[Kevin Praet (Adm)]

Hello Safety Analytics Community Members,

I hope all is well! We are just under one week away from our September Safety Analytics Community Conversation and want to get you excited about the session taking place. On Tuesday September 28th at 2:00 PM CT, we’ll be joined by the following presenters who will be leading a presentation around Gas Dig-in Analytics Use Case: Can you find a broken needle in an Everest-sized haystack?

– Thomas Kautzman, BI Analyst, Data Science (Avista Corp)

– Kim Boynton, Senior Analyst, Data Science (Avista Corp)

– Robert Hughes, Damage Prevention Analyst (Avista Corp)

As this discussion is interactive, we urge you to come prepared with questions and your insight.

Learn more about this session and our speakers below!

Session Description:

The purpose of this use case at Avista was to predict which dig requests are most likely to result in a dig-in and to enable targeted mitigation to reduce overall dig-in rate. Avista wanted to reduce line hits during excavation to improve safety measures. During this session, the team from Avista will present their use case and talk through the issues they encountered developing a predictive model, and the pivot they made to a consequence model.

Speaker: Thomas Kautzman, BI Analyst, Data Science (Avista Corp)

Thomas Kautzman is a Data BI Analyst on the Data Science team with Avista Utilities. He was hired as the Data Science team’s first student intern in 2018 and has been working as a full-time employee since graduating from Eastern Washington University in 2019 with degrees in Information Systems and Data Analytics. In his current role, Thomas assists a large number of the business units at Avista with a wide range of data science/analytics tasks, including data visualization, data pre-processing/cleaning, statistical analysis, and predictive modeling. 

Speaker: Kim Boynton, Senior Analyst, Data Science (Avista Corp)

Kim Boynton is a Senior Analyst on the Data Science team with Avista Utilities. He has more than 26 years of experience in the utilities industry. He has served in many roles during his career at Avista from software developer to applications manager and IT auditor. In his current role, Kim actively promotes analytic self-service throughout the organization by providing support to the analyst community and delivering analytic solutions to the business units. 

Speaker: Robert Hughes, Damage Prevention Analyst (Avista Corp)

Robert Hughes is an underground facilities Damage Prevention Analyst working on Avista’s Gas Compliance team. Prior to this position he worked in Avista’s Data Science team as a student intern. Robert’s background is in data analytics using Python and R and visualization software such as Power BI and Tableau.  

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A calendar placeholder for this community conversation was sent out earlier in the month via my alternate email address (kpraet@sg.utilityanalytics.com). If you are not seeing a placeholder on your calendar for Tuesday, September 28th at 2:00 PM CT, please reach out to me so I can be sure you are forwarded the invite an alternate way.

Thanks and I look forward to connecting next week!

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Kevin Praet
Membership Coordinator
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
Boulder CO
315-440-3033
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Original Message:
Sent: 09-01-2021 15:00
From: Kevin Praet
Subject: Upcoming September (2021) Community Conversation

Hello Safety Analytics Community Members,

I hope all is well! With September just kicking off, I wanted to reach out and get you excited for our September (2021) Safety Analytics Community Conversation. On Tuesday, September 28th at 2:00 PM CT, we will be joined by the following presenters who will be leading a presentation around Gas Dig-in Analytics Use Case: Can you find a broken needle in an Everest-sized haystack?

– Thomas Kautzman, BI Analyst, Data Science (Avista Corp)

– Kim Boynton, Senior Analyst, Data Science (Avista Corp)

– Robert Hughes, Damage Prevention Analyst (Avista Corp)

As this presentation will include Q&A and open discussion, we encourage you to come prepared ready to ask questions and share your insight. I’ll be providing more information on this session one week prior to our meeting but you can always learn more about each of our upcoming Community Conversations on our Events Page HERE.

Our latest IT update allows me to send meeting placeholders directly to your calendars through my alternate email address kpraet@sg.utilityanalytics.com. I sent out invitations for this community, and each of our other communities, earlier this week. If you did not receive a calendar invitation let me know so I can help troubleshoot. As this seems to be an issue with some of our members firewalls, we recommend whitelisting my new email address kpraet@sg.utilityanalytics.com to ensure any invites don’t go to your spam/junk folders.

Again please let me know if you have any questions/concerns or do not have a calendar placeholder on your calendar.

Thanks and I look forward to connecting with you all this month!

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Kevin Praet
Membership Coordinator
Utility Analytics Institute (UAI)
Boulder CO
315-440-3033
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