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The engineering webinar series is comprised of 12 webinars from January through December 2023. Descriptions for each webinar can be found below. Webinars can be taken individually or as an entire series; by registering for the full series, you will receive all 12 webinars at a discounted price. Group pricing is also available.

The CFO & Senior Accountant Webinar Series is comprised of 11 webinars from February through December 2023. Webinars can be taken individually or as an entire series; by registering for the full series, you will receive all 11 webinars at a discounted price. Descriptions for each webinar are listed below.

Want to understand the work order process (one that runs smoothly!) and the components within the process? Then this is the webinar series for you! Gain the knowledge and confidence to execute your day-to-day work more efficiently and effectively. Come learn more about the largest investment your utility makes and how your process (and maybe even relationships with co-workers) can be at their best

Leadership happens in the context of relationships. This course will help you identify and proactively manage the relationships that matter most to you in your role as a leader. Building relationships of trust and respect is central to your success as a leader. Know your key relationships and care for those key relationships on an ongoing basis.

Discussion and decision-making are the heart of the board’s work, yet often they are challenging. Robert’s Rules of Order has surprising answers on these topics. This workshop provides the tools, tips and guidelines to ensure effective discussion and better decisions. Essential information for chairs and board members.

We will review the requirements of the NESC as it relates to pole inspections, and address inspection cycles and methods. Estimating reduced strength of wood poles will also be covered.

Coaching is the craft of today’s workplace leader. Your role as a leader is to help others succeed in their role. This is done by continually building your team’s capacity (commitment and competence) to succeed. This course will provide a proven roadmap and set of tools to effectively coach others to higher levels of commitment and competence.

During this session, you will consider high-level and detailed metrics to evaluate and report evidence of capital investment spending; evaluate the impact of labor in planning and executing capital projects; identify areas where an evaluation of project costs would benefit the utility and establish buy in from others regarding the importance.

Combining assemblies together is what builds a distribution to specification and this course will explain why that is important. Assemblies need to be reviewed and updated, and standards need to be established at your utility. Instructor Teri Wallis will provide ways to manage these important tasks. In addition, you will differentiate what is an expense and what should be capitalized. Knowing how

Elected chairs sometimes assume that they are the decider and can direct the course of board meetings as they choose. What can directors do when a chair has this misunderstanding? What if it’s a board member who lacks the spirit of cooperation and compromise? Robert’s Rules has answers for you!

This is a three-part series of classes which provides utility-specific information directed toward administrative assistants and executive secretaries who want to become more effective in managing their tasks and in communicating with others. By registering for the series, you will receive a discount off the total registration fee.

Administrative professionals are in a position to communicate on behalf of their bosses and to communicate information to their bosses that is necessary for good decision making. This course will reiterate that there is a right and a wrong way for you to state your case. The right way is in a forthright, positively assertive manner.

This two-part course will focus on the important personal skills of flexibility, self-control, self-determination, and stress mitigation. Specific subjects covered will include analyzing how time is spent, controlling time-wasters (such as interruptions and procrastination), and identifying major changes and their response in the past and going forward.

Change requires leadership. Leadership requires change. Workplace leaders are the tread on the tire when it comes to change. This workshop will provide the roadmap and set of tools to lead your team through challenging change.

Collaboration among coworkers to meet the organization’s goals has never been more important. Organizations are expecting employees at all levels to work together--often across functions--to solve problems and make decisions that were once the exclusive responsibility of management. This new way of working also creates new opportunities for conflict making. Resolving conflict is a necessary skill

During this session, you will establish standard operating procedures to manage O&M expenses of the utility; analyze the impact of payroll charges in O&M expenses; evaluate actual outcomes compared to budget and forecast over time to right-size the expenditures for your utility.

This two-hour webinar will give you confidence in taking minutes and serving your board when parliamentary issues arise. You will learn the key guidelines from Robert's Rules of Order for processing meeting minutes, but we will not discuss the actual act of listening and recording what is said. This course includes 20 key points staff should know and Guidelines for Meeting Minutes in Local Governm

While many of the techniques used for single circuits can be applied to double circuits, this session will review unique issues and design considerations applicable to double circuit design, including spacing between crossarms, guying challenges, and framing options.

This webinar will focus on making the work order process work better at your utility. While we won’t be able to actually solve every problem in 90 minutes, we will solve a few challenges. More importantly, you will gain the knowledge and tools needed to approach areas of your utility’s process that need a tune up. It’s possible this webinar could help improve working relationships between individu

Avian protection is a key component to many aspects of operating a utility. From wildfire mitigation to regulatory compliance, understanding avian protection is critical. This four-part webinar will use case studies coupled with the instructor’s years of experience to help you support your utility's long- and short-term avian-related projects and planning. The sessions will focus on accepted metho

This session will open with current workforce trends and explain why talent management is among the top concern of management and boards. We will review how utilities must align a workforce plan with the strategic plan, while identifying the greatest needs and gaps. Talent management is every manager’s responsibility, so the class will focus on how managers can prioritize needs and develop an...

During this session, you will correlate historical financial results to the current rate structure; plan for future needs of the utility and understand the impact to rates; establish a plan and reporting mechanism to align stakeholders with a plan and needs assessment to the appropriate rate support needed.

Reliability is becoming more important in today’s electronic dependent environment, and animal-caused outages is one area where the utility can improve distribution reliability. We will discuss mitigation for outages caused by animals, such as squirrels and birds, and also talk about substation protection.

Companies need to understand why employees stay and why they leave, especially in a tight labor market. In this course, employee engagement—what it means and why it matters—will be at the heart of the discussion. We will assess this as the primary motivator for employees, and cover what has changed in recent years, including increased attrition and quiet quitting. We will also link leadership styl

Materials are a required component to the building of assemblies and maintenance of the distribution system. They flow from the warehouse to the field and become assets/continuing property records of the utility. Having a solid system to track materials is critical for every utility. From ordering, warehousing, using items on the system, to challenges with salvaging materials, come learn the many

During this course, we will discuss how recruiting is everyone’s role. Discussion will center on how you can describe your organization as a great place to work and what you can do to increase recruiting success. Topics will include recruiting strategies, hiring more effectively in a tight labor market, and promoting your organization so it stands out among other employers. This course will provid

To mitigate the risks of wildfires caused by the electric distribution system, many utilities are fire hardening their systems. We will discuss the electric distribution system components and line equipment and their potential risk for wildfires. We will also review changes in standards for the construction and maintenance of the distribution grid to reduce the risks of wildfires.

This course will focus on well-designed training and development that gives employees tools they need to be successful. This in turn increases employee engagement, and ultimately, employee retention. We will explore ways managers can support and reinforce training and discuss how managers can help employees create a career plan to support employee growth and fulfillment. Finally, we will cover...

During this session, you will understand variable expenses and their trends; correlate performance measures to financial outcomes; scale the budget to support strategic and financial goals of the utility; analyze past performance; plan and adjust for future performance.

Materials are a required component of building assemblies and maintaining the distribution system. They flow from the warehouse to the field and become assets/continuing property records of the utility. Having a solid system to track materials is critical for every utility. From ordering, warehousing, using items on the system, to challenges with salvaging materials, come learn the many details ab

Three-phase, pad-mounted transformers can be expensive items for an electric utility so it is important to understand the industry standards that apply to them, as well as many of the different options available in the marketplace. We will also review the specification and application of these units.

Even when a utility has a high retention rate, there will always be some staff turnover. During this course, you will work on ways an organization can improve knowledge retention. You will also assess knowledge retention vulnerabilities and brainstorm knowledge retention strategies. With respect to knowledge transfer, the instructor will help all participants differentiate between knowledge transf

Learn how to be financially prepared for a FEMA event from big-picture considerations to specific details. During this session, you will learn how to be financially prepared for a FEMA event from big-picture considerations to specific details; discuss key financial considerations in the navigation of a FEMA event; establish best practices to support emergency operations plans from a financial pers

Whether your utility uses a traditional special equipment system, has inventoried special equipment, or has a combination thereof, this session will provide a clear explanation of the installation and maintenance of these items on the distribution system. You will learn what special equipment information needs to be tracked, how it is used in the billing system, and why there may be questions aske

Many power quality issues stem from harmonics often introduced on the power system from inverters, VFD, and other devices. Attend this session to learn about harmonics, IEEE 519, and how to use a k factor in specifying transformers subject to high harmonic connections.

During this session, you will learn about and consider the volume and importance of the various components of financial information at the utility; build credibility through organizing, validating, navigating, and reconciling data; and learn what to report to whom and when; gain perspective about interactive reporting

In this course, you will learn about the interaction of assemblies using materials from the warehouse through unitizing them to assets/continuing property records. Utilizing baseline assembly concepts, you will discuss standard costs, updating assemblies/specifications, and ultimately having a system where the materials desired and needed for a job get to the jobsite and are used.

The purpose of distribution lines is to move energy from one place to another through conductors; the key to reliable, safe, and efficient design is having a good working knowledge of overhead conductors. Therefore, we will address electrical and mechanical properties of primary overhead conductors.

During this session, you will: understand the impact of seasonality, the weather, the economy, energy efficiency, and other influences on your utility’s sales patterns; learn ways to adjust to a changing industry environment; respond to future planning through an interactive perspective of the changing industry environment.

For your ratepayers/consumers/members, price/cost and reliability are most important. Therefore, keeping rates as low as possible is the desired outcome of attending this final session of the Understanding the Work Order System Series. You will look at how much it costs to provide reliable power, and discuss the impact of decisions, such as completing a timesheet and using materials, on the overal

During this session, you will learn about basic tools of the budgeting process and steps to manage the process; discuss best practices in electric utility budgeting; discover lessons learned from past budgets and the best ways to prepare for future planning needs.

Designing underground distribution differs from designing overhead distribution in terms of resiliency of the system. We will review common underground design criteria such as methods for design in underground subdivisions and commercial developments; routing of cable systems; and use of conduit, burial depth, and common errors in design. We will also address single contingency outage and overcurr

As distributed generation becomes ubiquitous, electric utilities must become more adept at interconnecting these sources to the distribution system. In this session, we will focus on the screening methods for smaller DG units, the impact of smart inverters, and detailed system impact studies if screening fails.

During this session, you will: learn about basic tools of the budgeting process and steps to manage the process; discuss best practices in electric utility budgeting; discover lessons learned from past budgets and how to best ways to prepare for future planning needs.