Technology Integration for Energy & Utilities in Corpus Christi, TX

We treat industrial-export customer workflows as a first-class design workstream rather than as exceptions to the standard pattern. These customers have contract-backed service levels with specific uptime requirements, planned outage coordination needs that integrate with their own maintenance and turnaround scheduling, interruptible rate structures with real dollar stakes, and reliability event coordination that requires direct operational-to-operational communication. We'd map the current workflow end-to-end for a representative industrial customer, identify the specific places where the standard utility pattern is producing manual work or commitment risk, and design integration patterns that support industrial-customer service as a first-class capability. This includes CIS customizations, OMS priority routing, direct-coordination communication integration, asset and reliability reporting specific to the industrial customer context, and the contract and settlement integration downstream. The investment pays back across all major industrial and export customers, not just the individual LNG facility.

It has been maintained operationally at AEP Texas Central and across South Texas utilities in ways we respect — the post-Harvey review produced real improvements. Where we typically still see integration gaps is in the specific patterns that carry data through multi-week restoration versus shorter events, in the coordination between AMI-driven outage intelligence and crew dispatch during the transition from active event to protracted restoration, and in the public communication pipeline that has to stay coherent when the event has moved past the acute news cycle but customers are still waiting for power. We'd look at the post-event reviews from Harvey and subsequent events, identify the specific places where integration pattern gaps surfaced, and redesign those patterns with better multi-week behavior. Pre-hurricane-season operational readiness reviews validate that the design works under simulated load. Post-season reviews apply real event lessons the same year, before they fade from memory. The discipline is cumulative — each season's improvements compound, and the gap between utilities that commit to this rhythm and the ones that revisit storm patterns only after failure widens every year.

Yes, and it's an area where targeted integration work produces measurable improvement. The interconnect backlog isn't just a queue problem — it's a multi-system integration problem. Interconnect study data flows through transmission planning tools, through the EMS for operational modeling, through ERCOT for market-side coordination, through asset management for the physical infrastructure work, and back to customer-facing systems for the developer communication. Every handoff is a place where delay accumulates. We'd map the actual interconnect workflow end-to-end, identify where integration handoffs are producing the most delay, and build integration improvements that let the interconnect team move projects through faster without adding headcount. This work pays back not just in throughput improvement but in customer satisfaction with the interconnect process, which has become a significant issue for developers dealing with ERCOT-wide queue times. The utilities that deliver cleaner interconnect experiences attract better developers on the projects that do clear the queue, which compounds into a better reliability and generation mix over time. That's a second-order benefit most integration programs miss.

Explicitly and from day one. The LNG-driven transmission investments in the Corpus Christi footprint have brought more assets into NERC CIP applicability than would have been the case a decade ago, and integration work touching bulk electric system cyber assets is firmly in scope. Every integration design includes a CIP scoping document: electronic security perimeter boundaries, compensating controls, change management implications. CIP-005, CIP-007, and CIP-010 are designed into the architecture, not retrofitted for audit. We coordinate with your CIP compliance lead throughout the engagement so there are no surprises. For integration crossing the ESP, we use data diode or one-way transfer patterns where appropriate, documented API gateways where bidirectional flow is required, and logging that gives your compliance team defensible audit trails. We've walked enough CIP audits to know where the documentation gaps typically surface — vendor access patterns, scope creep that drags new assets into applicability, and undocumented cross-boundary flows. We design against all three upfront.

Directly and in writing. Enterprise architecture decisions for AEP-family shared systems are made at the corporate level across operating companies, and AEP Texas Central integration work has to respect those decisions. We coordinate with enterprise architecture, document interface contracts explicitly, and keep the scope of Texas Central-specific work clearly distinguished from enterprise work. When Texas Central-specific patterns would benefit the broader AEP footprint, we document them in a form that supports enterprise adoption. When enterprise decisions create operating-company-level constraints, we're honest about what's achievable within those constraints. We've worked enough multi-operating-company utilities to understand the dynamics and not try to pretend the operating company exists in isolation or impose operating-company solutions on enterprise. The collaboration cadence matters: enterprise architecture reviews operate on a different calendar than operating company deliverables, and we plan around that rather than being surprised by it. Engagements that respect both cadences produce durable outcomes.

Four and a half hours on the ground one-way. For active implementation phases we're onsite weekly minimum, typically multi-day (three to four day onsite weeks). For steady-state work we're weekly or bi-weekly. We commit to onsite presence through pre-hurricane-season readiness reviews (typically May or June), through any active storm event during the engagement, and through post-season reviews (November). For a 12-month engagement we typically deliver 45-60 onsite days. Corpus Christi is more accessible than some of our markets for a Beaumont base, and we use that accessibility rather than defaulting to video calls for work that benefits from physical presence. When a system forms in the Gulf we can be onsite ahead of it; after landfall we stay through the restoration period if the engagement is active. That's the operational rhythm Coastal Bend utility work needs, and we structure for it.