Bryan Thomas on Building the Operations Team
From a single operator to a fully developed team, operations have grown alongside the system. Bryan Thomas, Operator, reflects on the early days and the experience it took to build a strong, reliable operations team.
Transcript
Transcript edited for clarity and readability.
I started in 2011 as an operator. I had a surface water background and was hired to help operate this new project.
At the time, it had been in operation for about four years, and they had just finished a big expansion of metering stations. The operator was leaving, so they needed someone to come in with that background.
I eventually worked my way up to manager and started attending board meetings. I’ve been here about 14 years.
I’m most proud of the team—the operations team that we have. When this first started, I was the only operator. I had two managers at the time, and I got to learn everything from scratch. It was a good experience.
As we grew and built the team, everyone had to learn those same lessons. So now everyone is very aware of the challenges of the system. We have strong senior staff who have been through emergencies and a lot of different situations.
I think we’re in a really good place with our operations team. They do a really good job, and I’m happy to see it.
