2-12 Identify and document enhanced design requirements for primary and backup control centers for pandemic operations

This page was last updated by Adrian Kelly October 26th 2021. Contact akelly@epri.cm for more details

Notes

1. To ensure consistency and standardization in terminology (and using ESCC definitions) in the below information the term "Critical Operations Employees" refers to:

• Control Center Operators - shift crew, including supervisors and managers. For transmission, this role must be performed in a control center within a secure Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) perimeter. Depending on the operational function, the role of the control center operator and the dispatcher can be combined.
• Dispatcher personnel - who interact with employees in the field. In some situations in distribution, this role can be carried out remotely or carried out in field offices.
• Direct support personnel - who assist in performing operational activities such as outage planning and switch order writing.
• Indirect support personnel - who assist with the maintenance and security of IT and OT tools in the control center.

All except control center operators can work remotely in some form, but it's highly likely all will need access to the control center facility in some form, even during a pandemic, when travel may be restricted.

2. The term " company/organization" is used as a catch-all to represent, companies, utilities, government-owned organizations, investor-owned entities.

Control Center Design Practices for Upgrade or Newly Built Designs

Utilities take different approaches to control center design when it comes to location, layout, desk arrangement, and desk setup. This is due to the size of the facility, the size of the transmission or distribution footprint under control, the number of staff in the facility, the functions being performed in the control center, and other factors such as tradition. As a result of the 2020-21 pandemic; transmission and distribution system operators are considering changes to existing and new facility designs to mitigate the risk of pandemic and disease spread and ensure resilience for future major issues. Some of the design changes and guidelines are summarised below.

Anciliiary Facilities in COntrol Center

• During the 2020-21 pandemic, some utilities utilized training facilities, conference rooms, or unoccupied office spaces within facilities containing control centers to further separate operators.
• It is advantageous to have adequate "flexible" space within the control center facility. This will allow spaces to be easily converted between normal office space, pandemic or emergency response, or lodging facilities if required in an emergency.

Bathroom Facilities

• Comfort facilities such as bathrooms should be designed to be accessible and used by critical operations employees only when access is restricted. This means the design should reflect the fact that critical operations employees and normal employees should not share facilities.
• Bathroom facilities should be designed with adequate space to accommodate pandemic-related distancing requirements.
• Bathroom facilities should be located as close as possible to the operations workspaces, to limit unnecessary foot travel and reduce the cross-contamination risk.
• There should be adequate showering facilities to accommodate sequestered critical operations employees. These may not be in the same place as the bathroom facilities for the critical operations employees, but they should be available in a space that can be easily set up in the event of a sequestration operation.

Building Entrance / Exit and Building Access

• Facilities should be designed to have a separate and segregated key card access entrance and exit for critical operations employees only.
• Facilities should be designed to have, if possible, a pod for entrance with security such as a close-door-open-door system.
• The car park (or critical operations employee-only car parking spaces) should be conveniently located to the operator entrance/exit to prevent lapses in access protocols, especially in inclement weather.
• Security access to the perimeter should be limited to personnel who have completed health status surveys (see Deliverable 2-11). This requirement requires results of the health survey to be securely made available to facility security.

Building Foot Traffic Design

• Facilities should be designed to reduce intermingling between operations and non-operation staff. Foot traffic flows should be designed to minimize cross-over or contacts within 6 feet (2 meters).
• There should be adequate doors to the facility to allow for segregated entrance and exit doors to be implemented during a pandemic, to limit cross-contamination.
• There should be a one-way system for foot traffic through the control center facility, which can be implemented during a pandemic.

Building Layout

• Where possible and practicable, the desk layout should be adjusted to ensure a 6 feet / 2-meter distance is maintained between personnel.
• Cross-contamination minimization practices in design should be implemented by using spaces that are only accessible from the control room floor.
• Workstations/consoles should allow for the possible installation of perspex or plastic guards between workstations, if necessary

Hygiene and Health

• As well as having handwashing facilities in the kitchen and bathrooms, it is good practice, to install handwashing stations, with plumbing installed, within the control center to facilitate regular hand washing without leaving the room.
• It is good practice to consider medical facilities for nurses/doctors for testing and diagnosis in a secure and isolated environment.
• Consider the inclusion of a flexible space that can be easily repurposed as an isolation area with easy access to building exits in case of emergency ambulance transfer.

Kitchen and Food Preparation Facilities

• To design a control center facility to be resilient for pandemics, it must have provision to accommodate the temporary sequestration of the critical operations employees. This requires lodging facilities. A kitchen facility for cooking and food preparation for critical operations employees on-site may also be required as part of the control center design.
• Kitchens should be designed and built to be large enough to accommodate multiple people preparing and eating food while respecting distancing requirements.
• Install duplicate cooking and food preparation facilities if this is possible.

Location of Control Center

• The location of the control center is very important to its resilience. Locations in areas of increased public activity, such as downtown in a city or office block will pose increased risks during a pandemic with high levels of community spread.
• If possible main and backup control center facilities should be located remotely and isolated, with consideration given to the living likely locations of operators.

Lodging Facilities

• Development or installation of permanent or temporary lodging facilities either within the control center building or within walking distance of the building in a separate building.
• The development of these facilities can also be advantageous for weather-related events or system emergencies that require operators to shelter in place, adding an additional benefit to the investment.
• There should also be adequate space within the external physical security perimeter car park, for RVs for lodging as a backup for permanent lodging facilities, if they are required.

PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) and Storage

• PPE will be required during a pandemic so safe storage will be required. This storage will be required in the facility, but not necessarily close to the control center space or within the CIP security perimeter.
• It should be located, such that it is easily stocked and checked by noncritical operations employees staff.
• In the control center building there should be adequate space for a locker room for critical operations employees, taking consideration of required physical distancing measures. In particular, the storage of individually assigned peripheral devices, such as computer equipment, should be seamless, as well as resources to clean the equipment.

Primary and Backup Control Center Designs

• If possible, there should be a similar operating experience in both primary and backup (where this is possible given space and equipment constraints). So critical operations employees have the same views of the system, application accesses, facility access, etc.
• Some companies/organizations run Hot standby / Hot standby systems for operations. Others use Hot/Warm and some use Hot/cold. There are some differences in approach to this across the industry and the approach should be company dependent.

Ventilation and Air Conditioning

• The measures in control rooms for pandemic resilience will take a multi-faceted engineering approach, which may include measures in the categories of Ventilation, filtration, HVAC control improvements, Purification, Relative humidity control, Occupancy control, Energy/heat recovery, and Retro-Commissioning.
• Some of these have specific requirements made by the ASHRAE (e.g., MERV 13 and above filters) and some are more specific to the building’s HVAC system (e.g., heat recovery/energy wheels) or the specific climate. So the ventilation and air condition measures are a combination of industry-wide guidelines and specific needs of the particular building.
• For more information, please see project deliverables from WS1 - Health and Disinfection Methods and Technologies, and the "Pandemic Best Practices: Ventilation and Engineering Controls" when its released in 2021.

[Ref: EPRI]

References

EPRI tech Brief Report 2020

Powering Through Together: Identifying COVID-19 Transmission and Distribution Operations Practices Download Report

ESCC

The electricity subsector council (ESCC) release a series of documents and practices for operation in pandemic conditions. Resource guide last updated July 7th 2021

ESCC Assessing and Mitigating the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) A RESOURCE GUIDE