PR 10-20
BONNEVILLE POWER ADMINISTRATION
MEDIA ADVISORY: Monday, July 27, 2020
CONTACT: Kevin Wingert, 503-230-4140/971-207-8390
or 503-230-5131
BPA selects John Lahti to lead Transmission Field Services
Portland, Ore. – The Bonneville Power Administration has announced the selection of John Lahti as its vice president of Transmission Field Services.
Lahti will lead roughly one-third of BPA’s workforce responsible for field operations, emergency response, and construction and maintenance of BPA’s roughly 15,200 circuit miles of transmission lines in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.
“John is the right person at the right time to lead this vital component of BPA’s Transmission Services organization,” said BPA Chief Operating Officer John Hairston. “Transmission plays a critical role in the value that BPA provides to the region. John has shown himself to be highly effective in leading groups that are dedicated to preserving and expanding the availability of that transmission and doing so in a cost-effective manner.”
As manager of Construction and Maintenance Services, Lahti led a complex and sensitive reorganization in 2018 to create a more effective and streamlined process, assuring execution of the agency’s Transmission Services capital program on time and within budget. The plan consolidated resources from across multiple work groups into a single organization in a span of six months, which resulted in greater resource visibility and project execution transparency. During his five-year tenure in Construction and Maintenance Services, Lahti managed an annual budget of more than $47 million and a multidisciplinary team of more than 220 professional, skilled crafts and trade employees.
“The bottom line is John Lahti delivers results and – just as important to me – he delivers those results safely,” said Richard Shaheen, senior vice president for Transmission Services. “He played a critical role in partnering with our Safety organization to reduce recordable injuries and improve other key indicators of safety and human performance.”
“I look forward to this new challenge at BPA, working with a multitude of employees and across disciplines toward a common goal of preserving and enhancing the value of our transmission system and keeping the lights on in the Northwest,” Lahti said.
Lahti’s career has included many facets of transmission, including front line worker, resource management, strategic organization and planning, and incident response and system restoration.
“John has covered our field services organization from soup to nuts in his nearly three decades at BPA,” Shaheen said. “His experience, leadership, and operational excellence make him the perfect choice for leading this vital component of Transmission Services as we seek to drive greater value to our customers and the region.”
His journey at BPA began as an electronics engineer in July 1992. He quickly rose to management levels, first as a Power System Control district manager in The Dalles and then as a deputy regional manager out of Idaho Falls. Lahti returned to PSC to supervise the program across BPA’s service territory before becoming manager for Commissioning and Testing. Lahti served as acting vice president for Engineering and Technical Services and temporarily served as a Transmission Business Strategist before landing in his current role as manager of Construction and Maintenance Services.
Lahti earned a bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from the University of Idaho in 1992. He holds certification from the Institute of Asset Management and a Utility Executive Certificate from the University of Idaho. Lahti is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Lahti begins his new role on Aug. 2.
About BPA
The Bonneville Power Administration, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, is a nonprofit federal power marketer that sells wholesale, carbon-free hydropower from 31 federal dams in the Columbia River Basin. It also markets the output of the region’s only nuclear plant. BPA delivers this power to more than 140 Northwest electric utilities, serving millions of consumers and businesses in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana and parts of California, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. BPA also owns and operates more than 15,000 circuit miles of high-voltage power lines and 261 substations, and provides transmission service to more than 300 customers. In all, BPA provides nearly a third of the power generated in the Northwest. To mitigate the impacts of the federal dams, BPA implements a fish and wildlife program that includes working with its partners to make the federal dams safer for fish passage. It also pursues cost-effective energy savings and operational solutions that help maintain safe, affordable, reliable electric power for the Northwest. www.bpa.gov
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