclude with key recommendations for improving training effectiveness in high-risk and complex domains, particularly focused on selecting and better preparing instructors on how to train.

Seven Steps to Build Human Reliability in Technical Teams

Where do we start? What do we do next? How do we know when we’re done? Every team’s answers are unique… to a point. But the overall pattern is becoming clearer and clearer.

  1. Take a Learning-Based approach

  2. Build Psychological Safety.

  3. Lead After Action Reviews.

  4. Apply classic defenses.

  5. Improve processes & systems.

  6. Build Resilience.

  7. Tell stories that change minds.

Join us in this fast-paced overview to learn more about how you can use each of these seven steps to improve human reliability, safety, and engagement in your team.

Cybersecurity for Operational Technology Environments (CyOTE™)

CyOTE provides a methodology for energy sector asset owner-operators to combine network-based sensor data with local context to recognize faint signals of malicious cyber activity before an adversary can cause higher-impact effects. This session covers the history of CyOTE to explain how the key insights came about, and then walks through the methodology as a way to put those insights into practice, showing how it complements other high-priority investments and activities in energy sector OT cybersecurity.

We’ll dive a bit more deeply into the science of human performance underlying this as opposed to the threat and cybersecurity details, noting that this work is focused more at the organizational level than the individual, with the goal of helping us all understand how we may be able to replicate the benefits of human performance that the real-time system operator community has embraced, that the protection and controls community has embraced, and get that goodness into the operational technology cybersecurity community!

Human Performance and COVID-19: Where human performance, safety, compliance, and OSHA meet

An electric utility's management of the COVID-19 pandemic requires looking at the situation from many angles. Certainly, ensuring the safety of the workers and the workplace is a major concern, but so are several other factors. Given the strong opinions are about the pandemic, those influences can create a lack of collaboration, and make finding paths forward more difficult. Incorporating Human Performance concerns (for example, recognizing that compliance-based "punishments" are non-sustainable, where positively reinforcing approaches are), it creates a pressure for leadership to handle the situation carefully, balancing a variety of concerns, from worker safety, autonomy, OSHA reportable events, compliance concerns, financial concerns, and many more. As a Human Performance practitioner, Shari has been walking this tightrope and will share her approach and story about how BEC has achieved significant strides towards those balances.

Situational Awareness: What is is, what it isn't

While the loss of situational awareness (SA) is often cited as the reason for an event, we sometimes are left without the understanding of the real reasons why it was lost. The science and application of SA have been in the literature for some time and with the advances in display technology and data analysis we now have real tools to improve and enhance SA.

Mike and James will lead a discussion on the evolution and continuous improvement of the ability to provide better individual and group SA and the role that improvement plays in eliminating human error in the workplace.

Human Performance in Electric Power Conference

NERC and The Electric Reliability Organization Enterprise, the Human Performance Community of Practice (KnowledgeVine and ResilientGrid) and our mutual partners (WECC, TexasRE, SERC, MRO, NPCC, Inc., ReliabilityFirst) are exploring the vital importance that human and organizational performance play in the reliability and security of the North American power grid. We have an exciting afternoon planned to get us started on our journey of continuous improvement together. Our speakers will touch upon a variety of topics to reduce error and risk through human performance application.

Part 1 - Comparing Company Characteristics and Injury Rates

Speakers:

Eric Bauman, EPRI

Dr. Matthew Hallowell, Safety Function, LLC, and University of Colorado-Boulder

Part 2 - Leaders Need Tools Too!

Speaker: Rob Fisher, Fisher IT

Part 3 - Control Rooms During Crisis

Speakers: Ken Dorantes, ISO-NE

Hector Nunez, ISO-NE

Andrey Oks, NPCC

Moderator: Mike Legatt

Part 4 - Making Safe Decisions

Speaker: Katie Smith, Oncor Electric Delivery

Human Performance Error Prevention Toolkits

When engaging in tasks to perform maintenance and construction on substation apparatus, including protection and control systems, a Job Briefing conducted before work begins sets the day off on the right foot! The Job Briefing will include a review and walk-through of Human Performance Tools and Event Free Work Zone Kit to be utilized to avoid an inadvertent operation.

Kevin Harris will lead a discussion on the evolution and continuous improvement of the active defense mechanisms that a Human Performance error prevention toolkit can provide for eliminating human error in the workplace.