Highlights of Experience:

• For numerous electric and multi-utility companies around the globe, Mr. Shearman has led large-scale asset management organization transformation projects. These efforts have typically followed significant shifts in strategy and been designed to implement rapid simultaneous change in organizational structure, culture and capabilities to align with the new strategy. Such projects have usually involved redefinition and redesign of core processes, adoption of new business models, redirection and new priorities for I/T, and establishment of new leadership practices and a more commercial organization culture.
• Mr. Shearman has conducted numerous organizational restructuring projects at utilities. He leads UMS Group's Organization Restructuring practice and is responsible for much of the firm's work in client business and competitive strategy development. His recent work in this area has included strategic analysis and organization design to implement responses to the Energy transition and associated business streaming of utility companies. Most of these projects have included in-depth assessment of markets and technology evolution, competitive positioning and sustainability potential of business strategies.
• Mr. Shearman has led many engagements around the world which were responsible for fundamental redirection of clients’ business strategy. He has worked with many CEOs and Boards to help frame a more robust understanding of industry drivers and directions, and clarify how shareholders view value in the business. These assignments have been structured around a more deliberate and informed approach to Strategic Choice and have often produced dramatic shifts in the strategic options considered.
• Mr. Shearman has prepared expert witness testimony for a number of US utility clients on the subjects of industry direction, regulatory incentives and appropriate use by regulators of performance benchmarking information.

Key Clients

Highlights of Experience:

Larisa’s lengthy tenure at UMS Group has resulted in a robust and varied resume of work experience. Highlights include:

• Digital Solutions – Responsible for the ongoing development and evolution of UMS Group’s flagship Spend Optimization Suite (SOS) for Asset Investment Planning and Distribution Reliability eXcellence (DRx) software products, as well as the entire portfolio of UMS Group digital solutions.  Manages the in-house programming team in building new features, functionality and machine learning models, covering all stages in the product development lifecycle from design specifications through to testing and roll-out.  Also supports all digital solution client configuration and implementation work.

   

• Asset Management – Has worked with over thirty clients helping them to improve their risk management and investment planning tools and processes. Ongoing involvement in refining UMS Group’s Asset Management Assessment methodology to align with ISO5500 specifications and has worked on many asset management gap assessment, transformation, and cost reduction projects.

Larisa holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics, with a concentration in Multinational Management, from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, as well as minors in French and Spanish.

Key Clients

Highlights of Experience

Patrick’s career has afforded him the opportunities to serve energy clients in a diverse set of contexts and problems, including:

• Leading a major group of 20 West Coast and Australian utilities to plan around mitigating wildfire risk and damage, including a $50m DOE grant for innovation and technology investment
• Directly advised new CEO of a Canadian utility on corporate and operational strategy, vision, and new operating model
• Saved over $10m in wind curtailment losses by highlighting improvements in coal and gas fired plant operations to allow for greater renewables consumption at a medium sized utility
• Discovered over 18% sustainable cost reduction for a large utility in Hong Kong through a mixture of improved asset management and operating norms, and reduced over $100m USD in wasteful spending on non-utilized assets by directly advising the COO on leading practices for AMI
• Led a major initiative to reduce operational cost for a large California utility with 4.5m customers by over $120m
• Led a strategic initiative for the board of a state-owned Canadian utility to improve retention at coal-fired power plants identifying over $30m in savings over ten years while improving retention by 22%

Patrick holds Bachelors of Economics and Russian and a Juris Doctorate and Masters of Law. He speaks English, Spanish, and Luxembourgish fluently.

Key Clients

Highlights of Experience:

Prior to joining UMS Group, Mr. Shaw served as the Vice President of Engineering and Operations at CHELCO, an Electric Distribution company located in Florida.   Mr. Shaw also served in various management capacities at Southern Company (Gulf Power) in Florida.  During his 20 years there, he became astute in all areas of the Distribution and Customer Operations functional areas.

Brett is a graduate of the University of West Florida, with a B.S. degree in Industrial Technology, and has served in a variety of executive roles in the Florida’s business & civic community.  He is also a graduate of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) MIP executive leadership program, as well as various Southern Company leadership training programs.

Key Clients

Highlights of Experience:

• Digital Solutions – Jenna has been involved in many Spend Optimization Suite engagements, configuring and delivering the SOS to meet each client’s Asset Investment Planning needs. She has worked closely with clients to determine their specific business value requirements and implement the SOS accordingly.  She manages the in-house programming team in implementations and building new functionality, including functional design, creating specifications, and designing/carrying out quality assurance plans. These projects have encompassed many areas of the business, including Electric and Gas Distribution, Transmission, Electric Generation, IT, Fleet, and Facilities.

Jenna is a graduate of Cornell University with a Bachelor of Science in Operations Research & Industrial Engineering.

Key Clients

Highlights of Experience

• AM Digital Solutions – Mr. Schmidt is currently Lead Project Manager for delivery/implementation of the Spend Optimization Suite (SOS) application, an asset investment optimization tool. Through his role as Lead Project Manager, Mr. Schmidt plays a pivotal role in not only the strategic  business value framework scoring development and application implementation but also in the development of new features/functionality to improve the capability of the application and keep it current in the industry.
• Asset Management - Part of a team delivering a multi-year asset management transformation for an electric utility in southeast Asia with the ultimate goal of achieving ISO 55000 certification. Involved in many aspects of the transformation including creation of an asset management organizational model, performance management structure, and risk management framework, with a specific focus on transforming the capital budget planning process through implementation of a value- and risk-based analysis approach.
• ITOMS – He is also the Program Director for the International Transmission Operations and Maintenance Study (ITOMS) global learning consortium. He is responsible for working with the Steering Group to determine interesting and insightful analysis, help the Steering Group identify the direction of the industry and develop analysis to keep the program current, and manage the analyst group tasked with building the required analysis and reporting.

Ian is a graduate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he received a Bachelor of Science in Management.

Key Clients

Highlights of Experience:

• Asset Management – Kate is a key contributor to UMS’ Asset Management solution and is an IAM Endorsed Trainer. Her current focus is on Asset Management, including Gap assessments, implementation roadmap development (modeling alternative scenarios for cost, resources, and duration), Asset health/replacement strategy application development, Asset life-cycle development for various transmission and distribution asset classes, and Organizational design. She also assists numerous electric and gas utilities in assessing and implementing ISO 55000-based organizations and competencies.
• Learning Consortia – Kate is an integral player in UMS’s Global Learning Consortium practices, which provide facilitated research and sharing to help utilities understand industry trends, practices, and benchmarks.   Specifically, she oversees the North American Substation Best Practice collaborative, a utility-directed community that identifies and shares best practices in substation maintenance, construction, and asset management.

Kate holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Economics and Finance from Pennsylvania State University.

Key Clients

Highlights of Experience

PJ’s particular areas of expertise include Data Wrangling, Probabilistic and Predictive Modeling, Simulation, Machine Learning, Network Optimization Algorithms, Business Intelligence, and Benchmarking.  Sample accomplishments at UMS Group include (1) using ensemble machine learning algorithms to develop a Weather Vulnerability model to forecast the probability of outage in distribution grid by service center using predictors such as sustained wind speed and wind gust, temperature, precipitation levels, and thunderstorm/lightning activities; and (2) designing an optimal preventive repair and replacement schedule of a transmission asset for an Asian utility utilizing a modified Weibull hazard function.

Prior to joining UMS Group, PJ taught the following courses in the Industrial Engineering (IE) Department at the University of the Philippines: Statistics and Probability, Statistical Quality Control, Discrete Systems Simulation, and Engineering Economy. Notable projects included (1) Applying Lean Six Sigma methodology to reduce procurement lead time of infrastructure projects of the University of the Philippines System by 20%; and (2) developing a robust prediction model for college students’ Statistics grades based on prerequisite Math grades, which is now used in IE admission policies.

PJ holds a Professional Master’s Degree in Data Science and a Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of the Philippines.  Key skills include Machine Learning, Probabilistic and Predictive Modeling, Simulation, R, and Python.

Key Clients

Highlights of Experience

Prior to taking on a leadership role within the company, Abegail has strongly contributed to the successful runs of the International Transmission Asset Management Study (ITAMS) and the International Distribution Benchmark Consortium (IDBC), having supported the programs through several cycles between 2013 and 2020. She has collaborated closely with the program managers located in the Europe office to improve the study designs resulting to an improved workflow for each program. Aside from process improvements, she was also responsible for the data analysis, data requirement clarification, and preparation of the final reports.

Abegail has also been involved in several distribution, transmission, and customer service benchmarking projects for major utilities within the North American and Australian regions, assisting in the identification of performance improvement opportunities and recommending actions to close performance gaps. She has also been a member of the Bid Support Team to a number of due diligence projects participated in by the Europe office. She was responsible for the collection, validation, analysis, and presentation of benchmarked metrics to support the efforts of the technical group to provide actionable insights for the clients.

Abegail holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and a Master’s degree in Development Economics, both from the University of the Philippines. Prior to joining UMS, she worked for the Advisory Services group of the Manila Operational Hub of Thomson Reuters as a Senior Associate. Earlier than this, she served as a Marketing Assistant for the Small and Medium Enterprise Department of BPI Family Savings Bank, the consumer banking arm of one of the largest banks in the Philippines, the Bank of Philippine Islands (BPI).

Key Clients

Highlights of Experience

As Software Development Manager at UMS Group, Rommel leads the development and maintenance of the Spend Optimization Suite (SOS), an application that optimizes spending for utility and asset-intensive clients. He is also a lead developer for other applications, such as Distribution Reliability eXcellence (DRx) EV Prophet and Weather Guard, Operational eXcellence (OPx), and others. In addition, he plays a key role in supporting clients with installation and maintenance activities.

Prior joining UMS Group in 2016, Rommel worked as a senior software developer in a leading Contact Center Solution company. He created internal applications that integrated with different client systems, such as airlines, energy distribution, cruise lines, and video relay telecommunications. He also worked with the business analytics team to automate reports using Microsoft Analysis Services, which improved the efficiency and accuracy of data analysis. He engaged with different lines of businesses and delivered high-quality solutions that met their needs.

He graduated from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines with Bachelor of Science in Information Technology.

Key Clients