{"id":5551,"date":"2018-12-14T12:05:18","date_gmt":"2018-12-14T12:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ecm.eng.auburn.edu\/wp\/emag\/?p=5551"},"modified":"2018-12-18T20:45:05","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T20:45:05","slug":"its-my-job-herbie-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ecm.eng.auburn.edu\/wp\/emag\/?p=5551","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s My Job: Herbie Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_5552\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5552\" style=\"width: 2784px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ecm.eng.auburn.edu\/wp\/emag\/files\/2018\/12\/Herbie-Johnson-Photos-2-of-23.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-5552 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/ecm.eng.auburn.edu\/wp\/emag\/files\/2018\/12\/Herbie-Johnson-Photos-2-of-23.jpg\" alt=\"Herbie Johnson\" width=\"2784\" height=\"1856\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5552\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Herbie Johnson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong><em>Herbie Johnson &#8217;94<\/em><\/strong><br \/>\n<strong><em>Civil Engineering<\/em><\/strong><br \/>\n<strong><em>General Manager of Southern Company,<\/em><\/strong><br \/>\n<strong><em>Hydrogeneration<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Before Auburn\u2026<\/strong> Out of high school, I went into the military. It gave me discipline and the chance to figure out that I wanted to get a college education. My father and grandfather built houses, so I always had an interest in construction. That ultimately led me to civil engineering. I toured the schools and felt that Auburn had one of the best programs in the nation. I have a passion for civil, and I feel very fortunate to have started my job 25 years ago in hydro at Alabama Power Company.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Starting out\u2026<\/strong> Our company does a great job of developing the technical side of individuals as soon as they start in the company. I started in the technical aspects of hydroelectric generation as a hydrologist. From that point, I went into the plants and learned how they operate, what it takes from a team of people to keep the plant running \u2013 from dam safety to keeping the lights on \u2013 how to keep the water regulated, and how to make sure we meet state laws and regulations. I had the chance to start managing a dam as superintendent at Thurlow Dam in Tallassee. From there, it just progressed. I managed other plants within our system and did some large construction projects, proving the ability to transfer my skills of civil and project management to large-scale projects. That gave me the opportunity to come back into our hydro organization as the general manager and support this great team of people that keeps our hydro fleet running.<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-container\" style=\"margin-bottom: 15px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4P2dThb3ZVE\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><strong>A day in the life\u2026<\/strong> I have the opportunity to work in the most beautiful places in our state, and I consider myself very fortunate. It\u2019s almost like every day is a vacation. My work routine is varied, and there\u2019s hardly a day that I repeat the same task, so there\u2019s always an interesting challenge. Each of the 14 lakes we have in Alabama Power Company has its own community and its own municipal, agricultural, environmental and recreational needs, so there\u2019s not one template for how we manage those resources. One of the largest things is learning the individual personalities of each of those lakes, how they interact with the community, and what the community values. Once you have that set, then matching the hydrology and managing the water resources is kind of the easy part. Keeping the balance of needs from the communities and all the stakeholders is probably one of the most challenging, but most interesting, parts of the job.<\/p>\n<p>I still leverage Auburn for support. We recently partnered with the School of Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Aquatic Sciences on some work studying aquatic species on our rivers. Auburn is a fundamental part of stakeholder input that helps us do our job better and be more in touch with our communities. We often go back to Auburn for their services, their talent and their students to support what we do to manage these projects. I feel great that I\u2019m in a job that\u2019s kept me in tune with Auburn in that manner.<\/p>\n<p><strong>My Auburn experience\u2026<\/strong> After serving in the Air Force, I graduated with a degree in civil engineering in 1994. When I look at my time at Auburn, I remember being part of a good community. Partnering with teams, having study groups, finding out our strengths and weaknesses and learning who could help us understand something better, as well as how I could share with them to help strengthen a gap they may have had, were all important parts of my experience. Working with a community of people in study sessions, and ultimately becoming a success by graduating with a degree, was my favorite part of my time at Auburn. Those friendships have lasted a long time and are still in play today. I rely on a lot of those same study partners to bounce off ideas, questions and challenges. It\u2019s been a positive experience to see that they have also advanced in their careers to be leaders and to contribute to this great state and community. I remember Dr. [Joe] Judkins, who chaired the civil engineering department when I was there, and as he taught and would test you, it wasn\u2019t about just repeating formulas and doing mathematical equations. Dr. Judkins taught us to use common sense. I didn\u2019t really appreciate it until I graduated and came to work for this company. When we took Dr. Judkins\u2019 tests, we were applying common sense to real-world business cases. If you can do that, you can just about be successful in doing anything you want to accomplish as a civil engineer from Auburn.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What drives me\u2026<\/strong> When I interact with our communities and our stakeholders, when I talk to our current employees or the young employee we\u2019re going to hire, I want them to know our hydro plants are forever assets, and that we\u2019ve got a plan for the next hundred years. Several of our dams are already over 100 years old. We want people to know that we\u2019re already thinking about how we\u2019re going to preserve these assets with sound engineering and innovation. We\u2019re asking ourselves, \u2018What type of employees will it take? What type of training and skill sets are necessary to maintain the equipment?\u2019 I would say the \u201chundred-year plan\u201d is the thing I really enjoy about my work. It\u2019s not just a 5-year, or even 20-year, outlook. We\u2019ve got to really think about the future, and I\u2019ve got to pull from that civil engineering background and foundation that Auburn gave me when I was there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Career success\u2026<\/strong> I\u2019ve had the opportunity to serve as the president of the National Hydro Association for the past two years. We work on legislation to keep the process of licensing and relicensing our hydroelectric plants, not only for Alabama Power Company, but across the U.S., as efficient as possible, so it doesn\u2019t impact ratepayers and our stakeholders in a negative manner. The opportunity to work in Washington, D.C. and manage that process, as well as manage that organization as the president, has been a dream come true for me. One of the highlights of my 25-year career was when I had a chance to testify before Congress about the efficiency of the licensing process and share our thoughts and ideas as an industry on how to keep the process efficient for the next hundred years. That five minutes I had before Congress was a highlight of my career so far, but I hope for many more highlights to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Herbie Johnson &#8217;94 Civil Engineering General Manager of Southern Company, Hydrogeneration Before Auburn\u2026 Out of high school, I went into the military. It gave me discipline and the chance to figure out that I wanted to get a college education. My father and grandfather built houses, so I always had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>It&#039;s My Job: Herbie Johnson &raquo; Auburn Engineer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ecm.eng.auburn.edu\/wp\/emag\/?p=5551\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It&#039;s My Job: Herbie Johnson &raquo; Auburn Engineer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Herbie Johnson &#8217;94 Civil Engineering General Manager of Southern Company, Hydrogeneration Before Auburn\u2026 Out of high school, I went into the military. 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