Lori L. Wiliams, Director of Water Operations at Sierra Pacific, was our speaker in Che/Mete 101 on November 6. She's a Chemical Engineer who graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno in 1983.
During her college years, she had internship at Sierra Pacific in the water division. During this time she was a lab analysis, and conducted pilot studies on chemicals to see how they treated water. Afterwards she was a system dispatch for one and a half years which she dealt with computer programming.
Graduating in 1983, she joined the power engineering group. At this time, a lot of regulations were coming down from the E.P.A., and she dealt with the problem of how to manage ash. In 1984, she asked to transfer out to Valmy where a new plant was being designed and constructed. She believed this could be a profitable experience, and she was given the opportunity to start up a scrubber.
When given the duty of installing a scrubber, she was supervising 15 employees. With only a maintenance staff and operators, and along with the books and blueprints she installed a scrubber that would remove 75% of the Sulfuric Acid. The controls and control loops were serial #1 equipment, which means that they had never been tested. There were a lot of breakdowns and malfunctions. They had to control the temperature, and the flow rate of the CaO.
She eventually returned back to Reno as Maintenance Manager of Water Distribution System. There she was in charge of 90 pump stations, 28 water tanks, 25 wells, and 2 main water treatment plants. Her duty was to insure that the customers received their water. She installed a 4 million dollar control system.
However she eventually moved on, and became Power/Fuel Contract Director. There she became more involved in the business side of the company. She was in charge of budgets for fuel, and supervised 10 people that negotiated contracts for fuel.
She never stays in place for too long, and she moved on to become transition team leader where Sierra Pacific was merging with Washington Power. They needed to decide what jobs would stay, and where people would work. However the merger did not follow through, and instead of returning to her old position she became manager of the Water Division. She has 90 employees, and for now she satisfied that she doesn't have to deal with the politics and negotiations.