Bonneville Power Administration

04/01/2021 | News release | Distributed by Public on 04/01/2021 14:03

Meet Tracey Stancliff, grid modernization portfolio manager and 2021 AEA winner

​

Meet Tracey Stancliff, grid modernization portfolio manager and 2021 AEA winner for Workplace or Technology Innovation for developing the Grid Modernization Dashboard.

Name: Tracey Stancliff

Title/Occupation/Work Location: Grid Modernization Portfolio Management, Business Transformation Office, Portland, Oregon

Hometown: Bowie, Maryland

Family: Husband, Michael; and son, Nicholas

When people ask me what I do for work I tell them:

I am the portfolio manager for BPA's Grid Modernization Key Strategic Initiative, a six-year effort that's all about advancing the region's transmission and power systems. In short, I facilitate the successful completion of 35 grid modernization projects by monitoring project progress, coordinating decisions and discussions for our executive oversight board and developing new tools to manage the portfolio.

How do you manage the massive portfolio of grid modernization projects?

There are four major areas that have made our portfolio management successful: governance, performance tracking, change management and a solid project management framework.

We have strong governance and executive support to make decisions on project scopes, schedules and budgets. We track each project with a Grid Modernization Dashboard. We use the dashboard to report on our performance measures and overall health of grid mod to the BPA administrator and other executives, and project leaders use it to report progress to their teams.

Our change managers make sure teams can successfully implement the new processes and procedures that come with modernization efforts. And we use a framework called IDID (Identify, Define, Integrate and Deliver) to manage the projects through each stage. It's the system of tracking project statuses that you see when you look at the Grid Modernization Roadmap.

What is IDID?
This tool keeps all 35 grid modernization projects moving forward by using different stages:

  • Identify the problem to be solved.
  • Define the business value and solution to the problem.
  • Integrate the new capability into systems and teams.
  • Deliver the solution by executing the project.

'We have teams within the Business Transformation Office to manage the portfolio framework and move grid modernization projects through each phase.'

Tracey Stancliff

Who all is involved in this effort?

Allie Mace​
is the director of grid modernization who oversees all grid modernization activities. Each project has a program or project manager responsible for guiding projects through the IDID process and coordinating BTO support or resources. We also have a Portfolio Delivery Team, led by Carrie Cobb, that manages, plans and provides resources, including contracting for specific skillsets. I work closely with all of the BTO teams to track, report and support each project's efforts through new tools and processes we've developed. Importantly, the grid modernization project teams execute the work.

Where do BPA's Information Technology, Transmission Technology and Supply Chain groups fit in?

Our internal partners are pretty amazing and worked hard with us to align our processes. Our current IDID framework now builds in time early in the Identify and Define stages for these groups to begin working with the projects to identify technology solutions and acquisition needs. This ensures we are all moving together as we execute the projects. It has helped us be much more efficient and has opened up the lines of communication between the BTO, the project teams and our IT, TT, and Supply Chain partners.

I like working at BPA because:

BPA has been supportive of innovative ideas. From working in our strategy group, to being the Enterprise Program Management Officer in the C-suite, to my current work in the BTO, I've had many chances to offer up ideas to perform work more efficiently, establish clear decision making processes and turn data into knowledge. Even better, I get to see them through to implementation like the work I did on the Grid Modernization Dashboard.

How does your work group or office support BPA's mission and strategy?

I'm proud to say that my work is directly tied to BPA's sole key strategic initiative to update robust systems and protocols for managing the power system, transmission grid and other BPA assets. Grid modernization is also crucial for fulfilling the agency's strategic goals to modernize federal power and transmission system operations and supporting technology, provide competitive power and transmission products and services, and meet transmission customer needs efficiently and responsively.

A new or technical aspect of my job that I enjoy is:

Developing our Grid Modernization Dashboard. With over 30 active projects, we realized early on we needed a way to keep track of project activity and to quickly recognize projects that may need attention. We built a dashboard that provides an at-a-glance snapshot of each project's status. It has grown over time to include performance indicators based on scope, schedule and budget as well as risks and issues. The dashboard is a single source of truth for grid modernization status. Developing this tool allowed us to be really creative, think about how to share the most important information and tailor it to different audiences.

The coolest or most surprising thing about my job is:

How open people are to talking about their work and how they would like to improve it. I love being in a position to make a process or issue easier for someone.

Notable past jobs/previous careers, awards, published work/technical papers, etc.:
I am a BPA 2021 Administrator's Excellence Award recipient for Workplace or Technology Innovation for developing the Grid Modernization Dashboard. Of course, all of this work was done with our team, including our dashboard consultants that built it, our internal BTO team, and our IT and Transmission Operations teams that helped build our database and integrate the data.

My favorite thing about working and living in the Northwest is:
To me, Portland is a case of wanderlust that paid off. I moved here virtually sight unseen 12 years ago, and my husband is the first person I met in Portland. It is a place where a lot of my hopes for my personal and work life became real.

When I'm not working or sleeping, I like to:
I've recently started to explore gardening and am looking forward to creating a pollinator garden this year. We have a lot of hummingbirds in our neighborhood, so I'm excited to have plants that will attract them to our little garden. We are also big Timbers fans, so I'm eager to rejoin the Timbers Army when it is safe to be together again.

Two things I can't live without are:
The short answer is naps and giggles. I think you can do anything if you are well rested and ready to share a good laugh.

Did you serve in the U.S Armed Forces? If so, what branch and what did you do?

I've never served in the U.S. Armed Forces but I spent the first part of my career working for the Department of the Navy. I had the privilege of getting underway on a few ships for support and training exercises and learned quickly that ship life is both fascinating and hard. I gained an appreciation for the sacrifices, professionalism and hard work of our military personnel. Also, I'm married to an Army veteran, so there is a fun rivalry there (Go Navy!).