In his first seventeen years at the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA, Portland, OR), Brian Furumasu learned its engineering from start to finish. On that base he built the management career that led him to CIO.
Furumasu officially took over the CIO reins in May 2003. He had paired up with the CTO to form a transition team in November 2002, when the incumbent CIO announced his retirement.
BPA is a self-supporting federal agency that markets and transmits wholesale electricity to and from the Pacific Northwest's public and private utilities, and sells to some large industries as well. It brokers about half the electricity used in the Northwest and operates more than three-quarters of the region's high-voltage transmission, including 15,000 miles of line and 300 substations.
Overseeing IT
As CIO, Furumasu oversees all IT within the agency, including systems for the power and transmission businesses. "You have a lot of operational systems in those business lines," he says. IT systems are used by the dispatchers to operate their transmission grid. The business areas for power and transmission services use IT systems for marketing.
The CIO's role is in areas like policy, software selection and operating practices. Actual day-to-day IT management is more or less decentralized to the business groups, and cross-agency teams communicate to formulate strategy and coordinate efforts. "We work closely together," Furumasu says.
He has a staff of fifteen, in an organization that numbers about 450 employees plus additional contractors to handle peak workloads in IT.
The CTO recently moved to a different role within BPA, and many responsibilities that formerly were the CTO's have been assumed by members of Furumasu's staff. "It's very much an organization in flux," he says.
In 2002 many BPA IT processes were re-engineered, with Furumasu taking leadership roles in the work. For example, the IT investment process is now more centralized, and a cross-agency project management organization is in the works for containing costs and keeping projects on schedule.
"These changes will help us be more efficient and save money," Furumasu says. "It will help us in the future to look at projects agency-wide, and plan and connect them to IT strategy."
American with Asian heritage
Furumasu grew up in Spokane, WA, part of the city's small Japanese American community. He views himself as an American with Asian heritage, since his family is so well assimilated. "I don't even speak Japanese," he confides.
His grandparents had come to the U.S. before World War II. His mother's parents were interned during the war, but his father's were given the opportunity to move inland instead. "They had the choice, but they only had about forty-eight hours to make the decision," he's been told.
Furumasu's father, a barber, is still cutting hair for favored clients at the age of eighty-plus. His mother worked for the school district. All four of the children graduated from college.
Furumasu attended Washington State University in nearby Pullman, WA, where he received his BSEE in 1975 and his MSEE in 1977. "I wasn't thinking of anything but engineering," he says. "I blossomed in college." His younger brother also became an engineer at BPA.
Career planning
Furumasu got his first job with the BPA in 1976, as a system planning and high-voltage equipment engineer. He enjoyed working with the infrastructure of the transmission grid, and learned the needs for quality and reliability of BPA's customer utilities.
"Understanding what the business lines need has been a big help in my present job," he says.
Later on, the engineering group sponsored Furumasu for the University of Oregon's executive MBA program. When he completed it in 1993, he was ready to make a move.
After seventeen years in engineering, he applied for a position in quality assurance for procurement. "I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew that I wanted to broaden my narrow experience," he says.
BPA was willing to help then, and today it supports career planning even more actively. "It's common to have two, three or even four separate careers here," Furumasu says.
He found himself outside his comfort zone in the new job, even though he was purchasing the high-voltage equipment he knew well. "You just have to build up confidence that you can do something else," he says.
Market research
He was soon asked to manage a new market research group. He helped the group establish a customer-first policy and redefine technical positions for the newly competitive utility environment.
The 55-member group provided market information to segment managers, account execs and internal BPA clients, and helped utility customers make decisions on wholesale power. The group researched products, and services and policy issues.
During Furumasu's three years there, he served as liaison to the transmission business line, drawing on his years with that group. And he gained a better understanding of strategic plans and financial issues company-wide.
Deregulation was beginning in 1995, influencing business and management changes. "We think, 'When is the merry-go-round going to stop?'" he says. "But really, we're pretty sure it's not going to."
Security and more
In 1997 Furumasu was asked to set up a new security coordination office, with BPA as host to the fourteen utilities in the Northwest Power Pool. The office was responsible for planning reliable communications with three other newly formed security centers in the northwest region, and Furumasu's team met the tight schedule and budget goals required.
The next year he was drafted to lead BPA's transmission business line Y2K project. This, he says, gave him an excellent vantage point from which to observe IT systems over the entire agency.
He also shared Y2K knowledge with Russia and countries with Soviet-designed nuclear reactors under a Northwest National Laboratories contract. And under a State Department contract, he evaluated Y2K power system risks in the former USSR states of Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia.
Systems and personnel
With Y2K behind him, he became IT manager for control systems software. He was overseeing the supervisory control and data acquisition systems used by dispatchers, the marketing systems and the scheduling systems.
New systems were being added. "It was a great place to see those computer systems in more detail," he says.
As the organization committed to upgrading systems, it was his aim to retain key employees and build the depth of expertise on the systems. "The goal is for all employees to find a rewarding and challenging environment for their careers," he says.
Furumasu values his mentor relationship with a woman exec at BPA. "She's a great leader," he asserts. "The opportunity to work with her taught me a lot about forming a strong management team."
He's never felt any limits because of his ethnic background. "It seems like the door has always been open," he says.
At home, Furumasu is active in his Methodist church, which carries on local Japanese traditions. "Usually it involves a lot of food," he says with a smile.
A well-rounded career
"By expanding experience you improve your luck, but luck is what you make of it," Furumasu says. "The broader your experience, the more valuable it is to you."
In twenty-seven years he has added management experience to technical knowhow. He's had a well-rounded career, or maybe several careers put together. And, "I've done it all here at BPA," he says proudly.
D/C
|
