High Reliability Management: Operating on the Edge

It's the 3rd day of a record-breaking heat wave and California is running out of power. Across the state, people are starting to think abut what life would be like without electricity.

What if the system fails?

In Sacramento it's 107 degrees, and as the heat rises, so does the concern in a grid control room where operators and managers try to deal with a potential crisis that could affect as many as 20 million Californians.

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Stanford University Press

These professional guardians of the grid have to balance load with generation and keep the voltage and frequency stable or else risk not only the destruction of billions of dollars in equipment and facilities, but also loss of life. "When we lose power people die" one control operator put it.

Suddenly a fire breaks out under a key transmission line, threatening a massive loss of electricity to the grid. Quickly operators decide on an alternative path to get the power to load centers. They reroute power and switch to alternate generators, literally just-in-time, and the system survives --for now.

We have witnessed firsthand what it takes to provide electricity reliably in California, one of the world's most complex electrical grids. What is remarkable is how often electricity is provided just-in-time. Sure, plans and schedules are made, but so much can happen up to the last minute that the system depends on the skill, judgment, and sometimes the everyday heroism, of a handful of middle-level operators and managers --people we call "reliability professionals". They keep the grid as reliable as it is, 24/7, 365 days a year. We have good evidence that the same holds true for other critical infrastructures in water, transportation, healthcare and financial services.

High Reliability Management is about these professionals, their skills and dedication. It's also about how they are now forced to operate at the edge of their performance capabilities. This is a reliability crisis that no one outside their organizations seems to care much about. As one long-time veteran of the electrical industry recently observed: "the public doesn't realize just how vulnerable they are".

This book offers a new perspective on critical choices facing our society, and practical advice to analysts, researchers and professionals who confront the challenge of high reliability daily.