INSIGHT
Celebrating 35 Years of Innovation, Solution, and Client Success

Terry Brueck President and CEO

February was a milestone month at EMA. It marked the 35th anniversary of our founding. As we commemorate the occasion, we celebrate our clients and their many successes. From Day One, commitment to you has been our priority – to understand the problems and challenges you face and provide innovative solutions with exceptional service.

As we reflect on our 35 years in the industry, we must ask ourselves: “What will sustain our clients’ success in the long run?”

Staying Ahead of the Curve

Utilities operate in an ever-changing business environment. Contributing to the constant change is a wide variety of factors including political, economic, regulatory, legislative, and social issues. Many of these factors, while out of the utilities’control, determine how your organizations operate from day to day. A critical aspect of effectively managing any utility is staying ahead of the curve – anticipating the changes and building strategies that can adjust to the ever-changing demands and the emerging issues.

Our vision at EMA is to be “a world class innovator, partnering with our clients to advance performance.” To remain true to this vision, we have to stay ahead of curve, identify emerging industry trends and issues, and help you remain informed and equipped to succeed for the long haul.

We have seen many different trends and challenges during the years. In each instance, EMA has worked with clients like you to manage the impacts and outcomes of these trends, some of which include:

• using technology to improve business (making technology work for business, not the other way around)
• integration of technologies and leading business practices
• issues of privatization and realities of partnerships
• environmental issues and increased regulation
• aging infrastructure and rising capital costs
• technology convergence, integration, and cyber-security
• rising energy costs and concerns regarding emissions
• challenges of the aging workforce and the new generation of workers

Futures Research: Valuable for Utilities

Utilities will continue to face a multitude of new challenges. EMA has a long history of partnering with industry associations and research organizations on projects that will help you identify these challenges and see what is coming in areas that include: asset management, energy, cyber-security, IT, workforce, practices, performance measurement, and continuous improvement.

Partnering with other leading research organizations, EMA is leading a new futures study funded by the Water Research Foundation (formerly AwwaRF) entitled “Forecasting the Future: Progress, Change and Predictions for the Water Sector.” Futures studies provide valuable trend information that can help utilities anticipate the issues that may have significant bearing on how they will conduct business in the coming years.

Through the study, EMA and its research partners, including international utility participants, will work specifically to “identify and analyze the trends that are expected to influence the water sector over the next 20 years.” The results of this project will help utilities anticipate the demands of these trends and support the development of strong utility strategies.

This research on the future of our industry is part of our commitment to stay ahead of the curve. Our goal is to continue to participate in and support research efforts that will help your utility.

And finally, here’s to continued success – for all of us.

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FORESIGHT
Avoid Hard Times Tomorrow By Acting Today:
Advanced Planning for a CIS Upgrade or Replacement

Melanie Rettie Vice President

Your utility billing system, or Customer Information System (CIS), is aging. While it’s not quite ready to be scrapped, you know that day is coming within the next three to five years.

Replacing a CIS or performing a major upgrade on your existing system is a time-consuming process, which, if not managed properly, can create a huge workload. What you do today can help you minimize future risks and impacts and make the very most of your capital and labor investments down the road.

Seven Steps to Success

There are seven steps you can take now to prepare your staff, reduce the future workload and stress, level the cost, improve customer service, and maximize the benefits of a major CIS project down the road:

Step 1: Prepare leadership. Establish an appropriate budget to support the project needs (including backfilling key staff). Identify missing skills and capabilities within your organization (such as project management or effectively communicating) and begin acquiring them now.

Step 2: Develop staff buy-in and readiness. Discover where there is resistance within your organization and develop tactics to reduce the resistance.

Step 3: Plan for and allocate appropriate resources. How will this project impact your budget? How about staff? Determine the necessary budget and staff resources and be sure to include them in your budget planning process.

Step 4: Shift forward or defer work when possible. More traditional approaches toward a CIS implementation or upgrade may cause a huge bubble of work during a concentrated period of time. Careful planning can level out the project workload by shifting certain tasks forward and deferring others until after the replacement or upgrade.

Step 5: Reduce unnecessary work. Prior to replacing or upgrading your CIS, commit to identifying and streamlining inefficient work processes and automating those processes that can be automated. Also, eliminate “rework” that occurs because of poor data by assessing your data to identify the areas of “bad” data that need attention and clean-up before it becomes critical.

Step 6: Optimize capabilities prior to CIS project. Look for ways to optimize within the organization as well as in business processes and technologies (for example, updating your Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)/Interactive Voice Response (IVR) scripts, or making simple changes to existing reports that will save people time).

Step 7: Don’t forget continuous improvement! Plan for continuous improvement after the new or upgraded CIS is in place. You will discover new capabilities you will want to take advantage of that weren’t in the original plan (for example, automating certain activities once people have confidence in the system). Handle these by creating a post-implementation phase to capture additional benefits from your CIS investment.

Big Benefits

Taking action prior to your CIS project can net big benefits. Following these seven steps helps reduce fears of the upcoming CIS project and smooths out spikes in workload that are associated with the project. Just as important, the process prepares your organization for change, minimizing stress on staff and significantly reducing the risk of failure for your CIS project.

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Q & A INTERVIEW
Shared Services in the Us Public Sector

The shared services model of centralizing back-office functions within an organization or between separate institutions is not a new concept. While other regions, such as Australia, Singapore, and Canada have adopted shared services with great success, the US public sector has not been as quick to do so.

In the US private sector, shared services have thrived since the early 1980s, resulting in reduced costs and improved efficiency. In recent times of recession and budget shortfalls, some US public sector entities are considering the shared services model either enterprise-wide or with like organizations.

EMA spoke with Jerry Mechling, Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Founder of the Harvard Policy Group on Network-Enabled Services, about shared services in the United States.

Can you give us an example that explains the shared services concept?

Virtually everybody is cutting technology costs, in general, and more broadly, cutting support service costs. A way to do that is through shared services, which is essentially a scope and scale of how you organize activity. It is moving support services that were being done on a very small scale in departments, be it technology services, human resources, financial services, vehicle maintenance, or any of the things that aren’t strategic to the service being delivered to the public, but are essential for the production of those services, and then organizing these services in a technology world at a larger scale. One of those scales is enterprise-wide as a shared service.

Shared services are taking support service production (finances, human resources, technology and information services) and changing how it gets produced – changing reporting relationships, career paths, job definitions, and work process. People have talked about it for a long time.

Is there a government that is successfully doing this today?

Probably the leading-edge state that has gotten the most publicity, and deserves it, has been the one hit hardest and earliest by the economy, which is Michigan. For years, Michigan has had enormous pressures on how they’re going to handle things. They have consolidated, changed their work process, procurement, and who has authority over these services. They are doing it, and like a lot of people, they’re doing it largely because they feel they have to.

Are shared services more of a state-level endeavor or are we seeing this in municipal government, too?

You’re seeing it at all levels of government. Everybody is thinking about it. I don’t think there’s a question of whether this should be on your short list as something to care about.

Among the most interesting places that it’s starting to happen and will happen more and more is the smaller governments both because they’re now into computing in ways they weren’t before so they know they depend upon technology, but also because they’ve been hit horribly by recent financial problems.

Nova Scotia is famous for putting out an ERP system where they standardized not just for the province but for all municipalities in the province, all the hospitals and universities – everything through one procurement that could be slightly tailored to various divergent needs at the local levels. Again, a standardization where one system could serve all.

What’s happening in the United States?

We have talked for almost a decade about business process re-engineering. Some work has been done on it in government, but there’s been a lot of work done on it in the private sector, particularly on shared services. So the experience base is stronger in the private sector.

While most governments will say, “we’re very different,” and they are, they’re not as different when it comes to internal administrative services. The client for a service, in this case, is the internal worker who needs the information, the payroll system, or the financial information. In the United States, we have come to doing it later, but now because of the horrible financial situation, it’s on virtually everybody’s top rung.

What are the benefits and risks associated with shared services?

The primary thing here is you should have substantially lower unit costs. You should have greater unit effectiveness. The thing about any network services is that “bigger is a whole lot better” technologically, but it gets harder politically, particularly if you’re making a shift. With any pattern that has been accepted among a group of people, it takes a lot of energy to get enough people to agree that they’re dissatisfied with what they have and are going to move to a new pattern.

There’s a certain amount of standardization that comes in here. With a shared service, departments have to standardize, so somebody may have a problem saying, “we did it this way and now we have to do it a new way.” But it is easier to update everybody at the same time. Technology is a field where annual updates and keeping up with changes is really important.

With the risks, there is great skepticism inside and outside of government anytime they say, “we’re going to save you money.” There is suspicion on the part of any individual agency that now handles much of the technology itself that if shared services are implemented, not only don’t they save much, but it becomes service from a distant, larger group that’s no longer responsive.

The tricky part is convincing people you can implement to get the benefit that clearly comes from having a larger operation.

How does organizational culture play into this?

Culturally, we all know that there are tensions between the formal rules and the informal. When you go from a lot of technology support that has been pretty informally generated to a larger operation that is standardized and pretty centralized, that means we need much more explicit routines.

One thing that’s often quite different and important on the central staff side is that departments have to get into more explicit service level agreements. They really have to deliver more cost effective systems and better services for it to truly work. If they’re able to handle the implementation and culture shifts, they can do this. The key is controlling implementation.

How can public sector entities best learn more to move forward with shared services?

Governments need to think about how fast we learn from the early movers. If your government hasn’t yet done it, there are probably governments out there like yours that have.

Every bureaucracy that’s going to do this needs to connect with other governments who have done this. You need some networked communication and face time with the people who have actually done these things. Don’t invent your own wheel here. Get your hands on all those bureaucratic tools that every other bureaucracy has used and then adjust them to best fit your situation.

If you’re going to do one of these projects, send a group to spend a reasonable amount of time onsite with others who have done it. When you’re talking privately with people face-to-face, you pick up a lot of beneficial information and can tease out explicit information that no one will put on paper.

What trends are coming out of shared services?

It doesn’t have to be done inside an enterprise. It might be much more effectively and efficiently handled by a larger service. This is going toward the next big stopping point: “the cloud,” which is Internet-wide. Amazon now provides many institutions quick access to storage space and processor power. If you need backup or need to test things, you don’t have to buy a machine, bring it in, and buy staff to support it. They’ll sell it to you by the drink very quickly. Because it’s at a huge scale, the unit cost is really low. People are going to get interested in that.

Jerry Mechling Jerry Mechling, Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, is Faculty Chair of the Leadership for a Networked World Program and Founder of the Harvard Policy Group on Network-Enabled Services and Government. His studies focus on the impacts of information and digital technologies on individual, organizational, and societal issues. He is primary author of Eight Imperatives for Leaders in a Networked World, a series of policy papers. Dr. Mechling was formerly a Fellow of the Kennedy School Institute of Politics, served as an aide to the Mayor and Assistant Administrator of the New York City Environmental Protection Administration, and as Director of the Office of Management and Budget for the City of Boston.

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CUSTOMER STORY
El Paso Water Utilities
Energy Management Strategies Save Millions in Annual Electricity Costs

Clockwise from upper left: A natural gas engine-driven pump at the Nevins Booster Station; SCADA system at EPWU; One of EPWU’s electric co-generators; EPWU’s Canal Street Water Treatment Plant; Elevated tank; A view of the Jonathan Rogers Water Treatment Plant.

In early 2007, El Paso Water Utilities (EPWU) realized a 20% increase in its electrical cost for water and wastewater facilities, placing its total cost at nearly $13 million. Electric energy represented about 18% of the organization’s annual Operating and Maintenance budget.

In light of this significant cost increase, EPWU partnered with EMA to negotiate new rates with their electricity supplier, El Paso Electric Company (El Paso Electric) and implement new energy management strategies throughout their utilities. The results have been dramatic, with cost savings of more than $2.6 million each year.

Ed Archuleta President and CEO

“El Paso Water Utilities is the largest single customer of El Paso Electric Company,” said Ed Archuleta, President and CEO of EPWU. “Rising energy costs make operating our plants more expensive each year. With our ratepayers in mind, we were inspired to come up with an energy management strategy and become an ecological leader among public water suppliers.”

Relying on both ground and surface water supplies, EPWU uses traditional and advanced surface water treatment, as well as arsenic and desalination treatment. The associated energy cost to treat and convey this water from supply sources to customers is substanial. The energy cost to convey and treat wastewater is also significant.

To begin, EPWU and EMA discussed new rate opportunities with El Paso Electric – rates that would benefit both parties.

Nick Costanzo Vice President of Strategic, Financial & Management Services

“We were looking at ways to reduce our power costs as there’s pressure on utilities not to raise rates,” said Nick Costanzo, Vice President, Strategic, Financial & Management Services. “We approached the electric company with strategies that would benefit the electric company and ourselves. The crux of the matter was reducing their peak energy demands. They were bumping up against their system capacity and were willing to give us a discounted rate to reduce our demands during that time.”

New Rates: How They Work

Two new rate structures were proposed by El Paso Electric: a Critical-Peak Pricing (CPP) “Time-of-Use” rate and an Interruptible rate for El Paso’s largest water and wastewater facilities. The utility’s existing Municipal Pumping base rate of $0.0520/kilowatt hour (kWh) would serve as the rate for comparison to the proposed CPP rate at water distribution facilities. Variable fuel cost adjustments are added to these rates by El Paso Electric.

Critical-Peak Pricing, Time-of-Use Rates

Chart 1. Critical-Peak Pricing Rates

The CPP rates would apply to facilties within the El Paso city limits for the summer months of June through September when demand is at its highest. CPP base rates followed a three-tier, time-of-use structure (Chart 1):

1. A low Off-Peak energy rate for eight months (October-May). During June through September, this rate would also apply during weekends and weekdays, 8 p.m. to 10 a.m.
2. A high On-Peak energy rate (2.3 times the Off-Peak rate) for six hours during two periods of the weekday (10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 5 to 8 p.m.) June through September.
3. A very high Critical-Peak energy rate (4.5 times the Off-Peak rate) during peak weekday hours (1 to 5 p.m.) June through September.

Negotiations for the CPP rates focused on the energy charges and number of facilities on the rate. Negotiations also resulted in a requirement that El Paso Electric provide kilowatt hour pulse data to EPWU for connection to their Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system.

Interruptible Rates

An interruptible rate was proposed for EPWU’s largest load: a nine Megawatt water treatment plant (Jonathan Rogers Water Treatment Plant) and wastewater treatment plant (Roberto Bustamante Wastewater Treatment Plant), which have a combined load on a common meter.

Table 1. Interruptible Rate Structure

The interruptible rate included a low base energy charge and demand charges, resulting in significantly lower electricity costs than the Municipal Pumping rate. The rate is broken into a firm power component and an electrical power component. (Table 1)

Rate Analysis

The newly proposed rate structures required significant analysis of EPWU’s energy consumption data to identify how to best leverage these rates and implement new energy management strategies throughout the facilities to realize the greatest cost savings. The challenge was in evaluating the potential benefits and risks (cost and operational) associated with the new rates.

John Balliev Vice President of Operations & Technical Services

“The first thing was to look at our largest electric demands and see whether they would work with an interruptible rate,” said John Balliew, Vice President of Operations & Technical Services. “Then we looked at all other facilities to see whether we wanted them on the CPP rate. We had to go through all of our facilities and all of the electric demands and determine which ones would provide a payback on the CPP rate.”

Together, EPWU and EMA began the process of analysis in order to implement energy management best practices to substantially minimize electric energy costs.
“We had to make available all of the SCADA data for each one of the facilities in question so we knew how much was pumped at any given hour,” Balliew said. “And then we had to assemble all of the electrical bills that went with that.”

CPP Rates

Analysis of moving from a flat Municipal Pumping rate to CPP rates was based on the premise of using storage and a limited number of gas engine-driven pumps to shift electric pumping from Critical-Peak and On-Peak hours to Off-Peak hours.
This pump shifting strategy was used to develop weekday On-Peak, Critical-Peak, and Off-Peak pumping percentages for each pump in the distribution system for each summer month. The percentages were then used to estimate CPP rate pumping costs for the summer months. Additionally, monthly consumption data was extracted from energy bills for October through May to estimate the Off-Peak costs associated with winter months.

EMA and EPWU developed a rate analysis model to find opportunities associated with the CPP rates. The model used water consumption, time-stamped flow, and reservoir data from SCADA to provide a perspective of pumping operations on a summer peak day. This data was used as an “as-is” pumping profile for Off-Peak, On-Peak, and Critical-Peak periods.

Any pump shifting scenario had to meet daily consumption requirements. Daily water consumption data was analyzed to develop a monthly consumption profile. Due to the large number of pumps involved, a Consumption Index was established for every summer peak day.

Looking at data by month, a monthly average was defined. To estimate the benefit of pump shifting, the peak daily flows were multiplied by the monthly average Consumption Index. Pumping was then moved, based on pump rating, from Critical-Peak and On-Peak hours to Off-Peak hours. The primary constraint was that the total pumping requirements for the day must be met.

For water distribution alone, analysis indicated a potential savings of $436,000 per year by moving certain water distribution facilities to the CPP rate. The review also identified numerous opportunities where Critical-Peak and On-Peak electric demand could be shifted to times that offered lower rates.

Interruptible Service

The potential savings and risk associated with the interruptible rate proposed for the Bustamante and Rogers plants were determined by analyzing the annual maximum demand load profiles for the combined load at the plants. Load shedding could be requested by El Paso Electric at any given time during the year but could not exceed 300 hours in a year. Once notified by El Paso Electric, the plants have 30 minutes to reduce their combined electrical load to 1,500 kW or less. With local generation in place to offset the reduction in interruptible power, it was determined that this was a manageable risk.

Moving to Critical Peak Pricing

Analysis of electrical demand data suggested that three of EPWU’s wastewater plants also were good candidates for the CPP rates. EPWU could implement strategies to shift its electrical load to Off-Peak and On-Peak periods to realize a combined cost savings of about $79,000.

Analysis of the opportunities for savings using the CPP rates at these wastewater treatment plants led to numerous recommended actions, many of which were implemented. These included:

• Set dissolved oxygen setpoints lower during Critical-Peak hours.
• Use natural gas-driven blowers during Critical- and On-Peak hours.
• Run co-generator on digester gas during Critical-Peak hours.
• Turn off digester mixing during Critical-Peak hours.
• Move reuse pumps from Critical-Peak hours.
• Reschedule dewatering from Critical-Peak hours.
• Move centrifugal thickening to Off-Peak hours.
• Ensure filters do not backwash during Critical- or On-Peak hours.

Initially, EPWU’s wastewater lift stations were not viewed as good candidates for CPP rates because they were locally controlled, had small wet-wells, and responded to collection system flows whenever they occurred. However, with improved SCADA pump run data, several lift stations were added to the list of CPP facilities.
Analysis of operational scenarios and associated electrical loads led to the determination that EPWU’s newly commissioned desalination plant also would move to the new CPP rates.

Shifting water distribution system operations to CPP rates was significant and required implementation of an operating schedule for shifting pumping of the water from Critical-Peak to On-Peak and Off-Peak hours. Central Control operators remotely control the pumps to minimize electric pumping during Critical-Peak and On-Peak hours.

Moving to Interruptible Rates and Service

The move to interruptible electrical rates at the Bustamante (wastewater) and Rogers (water) treatment plants required careful adherence to new procedures to ensure the plants were prepared for the interruptions in electrical supply.

“With the interruptible rate, we are to be notified by the electric company at some point in time when they need to interrupt our service, and we have a set amount of time to reduce our load,” Balliew said. “They wanted a single point of contact so we decided that our central operator would take that call, and then he would make the calls to the individual plants.”

As agreed by EPWU and El Paso Electric, when emergency conditions arise that threaten to interrupt service to the El Paso community, El Paso Electric calls on EPWU to shed their electrical load at the Rogers and Bustamante plants to lessen the electric utility’s load.

Once the call is placed to EPWU’s central operator, the Bustamante and Rogers plants have 30 minutes to reduce their combined electrical load to the firm power level of 1,500 kW or less. Failure to reduce its load in a timely manner, will result in significant penalties for EPWU. However, the reduced rates generate cost savings in excess of $1.5 million each year.

Practice Drills. EPWU held drills to ensure they could drop their electrical loads at both plants to the firm power level within the requisite 30-minute timeframe. A call was placed to the central operator, day or night, that served as notice of interruption of service. EPWU then monitored how long it took the plants to drop their electrical loads to the firm power level. Once comfortable with their internal drills, EPWU held several trial runs with El Paso Electric.

Back-up Power. EPWU also had to ensure that they had back-up generation capacity ready to go to accommodate the plants once the interruptions in electrical supply occurred. “We had most of the generation capacity in place,” Balliew said. “It just hadn’t been used in a number of years because we have fairly reliable power. Everything had to be serviced and brought up to speed so that we could use it when we needed it.”

Communication: Key to Success

Changes in work practices were necessary to accommodate new procedures associated with new activities such as pump shifting and adjusting to interruptions in service. EPWU recognized that communication was essential to make these new practices succeed. O&M staff were briefed on the new energy management strategies.

“We brought in all plant superintendents and assistant superintendents and explained the importance of the project and how much money was at stake,” Balliew said. “Everyone was very enthusiastic in doing what needed to be done.”
Additionally, EPWU circulated information to O&M staff that explained the
new energy management strategies and asked for everyone’s cooperation
and support.

New Rates and Practices Net Big Results

Figure 1: Cumulative 2008 Energy Management Savings Figure 2: Water Distribution CPP Savings Figure 3: Wastewater Treatment Plant CPP Savings Figure 4: Desalination System CPP Savings Figure 5: Interruptible Rate Savings

The adoption of new CPP and Interruptible rates and implementation of strategic energy management practices has generated significant savings and improvements at EPWU.

Higher-than-expected Cost Savings. New energy rates were effective in January 2008. During the first year, EPWU’s energy performance exceeded their targeted savings of $2.4 million in electrical supply costs, by $296,000, yielding a $2,696,000 reduction in the base rate cost from the previous year when using the flat Municipal Pumping rate. Figures 1 through 5 show this savings cumulatively as well as broken out by area.

Improved Performance Measurement Practices. EPWU and EMA worked to establish strong performance measurement practices at the facilities to gauge measures against benchmarks that promote continuous improvement. Monthly billing data for each facility using the CPP rate is compared against the benchmark rate previously used, providing data that shows the success of the energy management program at each site.

A daily SCADA report showing the amount of pumping taking place during Critical-Peak, On-Peak, and Off-Peak hours, allows EPWU to continually assess its energy management strategies by providing a good daily operational metric, by facility, and identifies the successes and difficulties associated with shifting pumping to lower cost periods during the summer season.

Energy costs are dynamic, and EPWU is faced with a new round of rate increases in 2010. New rate models have been developed to evaluate the impact of these rates. Through changes in operating practices and close attention to the cost of energy in daily operations, EPWU is well positioned to minimize the impact of these costs to their customers.

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e-FLUENT
Intwegrating Technology
Public Utility Transforms How It Manages Work and Assets

Brian Schrantz Principal Consultant

Integrating technologies to improve process can produce revolutionary results. In 2008, our client, a Northeastern state public utility (the Utility) embarked on a pilot program that integrated its IBM Maximo® work and asset management system with mobile GIS technology. The results transformed their transmission line inspection process, sending the project into full production and roll-out in 2009.

Project Scope

The Utility operates 18 generating facilities and more than 1,400 circuit-miles of transmission lines. Its Transmission Business Unit operates and maintains all of the high-voltage transmission facilities. An integral part of the maintenance program is performing transmission structure and right-of-way inspections.

The Utility’s Transmission Maintenance department requested an easy tool to record line inspections. The current process was paper intensive with hard-copy reports and notes first prepared by line inspectors and then reviewed by Maintenance Resource Management planners. Seventy-five percent of transmission maintenance orders are created from these inspections. The hundreds of hard-copy documents related to any given line inspection were cumbersome for line crews to manage and maintain.

Automating Process

The Utility partnered with EMA to integrate Maximo with their enterprise ESRI GIS to provide a mobile GIS solution for field data collection. Deploying an ESRI ArcObjects-based mobile GIS platform, EMA built a custom integration directly into Maximo’s condition monitoring module. This integration allowed for field inspections that were initially entered into the mobile GIS to be loaded directly into Maximo. A data synchronization process was also designed to ensure bi-directional synchronization (GIS to Maximo and Maximo to GIS) of all the data sets involved in the process.

Training Crews

Buy-in from the Utility’s line crews was critical to the project’s success. During the pilot, EMA and the Utility’s IT and GIS staff involved line crews to obtain their input and requirements. End-user training was thorough and interactive. In addition to initial classroom training, the GIS staff spent time in the field with crews to ensure they felt comfortable with the new technology. Ultimately, feedback from line crews was used to enhance and refine the technology for full roll-out.

Benefits of Integrated Technology

Mobile GIS technology has transformed how the line crews work – moving from a completely manual work process to an easy-to-use, GIS-driven functionality that uses the Utility’s existing work order information. The technology replaces large volumes of hard-copy, reference material with a convenient electronic format that gives crews immediate access to critical asset data and work order information while in the field.

Other significant benefits include:

• Better Data – Fast! The integrity of asset data has improved significantly. Crews are more efficient, accessing data onsite and updating asset information with a built-in redlining feature. Updated data is available enterprise-wide nearly immediately – a huge improvement over previous wait times of more than a year to revise paper documentation.
• Risk Reduction. Incorporating GPS within the new, integrated technology provides an important historical record of asset performance and maintenance data that reduces risk exposure.
• Smarter Planning. Using work and asset data within a geographic context, planners can sort information spatially, resulting in better, more strategic planning.
• Better Backlog Management. Using up-to-date asset data and geography helps to more effectively manage, reduce, and ultimately eliminate any backlog of lower-priority work.
• Trend Identification. Asset data helps identify trends in maintenance issues before they reach a critical stage. It’s a proactive approach that promotes greater asset reliability.

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