Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:00:10 Good morning, LinkedIn community energy industry, and more to another exciting and riveting episode of coffee at Jim and James. Okay. When I think of Tallahassee, Florida settled 500 years ago, became a city. I think next year is going to be the 200 year anniversary of it. It's nestled in the mountains of Florida now. Okay. I'll be at elevation 200 feet in Florida. That's mountains for us. James, I'm going to need you to help me to get a little bit more into this subject. So let's bring in, uh, our cohost, my brother, my yang and yang, Kim doll, one and only Mr. James Cross, James, how are you? This fine and beautiful day.
Speaker 2 00:00:55 Good morning. I'm doing great. Excited for today. We're going to have to find a new word for excited. We're not going to the source this weekend and try to find a new word for exciting. Cause I feel like we overuse it, but today I am pumped to have Steven Mayfield from the city of Tallahassee joining us. And Steven has been a long time client of UWM, but that's not why we have it here today. Uh, Steven, good morning and welcome to the show. And if you don't mind, would you give everybody just a quick rundown of your title and what you do there at city of Tallahassee? Sure. Um, I am the manager AGM of the gas utility, and I've been with the city about 21 years and I took over managing the gas utility in 2008. So I've been doing that for about 12 years.
Speaker 2 00:01:46 It's a great place to work. One of the funny things is when I came to the gas utility, I came out of the manufacturing business and I thought I was going to just do a stop off. I had a job offer in Chattanooga, had a job offer in Atlanta because I had worked for shell industries for quite a few years and I was going to stay in the manufacturing area and my life was not ready to move yet. So she actually sent an application in for me to the city of Tallahassee and she asked if she could. And I said, sure. So I got a phone call one day and it was like the city, the city of Tallahassee gas utility. We want us to come in for an interview. I said, who I'm like, I don't even understand, you know? Oh, and then I'm done. It kind of hit me. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I'll come in. And I walked in and talked about five minutes to the boss. He slid a sheet over and I'm all for me, a job on the spot. I accept it. And I thought I'll stay here year or so until I can talk my wife into moving into one of these other areas 21 years later, I'm here and I love the gas industry and that's awesome.
Speaker 1 00:02:48 That's fantastic. Let's, let's dive a little bit deeper into that. So city of Tallahassee for our viewers is the state Capitol of Florida. And um, we want to talk a little bit about your gas grid and the amount customers that you all
Speaker 3 00:03:00 Serve
Speaker 2 00:03:00 In that area. We have, um, a little over 34,000 customers and we're growing about a thousand customers a year. And you know, we've really been doing well through this pandemic time. I mean, and I think a lot of that, a lot of our con people we've gotten lately, our conversions, people that were all electric or maybe some other fuel source and the converting natural gas, I think they're sitting at home so much and they're thinking, you know, I really want to get a gas stove. I've been cooking more than I like to cook on a gas stove or, you know, tankless water heaters. I've heard a lot about those. And I really liked those. I want to get some other fire beautification issues, things out there, and we've actually gotten several people getting gas lights at their houses. I think there's just a lot of people that are wanting to remodel and make their houses look better.
Speaker 3 00:03:55 Yeah. I love a good, I love Stephen. I love an old school gas. Like, you know, I had one growing up and every time I see one of those feels like a win, um, statement. You guys are super active in APGA yourself being on the board. And, and I know you've been involved with a lot of, you know, the committees and stuff within APGA. Um, and the APGA has a program for those that may not really understand it called the soar program. And Steven I'll let you go into detail on that, but really it's about operational excellence, right? And when in the area, at least the public natural gas systems, can you give us your thoughts on that APGA soar program coupled with industry initiative like PSMs and how you think that can help really all of us improve?
Speaker 2 00:04:46 Sure. Um, I believe APGA and the industry as a whole, the best thing about the gas industry is even though we may be competitors in a slight scale, realistically, we all want to work together and we all want to improve the industry and APJ developed the soar program and it stands for system operation, operational achievement recognition. And it's a way to recognize organizations who go above and beyond and improve. And there is a system integrity system improvement, employee safety and workforce development. And I view it as really a continual improvement mechanism. And the best thing about it is you get to see what other companies feel like their best things they do are how they achieve excellence in different areas. And they shared this they're open and they allow others to see it so we can all improve. And you know, if you, if your gold, silver, bronze level is not important, because if you're involved, then you pick and choose things that, that help your system get better and better and better.
Speaker 2 00:06:01 And that's what I've used it for, for, I guess it's been around for about seven years and for seven years I've been involved with it. And every year it comes through my system changes a little bit and the program changes too, because if, if you watch the gas industry in the last decade, it's just constantly changing. New regulations are common. Um, if I remember it was about 15 years ago, they were talking about natural gas is about to go away price going out the roof. And so efficiency of appliances kept getting better and better and better and not fountain. You know, one of the funny things we talked earlier about 34,000 customers, I have 34,000 customers, but I have less load than I had a few years back causes plants, efficiencies, improve, and improve and improve. And so as my customer growth increases, my load is not increasing to the same amount, but I believe I'll do soar as a continual improvement mechanism.
Speaker 2 00:07:03 And we apply to show what we've done and we've done well, we've maintained the Dole status. And this year we had the most systems. I don't remember the exact number where the most systems obtain gold. And that just shows that everybody's using this program correctly because systems that were bronze in the past silver, silver in the past, they've joined in a webinars best practice webinars that the industries put together and they've incorporated some of the best practices of other systems into theirs and they've improved. And you know, you talk about pipeline safety management system. That is sort of a new way. It's been around for a while. I believe the liquid manufacturing company or the liquid transportation company is a little ahead of us on that. I believe they were hit first. I started hearing about it about two or three years ago. Wasn't really sure what it was, but it's really picked up some steam in the last year. And that's another way for us to share information. I was thinking about this. And one of the things always members imitation is the highest form of flattery. And I think I feel good whenever I see a system incorporates something that I've done and I hope others feel the same way too, because it means they think what I'm doing is good.
Speaker 1 00:08:28 Steven, I'm going to tell you, I, you know, beforehand, I have to say you have a reputation in the industry, just so you know,
Speaker 2 00:08:37 Good or bad. Well,
Speaker 1 00:08:38 It could be, you know, uh, yeah, we're not going to talk about that. Uh, Amy, we're going to cut that out. Just kidding. Just kidding. But, uh, Stephen know, people view you when we talk about your name leader, mentor, wanting the best for the industry, wanting the best for, you know, everybody constituents the whole bit homeowners. And I want you to know you have a great name in the industry and you know, I, I have a question here. You we're both Floridians and we live in hurricane alley and it, you know, it's all around us. It's a way of life. Just like blizzards are up North. We have hurricanes here. Can you go into some insight about, again, all the things that you just kind of hit on about sharing those best practices, mutual aid, you know, helping others to learn a better way, you know, taking down those walls where it's not us against them, but we are in it as an industry. Uh, thoughts, insight, comments on that.
Speaker 2 00:09:34 Sure. As well as I was talking to both before we got started, if you hear some lot of names, you hear some heavy rain come through, we're catching some of the outer bands of Zeta right now. And I tell you one thing, my heart goes out to Louisiana because this has been a hard year for them. I haven't, I don't remember seeing as many hurricanes hit one area. This goes back to left. Florida probably experienced 2004, 2005 when we had hurricane after hurricane, after hurricane hit us. But yes, and this is comes down to, we talk about sharing best practices and continual improvement. The industry's great. When I first took over the gas utility here, and at that time, it was kind of getting concerned on the hurricanes. What do we need to do? I reached out to some of my fellow systems in Florida, specifically Pensacola in Okaloosa.
Speaker 2 00:10:32 They're both right on the water. So, you know, and their assay is situated in a pretty good spot. It's a little difficult for us to get hit hard. And we did a couple of years ago with Michael and calls just the way it coming up, the coast it'll get beat down. And it has to make that perfect track, which Michael did to get us. But those two are really experts. They experience a lot of hurricanes. They know how to handle it. They dealt with it. So I reached out to them and they provided me some great insights. Some of the things are, make sure you have, make sure that your team members have taken care of their families. So they're not worried about them anymore. They need to get them gone out of the area, make sure they do that because everybody's worried about their families.
Speaker 2 00:11:21 So get that, get that part cleared away. First, make sure you have food. One of the things we do here, because we are also teamed up with our electric utility, which every issue they have, some they have issues is we have somebody come onsite and they have a self-contained, uh, cooking facility. And that's critical. You got to have food. And if, if it stretches out for several days, it could be really bad if you're able to feed the employees with good food. So we have them lined up in their own site with us and stay through the whole storm before, during and after. And we're lucky in the gas utility, you know, 99% of our stuff's underground. So about the only issues we have on our underground infrastructure, if trees fall down and pull lines out of the ground, so you need to make sure your valves are properly maintained and accessible.
Speaker 2 00:12:24 So you could shut off and isolate the areas that you need to handle. And one thing we do in Tallahassee annually, and we generally do it in January, February is our biz biz based exposure is probably due to our Cate stations and regulated stations. So what we want to do is we want to make sure trees and other facilities won't fall on those. So we take an arborist with us and we'll go look around and get their recommendation on this tree needs to come down. We need to trim the limbs off of this tree because Tallahassee loves his trees. And if we were just to go trim without having an arborist, offering the recommendations, we would have some citizens up in arms. So they'll say, you know, everything that we do helps protect the trades and make the trees stronger. And other than that, we need to be ready.
Speaker 2 00:13:24 And when it'd be able to help and get things going, and realistically, we probably help the other utilities more than we need help. We've mutual aid is very important and where we have mutual aid in Florida and mutual aid, you know, APJ also has a great program where they haven't throughout the nation. And we've not been fortunate that we've not had to call in mutual aid, but systems, every time a storm comes into hire, they reach out to me and say, Hey, do you need any help? The investor owns? And the municipals, we're all we all work together and I'll reach out and call others to see if they need help. And when Michael came through, we were okay, we didn't need help, but some other small systems Chattahoochee, which is a municipal and St. Joe natural gas, which is in a properly owned gas company, they both needed help. So we sent people over there to help them get their systems up and go. It's a great, it's a great team effort.
Speaker 3 00:14:23 Yeah, it sounds very proactive, Steven. Um, let's dive this really last big question here. Let's, let's dive a little deeper, really in, in how connected and involved in the industry you talked about APGA earlier and how active you're involved personally and Tallahassee as a whole. Um, we know you well from, from your involvement with finger, uh, and ours, as I think you guys operate very similar from what we heard, just sitting at the table sometimes nice to, to be able to draw from those things. So what are your thoughts on staying connected and what, what advice could you give folks maybe in your shoes or others that maybe aren't as active, uh, and how that can really drive or help drive your continuous improvement model?
Speaker 2 00:15:15 Well, when I think of involvement, it reminds me, takes me back to engineering school. I went to Florida state, got them chemical engineering degree, actually, before that I was a math major. So I do love, I love the rigor that goes through, but what I believe are the tools that I taught you and in school was we basically have two kinds of two sets of students. You had those that worked in study teams and they would get together and study, do homework, study for tests together. And then you had those that did it all on their own. Well, most of them that work together, they had higher grades than those that worked alone. And also they had a little more free time because you can get, you can get bogged down and stuck on something for a long time. And if you can't get past it, well, if you could ask someone else, Hey, how do y'all handle, what are you doing in this situation?
Speaker 2 00:16:10 And then they just kind of give you just a little tweak and it helps things go better, helps things improve and helps you understand, and you don't get just staring at something forever trying to figure it out. And that's how I look at embalming in organizations. If you're not involved in, you're just learning from yourself and you're just doing it all on your own. While if you are involved, you're seeing other people's best practices. You have to go with an open attitude and it's not like my way is the best way all the time. You have to be willing to learn from others, look at what others can do and share, share what you're doing and be willing to take a little constructive criticism. I was on a presentation Tuesday and I emailed, uh, Eric gorilla, who, you know, had on the show before.
Speaker 2 00:17:01 And I asked her, I said, you know, what do I need to do to improve? And she blasted me. She told me all the bad things that I was doing and that I really just needed to stop doing it. You know, that's not really true. She really, when she gave me a couple little ideas and I thought that's good, you know, because if you don't ask and if you don't do that, you can't get better. And as a group, we've had a lot of regulations come across in Florida and they'll have Dale Calhoun. Who's our executive director of a Florida natural gas association. He has helped spearhead some efforts to really save all the, all the municipals and the IOUs money, because these are ways that we're able to get legislation passed. That makes things better for us. I'm not saying it makes things easier, but it makes things that are workable because sometimes things can get passed. That just don't make any sense. What are the things that we're doing this year? That's been a big help as he's pushed some stuff through, we're going to be able to exact excavation damage is our biggest issue we have in the gas industry right now, or one of the biggest issues we have. And we're going to have ways to put a little more oomph behind companies that don't do what they need to do correctly. When it comes to Collin locates and working around gas lines, that's going to help.
Speaker 1 00:18:32 Is are we going to see that term in a regulation?
Speaker 2 00:18:35 Yeah. Well, I was trying to think of a better word. I didn't think ahead of time. It's a good enough word. A little bit of a monetary hit on the companies. And realistically, I don't want to, I don't want these companies to have any monetary hits because I want them to do it right, because we work together. It makes it a lot easier for me to plan work. When I don't have unexpected damage that takes, takes my guys away from what they need to do, that could have been avoided. Yes. And somebody is going to get hurt one time. Nobody wants
Speaker 3 00:19:10 Well. Um, and Steven people are motivated by different things. And some people, it takes money. You got to hit them in their pocket book. Unfortunately like, you know, me growing up, I, um, you know, I was that kid that just sued get a spanking, cause it was over and I'd go back, you know, doing what I was doing. But man, if you grounded me, that was my worst nightmare. So, uh, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do.
Speaker 2 00:19:35 Pumpkins.
Speaker 1 00:19:40 I never gotten in trouble. I'm like Eddie Haskell, look at me like, Oh, I didn't do it. You know? And they'd be like, Oh, well, Jim could never do it. You know? And I seen, I was a tear.
Speaker 2 00:19:51 I want to tell you all my favorite, uh, I guess paddling story was eight grade science or football taught. It, walked out of the class for some reason. And we were, all, everybody in the class was talking, we were all cutting up. You know, you're eight, 14, 13, 14 years old teacher leaves. You're going to cut up. So he walked into class said, okay, everybody that was talking to the front of the room. Well, we all went to the front of the room. I mean, what else are we going to do? He said, okay, everybody's getting three licks. I wouldn't set back down. Everybody else got three legs. They looked at me and said, he's the only one smart enough to go sit back down. So, I mean, you know, I, I made it through school without getting one, but it wasn't because I didn't deserve one.
Speaker 3 00:20:41 Hey man, Jim, I normally wrapped this thing, but I think I, uh,
Speaker 2 00:20:48 Y'all both paying for idioms. Okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna tee you up for this last question.
Speaker 1 00:20:56 The most hardest question of the day. Can we say that actually this one that he's bleeding it. So Steven w we just want to ask you and I, we already know the answer, but do you love what you do?
Speaker 2 00:21:12 Oh, I definitely love what I do. I never would have 25 years ago. You know, I don't remember what my wife says. She's going to put this in for the, an Africa asset. What do I know about natural gas? And when I first started working here, the thing that confused me is people listened to me, you know, employees. And I'm like, I know nothing about this stuff, but, you know, I realized it's, it's a great industry. I believe it is going to be around a long time. I believe it's it powers, you know, it's available. It's out there. It is one of the best energy sources. It has allowed this country to become viable on its own. And I believe we can be a palace energy approach with renewables and natural gas. And that is one of the things we need to be pushing as a country. I agree. Wow. Or what I'm on board. I don't know what you're selling, sir, but I buy, does that mean you want to bring us home?
Speaker 1 00:22:26 Absolutely it, Steven, uh, on behalf of James and I, we can't thank you enough. This has been an absolute pleasure. The passion, the commitment, the conviction in your voice and what you do. Like I said, your reputation in the industry, uh, is, uh, outstanding. You know, people look to you for mentorship, for, uh, leadership guidance. So we appreciate having you in the industry. We appreciate you being on here today for all of our audience, please connect with Stephen. He's a wonderful person, as you can see as a passion for it. So if you have any questions about best practices, how things can be better. I know he would, uh, love the opportunity to share that. Also, please follow, uh, finger Florida, natural gas association, Dale Calhoun, and the staff and the team and all the people in Florida that make up that great organization. Please follow that. APGA uh, APGA with Erin Korilla, you know, we've had her on before another great organization. Just keep connecting the dots, learn. There's so many great things out there. Um, anyways again, Steven, thank you so much. We appreciate having you on, uh, it's been a pleasure, sir, to the audience, please stay safe out there, do the right thing. God bless you. God bless our industry until the next time that we see our coffee with Jim and James have a great and safe week. Take care.
Speaker 4 00:23:47 <inaudible>.
