Steve Emond is Vice-President, System Design and Commercial Operations.

TransCanada recently brought together the System Design and Customer Service functions under the same organizational umbrella. To facilitate this, TransCanada needed a talented maestro to help orchestrate the integration.  As Vice-President, System Design and Commercial Operations, Steve Emond is responsible for the safe and efficient design and operations of TransCanada’s Canadian pipeline systems (Canadian Mainline, Alberta, Foothills, Ventures, Trans Québec and Maritimes Pipeline) as well as certain U.S. pipelines (Portland Natural Gas Transmission System and gas control functions for Northern Border).

Steve’s functional responsibilities include facility planning and design, gas control, operations planning and volume planning together with responsibilities from his previous role as Director, Customer Service which includes nominations and allocations, contracts and billing, measurement integrity and customer Call Centre. “Our business is becoming more complex as customers look to us to provide new or more flexible services to meet their individual needs,” says Steve. “The challenge is to keep pace with business change and increased complexity while maintaining the high levels of reliability and day-to-day service that customers expect and deserve from TransCanada. Credit goes to our front-line staff and to support groups, such as Information Systems, in meeting the challenge.”

The Commercial Operations team now processes about 3,200 nominations per day (about 97,000 per month), processes transactions for gas with a value in excess of ½ Billion dollars per day, and transports and delivers over $130 million per day of gas. In this environment TransCanada strives for “operational excellence” to minimize delays, downtime and errors that can have a significant impact on producers, shippers and end-use consumers.

TransCanada’s Gas Control operation is an excellent example of operational excellence. Since 1999, seven control rooms have been consolidated into one, reducing staff from 63 to 37, while we’ve assumed dispatching functions for six additional pipelines. This year, we have re-aligned the current Mainline operating structure, consolidating three consoles into two and introduced Northern Border gas control as the third operating console – with no increase in staff. The result has been better coordination and real cost savings. During the time of the 1999 consolidation, Gas Control had also implemented a Quality Management System which also includes an enhanced training and qualification program for gas controllers to help ensure safe, reliable and efficient control of TransCanada’s pipeline systems.

“As I see it customer satisfaction really is job number 1”, concludes Steve . “Whether it’s providing customized training courses or seminars, rolling out a new service, working collaboratively to address customer feedback, getting new meter stations on-stream when required, or ensuring we have the right facilities in place at the right time our success comes from meeting the needs of customers.”