Specialist Engineer - Transmission P&C Asset Planning and Management

Hours of work: Full-time (37.5 hrs/week)

No. of positions: 1

Transmission Protection and Control Asset Planning and Management is accountable for management oversight and planning of the power system’s protection and control assets across over 300 Transmission and Distribution Substations.

These systems provide critical support to the primary circuit elements of the Transmission System to preserve its integrity and lifespan.

The team funds the review and analysis of P&C failures and disturbances, and operational data to mitigate damage to the system while maintaining safety and reliability for BC Hydro staff and the public.

Protection assets include devices that fault detection devices on the electrical system, while Control system assets allow Operators to monitor and control all or part of a substation’s equipment either remotely via SCADA, or locally via direct control based on operational requirements and/or supply system conditions.

The team is involved in planning, initiating, and overseeing all protection and control related capital projects and preventative maintenance programs. These initiatives include compliance planning for new or evolving NERC standards.

To continue to strengthen these areas, BC Hydro is looking for qualified, self-driven individuals with highly developed analytical, collaboration and communications skills to contribute to this important business objective.

The successful candidate will join Transmission Protection and Control Asset Planning and Management and will report directly to the Team Lead, Transmission P&C Asset Planning and Management.

• Strategic Asset Planning:
• Lead the planning and implementation of P&C modernization (digital substation) at new substations and for retrofit of existing substations, using new technologies and industry standards like IEC 61850
• Supporting change management aspects of digital substation for the purpose of ensuring appropriate subject matter expertise exists within BC Hydro for selection, installation, maintenance, troubleshooting, hardware management and configuration management.
• Coordination with appropriate department stakeholders including Transmission Stations Asset Planning, Engineering P&C Planning, Engineering Support, Station Field Operations, Transmission and Distribution System Operations, Program Contract Management
• Planning to ensure the asset fleet aligns with technological trends and opportunities, including digital substation advancements, leading operational cybersecurity practices, and configuration management techniques
• Support the delivery of three main strategic objectives:
• Build a full lifecycle sustainment model for Protection Relays and Control Systems
• Make use of new technologies to develop a P&C architecture for the long term and implement it through Planning Standards.
• Update Vendor Sourcing Strategy for Relays and application of homogenous A&B protection systems.
• Support the creation of a P&C Roadmap and P&C Planning guides
• Working to ensure future technologies support human performance with the goal of improving safety, troubleshooting, maintenance and resource efficiency.
• Technical leadership and mentoring
• Asset Management:
  • Coordinate with P&C Asset Planning and Management on Maintenance programs, asset health methodology and register, risk methodology and registers and other applicable asset management innovations.
  • Ensuring that asset installation and maintenance standards meet state of the art industry standards, including reliability practices for settings and configuration and cybersecurity practices for configuration hardening.
• Capital Planning and Execution:
  • Write and review Asset Investment Summaries for Project and OMA Programs that support the strategic asset goals.
  • Review P&C Scope Notes and P&C Applications
• Compliance and Operational Technology Cybersecurity:
  • Ensure that P&C Modernization programs meet the requirement of NERC mandatory Reliability Standards (MRS) for Protection and Control (PRC) Standards.
  • Ensure that P&C modernization programs meet OT cybersecurity requirements.
  • Coordinate with IT Cybersecurity teams and relevant Engineering teams on OT Cybersecurity.

• Ba…