The 2020 USA Winter Conference kicked off Monday afternoon, January 27, with attendees and guests enjoying our traditional golf outing. Tuesday brought meetings of the Supply Chain, Procurement Engineering, Advance Remote Monitoring and Site Representative teams, as well as 16 “value-concept” presentations by our Supplier-Partners designed to provide a road map of value opportunities for 2020. The day concluded with a fantastic welcome reception where all attendees and guests could relax, enjoy great food and drink, catch up with old friends and meet new ones all while being AMAZED by the magical talents of Rich Kwesell.
The next two days were packed full of presentations on a wide variety of topics including risk-informed applications, suppliers and utilities working together to optimize value, supplier performance and navigating challenging trade conditions, to name a few, as well as 2020 outlooks from EPRI and USA and much more. The Conference also included more than 200 individual breakout sessions (“speed-dates”) between Utilities, Suppliers and USA Staff, always a key ingredient and an extremely popular part of the proceedings.
Last, but certainly not least, were the annual awards! Erin Overholt and Dan Murray accepted the coveted 2019 Agreement Maximizer award on behalf of Team Fermi (DTE) based on their “First-Cost” and “Rebate” savings in excess of $2.2M using USA Supply Chain agreements! Xcel Energy was next, with Tim Johnson, Jim Hofstra, Jose Valor and Andy Brown receiving the “TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) Savings Optimizer” award for their outstanding $10.2M in TCO savings during 2019. Our final award, the “Cost Cutter”, is awarded to the USA Supplier-Partner that best helped members reduce cost and improve efficiency as evidenced by the number of TCO events submitted and approved savings generated. Dave Mueller, Tighe Smith and John Cestra accepted the “Cost Cutter” on behalf of Paragon Energy Solutions based on 2019 TCO savings to our members of $11.5M! Overall, members saved more than $31 Million in 2019 on Supply Chain programs alone, thanks to the hard work of our supplier-partners and utility representatives throughout the member organizations.
2020 was our largest Winter Conference ever! 100% of survey respondents rated the Conference as “Excellent” or “Good” and 95% said they plan to attend in 2021. We’ll be heading west to the Palm Springs area and look forward to seeing you there!
