Billboard on Highway 101 Celebrates Energization of North Coast School

The headline in a North Coast newspaper didn’t suggest a promising outcome, but a cross-functional PG&E effort helped turn things around.

The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat in September wrote: “Anova School was Finally Rebuilt 7 years After the Tubbs Fire, but Officials Fear PG&E May Delay its Reopening.” 

The story detailed the journey of Anova Center for Education in Santa Rosa. The school was destroyed in 2017 during the Tubbs Fire, which was caused by private electrical equipment. After years of fundraising and construction work, the school was ready for electrification and planned to reopen in 2025.

The article included scathing quotes from an Anova School leader who claimed that PG&E was keeping them from opening.

But Service Planning & Design Manager Becca Houston said the story didn’t reflect the effort that her team had put into serving Anova.

“We had been working with the customer for over a year and were aware that they had recently become extremely frustrated. They had a timeline to get the school up and running and didn’t feel that we were meeting it,” Houston said.  

The North Coast and Applicant Design Teams quickly sprang into action. Thanks to their prioritization and fast work, PG&E was able to energize the school on Oct. 24, significantly ahead of the school’s requested timeline.  

“The school was waiting on a pole set from PG&E, which we quickly escalated. We worked closely with the local team, the Service Planning Incident Management Team, Construction and other lines of business to expedite the work and get a crew on site. Once the pole was set, the ball was back in Anova’s court to complete trenching and installations,” said Houston. 

Over the next few weeks, PG&E and Anova collaborated to complete scheduled tasks and inspections and keep the project on track. 

“The Anova project was already a high priority for PG&E and Tanya Valentine from Service Planning played an important role in expediting additional components. One of the customer’s original frustrations was what they perceived as not enough communication, so PG&E continued to be in touch with the school almost daily,” said Houston.  

Members of the North Coast Regional Service Model team supported the escalation, bringing PG&E groups together to get the work done and giving the customer more insight into PG&E processes.   

“On the customer side, we spent some time helping them understand the new-service application process. When Anova submitted their application over a year ago, it may not have been clear that there was still work to be done on both sides before we could actually connect them to the grid. The confusion added to the frustration,” said John Leyba, principal on the Regional Service Model team. 

For the remainder of September and October, the team plowed ahead, meeting and exceeding deadlines for the project and communicating regularly with Anova until the work was complete. 

About a month after PG&E’s work was complete, a giant billboard was posted on the side of Highway 101 in Santa Rosa thanking PG&E for bringing Anova School online. It was courtesy of Gallaher Group, who helped fund the rebuild and was originally critical of PG&E’s participation. 

“For a customer to go from a deep dissatisfaction with PG&E’s work to celebrating the company on a community billboard—all within a few weeks—is an incredible turnaround. This is a case study in working together to put the customer at the heart of everything we do. What a way to close out 2024!” said Dave Canny, vice president for PG&E’s North Coast Region.