Web Event

Equipping Your Workforce for Emergency Response: KloudGin's Executive Roundtable

With the recent severe weather events that have impacted communities across the country, it’s clear that these are no longer exceptional events. Hurricanes, wildfires, and natural disasters are becoming more common and more powerful, impacting the lives and safety of millions. With utilities and essential service providers standing at the front lines of disaster response and recovery, effective emergency response management is more critical than ever.

Watch KloudGin, Black & Veatch, Puget Sound Energy, Madison Gas & Electric and AWS for an important and timely discussion on how utilities and essential service organizations can improve their emergency response management by providing every member of emergency crews with the tools and support they need to help them quickly and safely restore essential services.

Emergency response: a top priority in a world of increasing crises

Critical infrastructure providers face immense pressure during emergencies. Downed power lines, damaged equipment, and service disruptions necessitate immediate action to safeguard essential services and public safety. This requires the rapid and flexible deployment of all personnel, efficient resource allocation, and decisive action to minimize disruption and ensure community well-being. However, swift service restoration is often hindered by challenges such as:

Resource mobilization

Deploying sufficient personnel, equipment, and supplies to impacted areas presents a significant logistical hurdle, potentially delaying service restoration.

Response coordination

Effective planning and dispatch is challenging due to the sheer volume and urgency of real-time communication and coordination between responders, coordinators, and customers

Unpredictable events

The dynamic nature of emergencies demands agility in assessing situations and adapting resource allocation to meet evolving needs.

Deliver safe, effective emergency response when there's no power, no network, and no time to waste

This executive roundtable will delve into the critical role of modern workforce solutions in enabling utilities and essential service providers to manage emergencies effectively. Industry experts will explore how these solutions empower organizations to:

Optimize emergency response

Discuss strategies for rapid onboarding and equipping of external responders, ensuring seamless integration and effective collaboration during critical events.

Enhance real-time coordination

Examine the power of mobile connectivity in facilitating real-time communication and dynamic resource allocation for efficient response to evolving emergency situations.

Minimize service disruptions

Analyze how real-time data and situational awareness enable swift mobilization of resources, minimizing service outages and ensuring customer safety.

Prioritize safety and communication

Explore best practices for protecting both customer and field crew safety, including real-time notifications, hazard mitigation, and efficient information dissemination.

This roundtable provides a valuable platform for industry leaders to share insights, discuss challenges, and explore innovative solutions that enhance emergency preparedness and response within the utilities sector.

Meet Our Speakers

Ted Wadzinski

Assistant Vice President – Gas Operations, Measurement and Operations Support, Madison Gas & Electric

Ted Wadzinski has over 35 years experience in the utility industry and oversees the engineering and operations of the gas business at MGE. In addition, he oversees the gas and electric metering areas, the generation and distribution operating centers, the asset management team, damage prevention, and other operations support functions.

Prior to MGE, Wadzinski spent 24 years at Alliant Energy in various engineering and operations support roles including twelve years leading business systems implementations including Work Management, GIS, SCADA, and Outage Management and DMS.

Wadzinski has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin - Platteville.

Dave Trimble

IT Manager, Puget Sound Energy

Dave Trimble is the IT Manager for the Operations Mobile Workforce team at Puget Sound Energy (PSE), overseeing work scheduling, field applications, and the Esri GIS system. With over 34 years of experience at PSE, Dave has contributed to nearly every system within the organization. For the past 15 years, he has specialized in field work management applications, including serving as the solution architect for PSE's Integrated Work Management (IWM) program. In this role, he helped implement and deploy different systems, including PragmaCAD, Click Scheduling and SAP Work Manager in 2018–2019. PSE is Washington State's largest electric and gas utility, serving 1.2 million electric and 900,000 gas customers across a 6,000-square-mile area. Dave's deep expertise and long-standing commitment have been instrumental in optimizing PSE’s field operations and ensuring reliable service to its customers.

Mark Wesolowski

System Supervisor, Electric System Operations, Puget Sound Energy

Mark is responsible for the operation of PSE’s electric distribution system, bringing 45 years of experience in the electric industry.

Over the course of his career he has held a variety of roles across customer field service, business operations, IT, emergency planning, and operations. In his current role as System Supervisor for Electric System Operations at PSE, he applies his extensive knowledge and experience to ensure the reliable operation of their electric distribution system.

Phillip Crossland

Director, Asset Management Distributed Infrastructure, Black & Veatch

Phil Crossland is a Director with Black & Veatch Management Consulting and focusses on Asset Management Solutions. He has provided on-site support to many of his clients’ business transformation programs throughout his career Recent experiences include leading a Construction Work Management program for an electric and gas utility, developing an Analytics PMO, the role of Client & Delivery Partner for a Pipeline Integrity Management program, the development of an IT PMO for a multinational Mining Corporation and the development of a transformation roadmap and program for a Canadian power generation company.

Phil has a background in Supply Chain and Operations with experience in business process improvement projects, conducting assessments, creating client roadmaps and managing large scale business transformation programs. Phil has worked in many industries including Utilities, Mining, Power Generation, Telecommunications and Manufacturing and has completed project work in the UK, USA, Canada, Mexico, Denmark and Germany.

Simon Boyer

Global Partner Segment Leader Power & Utilities, Amazon Web Services

Simon is the global partner lead for the power & utilities industry at Amazon Web Services (AWS) partner network. Simon is responsible for partner strategy and works closely with AWS industry partners to build and grow on AWS by providing innovative technology that helps customers solve business challenges and accelerate the energy transition. He has over 30 years of business leadership experience, developing and delivering digital solutions to help utilities optimize operations and adapt to changes in the market. He is based in Houston.

Vikram Takru

Co-Founder and CEO, KloudGin

Vikram co-founded KloudGin with the vision of creating transformative field service and asset management technology that eliminates silos, connects people, process, and technology, and creates access to information where and when it is needed. He is committed to delivering solutions that work for field crews in the toughest conditions. His vision has served as the inspiration for KloudGin to become the only, combined, one-cloud Field and Asset management solution that transforms processes, customer experience and worker productivity.