Kyler Flores has been at City Light for more than five years. He first joined the utility as an intern and was later recruited by his former colleagues to return as part of the Distribution Mapping Team. “I supervise the Looped Radial Distribution Mapping Team,” Kyler said. “There are eight people on my team. They’re located at our service centers, Seattle Municipal Tower and the System Control Center.”
Born and raised in Washington state, Kyler attended Edmonds Community College and the Universal Technical Institute for Automotive Technology before graduating from Seattle University with a degree in civil engineering. “At Seattle University the motto is to develop the whole person, because of that, it is required to take courses on Ethics, Philosophy, and Theology,” Kyler shared. These courses gave me a broader perspective on how my actions affect the environment, people, and communities and I’m grateful I had to take them.
In this week’s (spot)Light, Kyler talks about his family and life at City Light.
“I live in Everett with my wife Kirn and two children Mata (two years old) and Suhavee (five months old). I like to enjoy the moments I have with my family, especially my kids since they grow and change so quickly. I play soccer on Sundays in a league in Everett. I actually played soccer for two years at Edmonds Community College. I also love to read and watch anything Sci-Fi. Frank Herbert is my hero.”
“An internship is what first attracted me to City Light. It was posted as an electrical, mechanical and civil co-op. A year into it, I found out there were no mechanical or civil aspects! What kept me around were my colleagues and the challenge of learning about the utility and its systems, applications and procedures. The same notion brought me back to City Light, but the second time around there was an updated Geographic Information System (GIS). There were opportunities to streamline processes and supply our internal and external customers with information they had been needing and requesting.”
“My team has many responsibilities. We maintain the as-built electrical model of the Looped Radial Distribution System in GIS; maintain overhead and underground structures and transformers in Work and Asset Management (WAMS); maintain transformer to customer connectivity and underground drawings and respond to general requests for maps. The data we maintain is seen in City Light’s quarter section maps, Advanced Grid Analytics, Outage Management System, CurrentView, WAMS, and Customer Care and Billing. Currently, I’m reviewing our processes and focusing on improvements and efficiencies, so we can meet customer needs.”
“I enjoy the people at City Light. I believe people are genuine about their commitment to provide a quality product to our customer-owner and it’s contagious. I also enjoy the challenge. Things have been done a certain way at City Light for many, many years – no matter the division. With new technology, there’s an opportunity to change our processes, to maintain data that has not been previously maintained, and to provide additional information in a user-friendly way to our internal and external customers. It’s challenging to reach across well-established silos to convince others to do things differently. But I believe it’s worth the effort because in the long run, we’ll be able to provide a higher quality product to our customer-owners.”