For over two decades, ENTRUST has been at the forefront of innovation in utility engineering and consulting. “Powering the Transformation” is more than a campaign—it’s a celebration of our legacy of innovation and our unwavering commitment to pioneering cutting-edge solutions across multiple sectors.
Today, we continue this tradition by embracing forward-thinking practices that set us apart. Each group within ENTRUST embodies this spirit of innovation, contributing unique solutions that not only meet but exceed the evolving demands of our clients. Particularly, our consulting services go beyond the ordinary, offering unexpected advantages and creative solutions that make a tangible difference.
George DeLoureiro, Vice President of Electric Consulting, and Daria LaValle, Director of Project Management Consulting, go in depth about how we go beyond for our clients—and how we always have.
George leads ENTRUST’s Electrical Consulting Group, a team of around 120 professionals—including engineers, project managers, analysts, and construction experts—who specialize in delivering project solutions to clients across the electrical industry, from utilities to developers.
Since joining ENTRUST Solutions Group in 2017 through the acquisition of Energy Initiatives Group (EIG), George has brought his extensive experience managing diverse electrical projects, ranging from utility infrastructure to unique endeavors like art museum installations. His passion for working with talented teams to solve complex challenges aligns perfectly with the mission of #PoweringTransformation, driving innovation in consulting services to help clients achieve success.
George holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a Master’s Degree in Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is also a certified Project Management Professional, ensuring every project is managed with precision and expertise.
ENTRUST first started providing high-level consulting services to utilities in the early 2000’s as Energy Initiatives Group (EIG), a professional services firm started by four ex-utility employees. Most utilities were just starting to recognize the need for highly skilled and experienced Project Managers. EIG helped fill that need with PMs who had “been there, done that” and knew the challenges that these large projects faced. In addition to managing the “scope, schedule and budget”, the PMs were responsible for all facets of the project, including, but not limited to:
Most utilities were just recognizing the value that Project Managers provided and how they could help successfully deliver large, complex (and expensive) projects. Until then, most utilities had taken a segmented approach to project delivery with numerous hand-offs between project development, engineering, construction, closeout, etc.
Given this newfound “enlightenment”, the utilities found that they did not have the experienced professionals that understood all facets of a project and could successfully manage the same. ENTRUST (then EIG) was able to help fill that gap with seasoned professionals who had significant experience with utilities and understood all facets of project execution. Furthermore, the professionals at EIG brought best practices from other utilities that could be brought to benefit the clients.
ENTRUST identified early on that our utility clients would benefit from additional project support services to help them deliver on their complex projects. ENTRUST has established a “best in class” project controls team that works with the project teams to help our clients manage the project budgets and schedules. ENTRUST has also pioneered the approach to transmission infrastructure outage planning that enables our clients to take equipment out of service to implement the required projects to upgrade their systems. Finally, ENTRUST provides robust construction management and supervision to ensure that projects are successfully completed.
ENTRUST has managed the project team(s) responsible for the implementation of large-scale regional projects that included the construction of new transmission lines and/or substations. The large projects also included transmission line and substation upgrades and expansions. The projects teams managed all facets of the construction including engineering and design, material procurement, construction, stakeholder management, public relations, permitting and closeout.
ENTRUST has also been brought on to manage difficult projects that required special expertise, often being asked to “right the ship” on high-visibility projects that had gotten sideways.
Daria LaValle’s professional journey at ENTRUST Solutions Group is a testament to her expertise in the energy and utility sectors and her leadership in driving complex projects to success.
Since joining ENTRUST, Daria has advanced from a Senior Project Controls Consultant to her current role as Director of Project Management Consulting, where she leads with a vision of efficiency, quality, and innovation. Her background spans diverse roles, from managing employee programs to strategic project oversight in electric utilities.
Daria embodies the mission of #PoweringTransformation by fostering continuous improvement, guiding clients through change, and leveraging innovative practices to shape the future of energy solutions. Her dedication to maximizing operational efficiency and navigating regulatory landscapes makes her a crucial leader in our organization.
For our organization it is all about the “Why?”. What is driving our clients’ need for our services? How can we best deliver them? We are not an organization that comes in for a few weeks, says “do it this way”, then leaves and lets our client pick up the pieces. We believe in working within our client’s organization, their protocols, processes, procedures. We learn what is working well and recognize the challenges. Where appropriate we suggest efficiencies, new or improved processes, etc. We bring our years of experience with us to every project and always look to save our clients, and thereby their customers, money in delivering their capital projects through efficiency, risk mitigation, and solution minded delivery.
We not only do our homework to understand each of our client’s industries, regulatory environments, future needs, etc., we find it critical to have introductory conversations to understand their how and why that drives what needs to be done. We believe success equates to a true partnership where we are truly invested in helping our clients reach their goals. Whether we provide short term or long-term support, process improvements, audit evaluations, or taking on high profile projects thanks to our experience to ensure successful project completion, we have our client’s best interests in mind.
Ongoing communication between our teams and our clients’ teams is crucial to creating a seamless and efficient experience. We believe regular communication is vital to supporting the level of service we want to provide our clients. To make sure we are meeting, and more importantly exceeding our clients’ expectations we need to frequently do “start, stop, continue” analyses to make sure we are aligned with our clients’ needs. We work with the client to agree on anything that we need to start doing that we have yet to do, stop and/or address items/tasks that are not working, and continue to deliver to the best of our capabilities along agreed upon objectives with the client. We understand that the landscape our clients reside in are not static and it is important for us to be flexible and open to helpful feedback.
Although we have extensive experience in the industry, we know that each client’s experiences, goals, priorities, challenges, etc., can be very individualistic so it is important to understand those to help support our clients in reaching their goals. We work with our clients to understand their short term and long-term goals. We discuss their current pain points so we can help provide mitigations or solutions. We seek to understand their priorities and make sure our team knows as well. Even though our resources are brought on for our experience, each member of our team knows that our goal is to help our clients succeed. Our “why” is to create a partnership that allows an environment of growth, opportunity, efficiency, and performance for our people and for our clients.
One of our most important value-adds is to take on much of the onboarding process of our resources for our clients. Of course, individual clients will have their own security and computer access processes, etc., this is more about the actual day in, day out, job performance and delivery. We provide support for our resources to guide them through client expectations, deadlines, reporting requirements, etc., but in addition, sharing key individuals and teams to address particular topics, necessary training, and more. This enables the ramp up period for our resources to be noticeably short and allows our team to bring extensive value to our clients on day one. Our goal is to continuously be a solution for our clients. So that means we look to problem solve internally as a team and provide solutions and/or options for our clients. The utility industry is challenging, and there are a lot of demands on our clients’ time. We understand and value that, so we strive to make sure we are a support and solution and not another challenge for them to address.
We are solution minded in all that we do.
For our project managers they not only look many steps ahead to mitigate challenges to delivery, but they create a solution minded project team that understands the “why” of the project, and this creates the dedication of all members of the project team to deliver. The project team is made up of many individuals of differing backgrounds, expertise, and different employers but our project managers bring them together as one towards one goal. This has not only led to projects being delivered exceptionally well, but also many receiving internal and external recognition and awards.
For our project controls specialists, we have individuals who love playing in the weeds to analyze and provide the project teams the ability to be proactive vs reactive whenever possible. We also bring best practices to the many processes involved.
One recent significant impact was with a client that operated in four separate regions, and with that had at least double the versions of cash flow files to aid project teams in budgeting, forecasting, and variance analysis. However, all regions had the same deliverables. This, along with a new reporting application about to be rolled out with a new work breakdown structure (WBS) was a recipe for this to fall through the cracks and inconsistencies, as well as double the workload for the analysts. Our team proposed a common cash flow file format, that not only created a consistent approach across all regions, it was also built with formulaic intelligence to reduce human error, create efficiency for monthly tasks, as well as help translate the current WBS with the new application WBS.
This not only improved the current workload, but it also built in flags and indicators for proactive decision making, allowed more teamwork as all were looking at the same format, and enabled the rollout of the new application to be more easily managed regarding the analyst tasks. This was not completed in a vacuum. Our team led input sessions to make sure we included the “must-haves” from particular regions, the needs of the new application deliverables, and to reduce duplicative tasks. Then we led a team that automated as much as possible to make the monthly cycle more efficient.
This became critical as with the roll-out of the new application the timeline available for the analysts to complete their tasks was significantly shortened. If we had not proactively taken these steps to improve this work it would have been devastating to the monthly cycle activities, and with the flags and tools created in the new file, analysts were able to point out issues in the new application early in the pilot stages allowing adjustments and corrections to be made prior to full roll-out.
As we move forward, ENTRUST remains steadfast in its dedication to transforming the energy landscape through innovation, partnership, and a commitment to excellence. The #PoweringTransformation campaign not only reflects our legacy but also highlights our ongoing efforts to stay ahead of industry changes while continually supporting our clients.
By blending our deep-rooted expertise with an openness to new ideas and technologies, we strive to shape the future of utility solutions. Our clients are more than just customers—they are partners in transformation, and together, we are creating a resilient and efficient future for the energy sector.
Want to learn more about #PoweringTransformation? Check out our page here.
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info@entrustsol.com