Chartwell Inc., a leading provider of utility industry research and thought leadership in support of key customer journeys, is excited to announce that Don Daigler, a veteran utility resilience executive, will lead a new initiative focused on helping the industry adapt to the ever-evolving threat environment it faces in an effective and cost-efficient manner. 

Chartwell Executive Advisor Tracie Boutte said the initiative will focus on identifying how the industry views resilience overall and developing benchmarks to identify best practices that can be used by individual organizations to assess and improve their current capabilities. “Recognizing the complexity of resilience, and hearing utility feedback, we believe focusing first on emergency management will help organizations be better prepared to effectively respond and recover from ‘all hazards,’ regardless of type. We will then continue to look at other areas of resilience based on additional feedback we receive from the industry.”

“While the industry overall has a strong track record for maintaining service reliability, many utilities tell Chartwell they are grappling with these ‘hazard’ challenges, even those that have enjoyed historically high levels of power quality and reliability performance,” Boutte said.

Daigler, who was previously a member of Edison Electric Institute’s National Response Executive Committee, said, “Utilities are living in a new reality because of large-scale events increasing in frequency, duration, and impact. Starting with Hurricane Katrina and Super Storm Sandy, the industry has had to look at how it supports catastrophic events in a new way.” 

“Today’s paradigm requires leaders to look beyond reliability to consider the broader challenge of resiliency,” he said. “More companies are recognizing they must prepare for catastrophic black-swan events arising from climate change or natural disasters, sophisticated cyber and physical threats, economic instability, evolving social trends, or the unintended consequences from advances in technology.”

Daigler brings to the initiative more than forty years of leadership experience across both the public and private sectors addressing emergency management, business continuity, risk management, climate change/adaptation, wildfire management, physical/cyber security, organizational change management, policy development, and planning. Prior to joining Chartwell, he was the managing director for Southern California Edison and has filled leadership roles with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Energy (DOE), the Environmental Protection Agency, and DOE’s national laboratories. Daigler is currently the CEO and Founder of Resiliency Advisory Services, LLC. 

Chartwell will convene initial roundtable conversations in the coming weeks to begin discussing this effort with utility leaders. If you would like to receive an invitation to an upcoming roundtable discussion, please contact Chartwell’s Anna Miller at [email protected].

In June, at Chartwell’s PowerUp Conference, Daigler will bring several industry executives together for a panel discussion on current utility emergency management practices and innovative approaches to address “all hazards,” organizational alignment, and other critical topics.