Show Notes

This episode features an engaging discussion with Ron Adams and Shawn Standish. Stephen Cieslewicz and Nick Ferguson explore leadership, strategic planning, the evolution of Utility Vegetation Management, the lasting impact of the 2003 Northeast Blackout, the implementation of NERC FAC-003, organizational change, wildfire mitigation, and practical advice for both utilities and technology providers seeking to engage with utilities. The conversation combines decades of industry experience with practical lessons that can be applied by utility leaders, field personnel, consultants, regulators, and vendors.

About the Guests

Ron Adams spent his career with Duke Energy, one of the largest investor owned electric utilities in North America, serving millions of electric customers across six states with one of the nation's largest transmission and distribution systems. During his tenure he held numerous leadership positions, including responsibility for all Transmission and Distribution Utility Vegetation Management activities. Ron has been a respected leader in advancing utility reliability, strategic Utility Vegetation Management, organizational leadership, and operational excellence. Throughout the industry he is recognized for his thoughtful approach to leadership, change management, and building high performing organizations. While only partially retired, Ron is currently consulting with utilities and service providers.

Shawn Standish built a similarly distinguished career with FirstEnergy, one of the nation's largest investor owned electric utilities, serving more than six million customers across the Midwest and Mid Atlantic regions. During his career he led major Utility Vegetation Management initiatives across a large and diverse electric system while helping improve system reliability, operational performance, and risk management. Today, as a consultant, Shawn continues to work with utilities across North America, combining practical field experience with strategic leadership to help organizations strengthen their vegetation management programs and adapt to an evolving industry.

Together, Ron and Shawn represent more than seventy years of combined Utility Vegetation Management leadership, having managed programs serving millions of customers and overseeing vegetation management across tens of thousands of miles of transmission and distribution lines. Their perspectives come from decades of making real world decisions at two of the largest electric utilities in the United States.

Topics Discussed

1. Leadership and mentorship
2. Building an effective Utility Vegetation Management strategy
3. Lessons learned from the 2003 Northeast Blackout
4. The impact of NERC FAC 003
5. Organizational change and leadership
6. Wildfire mitigation
7. Working effectively with technology providers
8. The future of Utility Vegetation Management

Sponsors

This episode of The UVM Podcast is made possible by our commercial sponsors:

Celerity Utility Solutions
Clear Path Utility Solutions LLC

We appreciate their continued support of industry education and conversation.

Episode 1: Grid Resilience & Safety — Caroline Thomas Jacobs, California Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety

This is the first of a six-part series recorded live at the Grid Resilience Summit, a half-day industry event organised by LiveEO. Hosts Nick Ferguson and Steve Cieslewicz hand over to moderator Patrick Hollenbeck for a keynote and Q&A with Caroline Thomas Jacobs, Director of California's Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety — known as Energy Safety.

Caroline has appeared on the UVM Podcast before: she was the very first guest when the show launched. Her return here marks another milestone — this is the UVM Podcast's inaugural video episode after four years of audio-only production since 2021.

About Energy Safety
Energy Safety was created in 2020 in direct response to the catastrophic utility-caused wildfires of 2017 and 2018, which killed over 100 people and destroyed more than 25,000 structures. Its core mission: review and approve annual Wildfire Mitigation Plans submitted by California's electric utilities, oversee their implementation through audits and field inspections, and drive the cultural change inside utilities needed to truly integrate fire risk into how they build, operate, and maintain the grid.

Crucially, Energy Safety was designed not to be a traditional penalty-based regulator. The focus is on continuous improvement and learning — holding utilities accountable to developing new capabilities, not just meeting minimum standards.

What's working
Five years in, the data is encouraging. Total ignitions in California's High Fire Threat Districts in 2024 were down 18% on the seven-year average, and down 34% compared to 2020. Utilities have invested billions in grid hardening — covered conductor, undergrounding, remote sensing devices — and have deployed satellite imagery, LIDAR, and AI-driven risk modelling to transform how they manage vegetation and assess asset condition. A mandatory performance metrics regime means utilities must now demonstrate that their mitigations are reducing risk, not just describe what they're doing.

As Caroline puts it: utilities were never going to cut their way out of the wildfire problem. They had to innovate their way out.

Landscape-scale coordination
California's Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force — created by Governor Newsom in 2021 — is aligning federal, state, local, tribal, and private organisations around shared forest health goals. It has invested nearly $6 billion and now treats over 700,000 acres annually. Energy Safety leads the development of a Utility Wildfire Resilience Partnership Program, modelled on a successful collaboration between Liberty Utilities, the US Forest Service, and the Tahoe Conservancy in the Lake Tahoe basin, designed to amplify the impact of utility corridor investments through landscape-scale coordination.

The challenge ahead
The January 2025 LA fires are a sobering reminder that the wildfire threat is not receding — climate conditions once considered extreme are now the norm. Building California's clean energy future (targeting 100% clean electricity by 2045) on ageing, wildfire-prone infrastructure is not sustainable. Caroline is clear that urgency, equity, and cross-agency coordination are all essential — the communities facing the greatest wildfire risk are too often the ones with the least access to backup power and recovery resources.

In the Q&A, Caroline addresses whether California's separated regulatory model can be replicated in other states (political will, not financing, is the key enabler), how the Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force is structured to actually get things done, and the role of the Wildfire Safety Advisory Board in advising both Energy Safety and California's 50 publicly owned utilities.

🎙 Hosted by Nick Ferguson & Steve Cieslewicz
📍 Recorded at the LiveEO Grid Resilience Summit
📺 Part 1 of 6

Subscribe for the remaining five sessions — covering grid modernisation, storm resilience, wildfire technology, and more.

Got a topic suggestion? Email us: podcast@utilityvegetationmanagement.com

View this episode with video on YouTube https://youtu.be/rXjTjcAmNYYhttps://youtu.be/rXjTjcAmNYY.

A big thanks to LiveEO (www.live-eo.com) for organizing the summit.