finance

Accounting

▶ Submitted 2021 year-end external reports in a timely manner; RUS Form 7, RUS Form 12 and FERC1.

▶ Completed SRF filings in a timely manner.

▶ Closed out 2021 financials successfully.

Facilities

Treasury

▶ Presented annual banking report to the board.

▶ Renewed KeyBank Line of Credit.

▶ Submitted tax return in a timely manner.

▶ Filed annual and quarterly USDA reports for REDLG grant.

▶ Completed annual and quarterly Payment Card Industry compliance attestations.

▶ Capital Credits paid out $3,300,000 for 1997 capital credits.

▶ Implemented additional fraud prevention tools on all bank accounts.

After 16 years of leadership, Dale Lupton retired and handed the reigns of leadership over to Mack Wiehl. Mack looks forward to continuing his work with all his fellow employees to ensure that needs are met in a timely fashion.

Once again, Facilities recorded an injury-free year with no lost time. Facilities continues to focus on using job briefs as an effective tool before starting a project to better understand risk and how to protect themselves from injury.

A major project to replace an aging boiler in the Nerland Building that had cracked its casing was undertaken in-house by GVEA HVAC Specialist Jacob Wipf. Jacob completed the swap just before the first blast of cold weather hit. By doing the project in-house, GVEA was able to save thousands in contractor costs.

Jacob also upgraded the HVAC software for the New Vehicle Shop to better control the heating and cooling of that facility.

▶ Transitioned to a new department supervisor

▶ Hired a new team member – Travis Lunney

▶ Developed and deployed a new Fix-it Ticket system

▶ Zero workdays lost to injury

Materials Management/Warehouse

The Healy Warehouse had a productive and busy year. Besides their daily functions, Tim Ehresman and Deanna Daniel supported three scheduled plant outages and continued to put effort into improving inventory controls. The Healy outdoor cold storage areas were cleaned and reorganized. They increased the number of cycle counts performed, which led to a successful annual inventory. They also became more involved with the Eva Creek inventory, performing the first annual inventory there.

The Fairbanks Warehouse was also very productive. Great effort was put into warehouse and yard cleanup/reorganization. After revamping the Bidwell yard, Fairbanks began utilizing it for special material storage and laydown. Ryan Middleton, Justin Gleason, Adam Zaverl, and Dave Woods also supported line crews through three major storm events. They ensured needed materials, tools, and consumables were available 24/7 during these incidents. The monitoring of inventory levels, needs, and their supply chain continued to be a major focus as well.

Both Warehouses completed their portion of the Quality Management Systems projects and made preparations for the upcoming NISC conversion.

Purchasing

Purchasing went through major changes in 2022, including staffing and preparation for NISC. The purchasing team supported several outages and large-scale projects.

• Transitioned department supervisors and hired a new purchasing agent.

• Purchasing assisted and defined needs in providing line crews with food, lodging, refreshments and logistic support during major outages.

• Purchasing supported Healy and North Pole through all planned and unplanned outages. Revamped the FR online ordering system for more user-friendly access and faster turnaround times.

Records Management

After a few years of research, implementation and training, our records management system is up and running. With regular maintenance and necessary updates, SharePoint, Teams, VisualSP, and Gimmal will set GVEA up for success in managing necessary documentation and increasing collaboration and communication. The Konica Minolta document scanning project moved along in 2022, with another pallet of mostly Engineering paperwork scanned and ingested into SharePoint for better usability and research purposes. Stacey Baldridge served (and continues to serve) as the main contact point for NISC Document Vault, and in 2022 worked with respective users to set up permissions, attributes and folder structures within the program to serve the new Connect/iVue system which went live in January 2023.

◆ Laserfiche to SharePoint migration completed.

◆ Multiple departments shared drives migrated to SharePoint.

◆ Stacey and ShareSquared migrated old internal web to SharePoint.

◆ Pallet three sent to California for scanning, and ingested into SharePoint.

◆ NISC Document Vault meetings and actions were deployed.

◆ Massive Generation SharePoint re-org.

◆ IE retired.

◆ Stacey completed in-depth Gimmal training.

◆ Built new fix-it-ticket system.

◆ Developed Management of Change tracking workflow with ShareSquared.

WHAT’S TO COME

Regulatory

▶ Continue to strengthen GVEA’s industry influence by building on successes of 2022 as efforts to implement the Railbelt Vision carry on.

▶ Develop and gain RCA approval of filings implementing changes to GVEA’s tariff post-AMI and post-NISC conversions (On-Bill Financing, Schedule M, etc.).

▶ Continue to ensure GVEA’s interests are represented on the RRC Board of Directors, as well as during RCA proceedings, investigating the tariff, surcharge methodology, and rules of the RRC.

▶ Continue to provide Regulatory support and guidance on the five prongs of GVEA’s Strategic Generation Plan, including obtaining federal funding as it may be applicable.

▶ With the hiring of Jessica Broker as regulatory specialist, ensure that Regulatory continues to provide quality and timely customer service to internal and external stakeholders.

Public Relations

→ Continue strategic coordination of employee communication and event opportunities.

→ Focus on building partnerships at local, state and federal level to benefit employees and members.

→ Develop extensive new member outreach.

→ Expand GVEA’s digital presence and interactions.

→ Continue work to improve information available to members on GVEA.com.

→ Increase GVEA interactions with Key Accounts.

→ Maximize media opportunities for GVEA.

Member Services

• Trasitioning to NISC. This is a big project and we are ready for it. Exciting stuff!

• Partner with public relations on new member outreach program.

• Work with other GVEA departments on the development of on-bill financing and community solar projects.

Capital Credits

▶ Mail out IRS 1099-MISC’s to taxable capital credits payments during 2022.

▶ Allocate new 2022 Capital Credits to members (mid-year 2023), mail out about 50,000 letters to members with details on their new capital credits payable in 25 years.

▶ Process an estimated $1M of Capital Credit early retirement payments during 2023.

▶ Continue transition of new NISC software for both cash and capital credits processes.

Human Resources

◊ Employee Referral Program

◊ Employee Survey

◊ NISC Financial transition

Materials/Warehouse

• Both warehouses are preparing for NISC and looking forward to the opportunities it will provide to improve inventory management and day-to-day tasks. There will be a significant focus on learning the new operating system, adapting to it and utilizing it to our advantage –all while ensuring service levels remain high.

The supply chain continues to be unstable, especially critical items such as transformers, conductor and hardware. So, we will continue to be proactive and secure material so that projects and work are minimally impacted.

Purchasing

• Purchasing will ensure we are as prepared as possible for the deployment of NISC, this includes creating and offering training for requisitions and educating employees on purchasing practices.

• Comprehensive review of the Purchasing Manual will take place in 2023.

• In an effort to continue standardizing work processes and procedures to maintain efficiency, purchasing is working on standardizing contract language and creating requisition request forms.

Records management

Stacey will continue to support digitization efforts throughout the company by working with other GVEA staff to locate and process paper and microfilm materials. Stacey plans to ship out at least one more pallet of paper documents for scanning and ingestion into SharePoint. Having access to paper files digitally will be a massive time saver and allow more employees to access and retrieve more information for their daily work.

• Stacey will also be training new GVEA staff members on SharePoint, reviewing SharePoint best practices, hosting advanced training for the Microsoft O365 suite and keeping up to date on all the newest apps and features O365 has to offer.

• Stacey will continue ensuring GVEA follows the established retention schedule and updating it as needed.

Facilities

Finish a major refresh of the facilities workspace creating more area for warehouse operations and for facilities tasks to be performed, this will include the cleaning and reorganization of the mezzanine storage area.

• Replace 100% of the Variable Airflow Valves in the Operations Building to gain better control of the heating and cooling in that building.

• Complete AC upgrade in the Member Services Building in the Spring of 2023 so that there is better control of the temperature in the offices.

Environmental

▶ Continue to strive to be as responsive and proactive as we can to support personnel in satisfying GVEA’s environmental responsibilities.

Accounting

• Complete implementation of NISC Finance.

• Recruit and hire open positions.

• Continue staff cross training rotation.

Treasury

▶ Implement the relending portion of the GVEA Rural Economic Development Revolving Loan Fund.

▶ Complete implementation of NISC Banking module.

CAD/CIS

We have contracted a surveyor, working in conjunction with our Engineering Technicians, to accurately locate and determine GPS coordinates for the section corners in Delta as we plan to continue updating our landbase in some of the more troublesome areas. We also look forward to building on the ESRI mobile app for the field crews to test in an effort to make it as robust and user friendly as possible.

E-Shop

For 2023, on top of the engineering projects and regularly scheduled maintenance, the EShop will be adding a new generator to the Healy Repeater to ensure that the Healy plant has communication during a power outage, replacing the fire alarm system at BESS (this is an enormous project!), assisting with the new SCADA upgrade in Dispatch, and replacing field reclosers and adding dispatch control to them where possible.

Land management

• Easement and permit acquisition to energize Black Rapids Training Center.

• Several single phase to three phase upgrades for Delta Ag. region.

Cyber security

→ Install and configure server and network infrastructure for new corporate IT environment.

→ Continue with NISC transition – CC&B module, Finance module and other modules to follow.

→ Complete VPN transition to Fortinet and decommission/remove EOL Cisco ASA and AnyConnect client.

→ Shift GVEA completely to Microsoft365 for email.

→ Ensure encryption for sending emails externally and safe links are both working properly and train employees on what they are and how they are used.

→ Implement patching procedure using new patching software recently purchased.

→ Implement a new ticketing system for more uniform problem management.

→ Look into purchasing five MTA communication sites (fiber huts) back from MTA.

→ Plan for eventual HVAC refresh in DC2 with Facilities and E-Shop.

→ Continue to improve our network and server monitoring.

Safety

▶ Develop and deliver leadership training to help promote and strengthen safety expectations.

▶ Partner and engage with all departments and divisions to improve safety culture through management commitment to safety and health.

▶ Begin construction on the Gensuite safety management software.

Power Supply Engineering

• Zehnder 2 DCS upgrade.

• Healy Unit 1 wet ash water treatment improvements.

• Optimizing existing generation process through KPIs, operating guidance and implementing process improvement opportunities.

• Develop written best practices for project management.