Leadership Insights: TECO’s Effective Project Delivery

By: Mycah Jewell

TECO’s mission is built on reliability. To effectively meet customer load growth, it’s critical our leadership team identifies, plans, and implements projects years in advance. This would not be possible without our dedicated staff who ensure that our projects are executed on time and deliver the expected benefits to the plant.

Not all projects are made the same. Whether they are small plant projects, maintenance projects, or larger capital projects, each initiative is constructed with reliability and safety in mind. The master plan guides our long-term vision, ensuring our plant is prepared for growth and large capital replacements as critical equipment ages. The master plan doesn’t include every project, but having a roadmap for the future ensures that smaller enhancements or repairs align with TECO’s mission. 

Each year, I work with the maintenance, engineering, and operations departments to gauge if they have needs that could be considered as capital projects. This could be instrumentation upgrades on specific equipment, or it could be single replacement of a major piece of equipment. It could also be something like vehicle replacements as company vehicles age. Various inputs comprise project identification, but all start with a description and cost estimate.

No matter the size of the project, we ensure that the benefits outweigh the cost. Once approved, we evaluate the project timing and identify critical action points in terms of ordering long-lead equipment, starting engineering processes, and if needed, constructing a project team.

TECO is fortunate to have a strong group of project engineers and managers who drive each initiative. On capital projects — particularly those outlined in the master plan — we assign a project engineer or manager to drive the implementation. Once the lead is in place, they are tasked with identifying the schedule, areas they need support, and the necessary resources. From there, the lead will oversee critical processes, such as engineering, scheduling, contractor oversight, installation, and team management.

Jess Harper and Joe Robles led the recent gas turbine project. Each works to their strengths, drawing on their strong organizational and interpersonal skills, which is a critical part of managing a project of this scale. The success of the gas turbine project results from our team’s discipline in scheduling and coordinating work across many vendors and contractors.

Juan Jimenez, Priscila Avila, Callen Clark, Matt Ferrell, Marty Sarch, Austin Kelly, and Philip Muzar round out our full project management team. The consistency with each of these individuals is their attitude. At the end of the day, TECO has to live with the finished product, right? Each team member takes immense pride in their work and consistently goes the extra mile to ensure that TECO receives the highest quality product possible.

As we celebrate the completion of a few pivotal additions this year, I am excited about what’s next and know that we have an exceptional team that executes each project with our customers in mind.