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Her background in civil engineering was the important first step in preparing Robin Furrer for a career as an exec at a power transmission company. "If you don't understand how the transmission system operates on the ground, how can you possibly make decisions as an executive?" she asks.
Furrer is currently the internal operations manager for transmission field services at Bonneville Power Administration (BPA, Portland, OR). Her responsibilities include budgets, policy, workload and resource planning, operations, maintenance and construction (OM&C) programs and metrics, conduct and grievances. She reports to the VP for transmission field services.
The Bonneville grid
Bonneville Power operates a transmission grid, and markets electricity at cost from thirty-one federally owned dams, one private nuclear plant and several private hydroelectric projects and wind energy generation facilities. The power goes to Northwest utilities.
The Bonneville transmission business line operates and owns one of the nation's largest high-voltage transmission systems. The system connects the Northwest to Canada, California and the inland Southwest.
From shining sea to high desert
BPA covers geographic regions from the Pacific Coast to high desert, and from metropolitan areas to wide unpopulated expanses. "Equipment erodes and degrades in different ways in different areas," Furrer says. "Crews even behave and respond differently."
Her field services unit oversees all physical structures, from lines and substations to control houses. "We are responsible for all the equipment that's out there where the rubber meets the road," she says.
Furrer works with the company's three bargaining units, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Professional Division of Laborers and the Associated Federal Government Employees. All employees except supervisors and managers are represented by one of the three units. The buck stops at Furrer's desk for decisions on discipline, overtime, awards, travel and training.
Data provides direction
Eighteen staff members report directly to Furrer on issues of construction and maintenance. A new enterprise system with work and financial modules aims to help planning and scheduling. It relies on handheld electronic devices for data entry by line crews, and direct entry of important facts by those who know the equipment best.
"Analyzing data provides direction on where we go for the future," she says. "The challenge in this office is how to provide policy and guidance so that we meet Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) regulations and the expectations of the region without making work complicated and cumbersome for the crews."
Starting out
Furrer grew up in Hermiston, OR, where most of her relatives were farmers. Her father worked as a lineman for an electrical co-op, where he's now an operations and maintenance manager.
She intended to become a veterinarian after doing her undergrad work at Portland State University (Portland, OR), but eventually settled on civil engineering. "I'd always loved digging in the dirt and building things, so CE was a nice fit," she says. "The joke around here is that I specialize in dirt."
Learning about BPA
After receiving her BSCE in 1989, she took a job as a road engineer with the U.S. Forest Service, planning and building new roads. She found herself working with BPA because of its transmission lines through her area.
"Over the course of the summer I became real interested in how the transmission system worked and the different opportunities at Bonneville Power," she says.
Her supervisor encouraged her to learn more, to give the Forest Service more expertise in understanding the utilities that crisscross forest land. He helped her apply for a year-long interagency detail. But by the time the paperwork was complete in 1991, a BPA hiring freeze had been lifted and she accepted a job directly with the agency as a design engineer/project manager.
Transmission lines
Furrer spent the next five years designing, locating, reconfiguring and rebuilding transmission lines. Her responsibilities included coordinating with the linemen to determine the system's condition, locating the structures that needed attention, interfacing with customers who wanted to interconnect with the system and making it physically possible.
A mentor helped her identify areas she needed to develop to move ahead. One was financial. "He advised me that I didn't always need to go for a promotion," she says. "Just a simple job change may plug a hole in your resume."
Program coordination
When BPA reorganized in 1996 in response to deregulation, a new job in program coordination was created. It involved budget responsibilities for new construction, replacements and fish and wildlife projects. Furrer went for it.
BPA's power comes from Pacific Northwest dams, involving the admin with the Federal Columbia River Power System, the Army Corps of Engineers and the agencies that operate the dams. It also has commitments to Native American tribal communities and environmental entities.
Furrer's new job was to prioritize requests for money. She had to rank them according to organizational criteria to meet business objectives, and present them to the cross-organizational team that made the final decisions.
Moving up
In 1999 she became maintenance coordinator, valuable experience in transmission field services as another step toward an executive role.
On that job she met Dean Landers, then manager for internal ops, who became another mentor. When he retired two years later, she applied for his job and got it.
Most positions at Bonneville Power do not require a Professional Engineer certification. Furrer got as far as taking the Engineer in Training exam. "Then I took a route out of engineering," she says.
Exec candidate
Furrer was recently selected for the company's executive candidate development program, one of a class of just six employees from corporate, transmission and the power side. The class includes one other woman and one African American.
The program includes peer, client and customer reviews as well as reports from supervisors and the individual's direct reports. One of Furrer's first needs was to understand the business side, so she was delegated to marketing for three months to learn about it. What comes next as an exec candidate? Furrer isn't sure.
"I've received some training now, but there's no guarantee," she says. "It's luck, timing, who you know, who you've been exposed to and what your talents are."
After hours
Furrer has been a member of SWE and the American Society of Civil Engineers. She was active with the local chapters until job responsibilities got too heavy. She's also participated in a program at Clark College (Vancouver, WA), speaking to young women about engineering.
She married a colleague in 2001 and has a two-year-old daughter. She and her husband now alternate Fridays off, to be at home for quality time with their toddler. "I could not have asked for a better place to start a family," Furrer says.
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