GIS Helps position west OHIO company for success
Ty V. Lotz
Superintendent of Engineering, West Ohio Gas Company
319 West Market Street, Lima, OH 45801
Introduction
Eight months early and 10 percent under budget. Those are the vital statistics for the GIS now in
operation at West Ohio Gas Company.
West Ohio Gas is intent on positioning itself to grow in the increasingly competitive energy
market by being more competitive and by focusing more intently on new products and services
to meet customer needs. The GIS system delivered earlier in 1996 ahead of schedule and under
budget will help the company do precisely that.
The company is based in Lima, Ohio and has been in operation for over 100 years. West Ohio
Gas has 159 employees and serves more than 60,000 customers with more than 1,200 miles of
distribution lines. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Consolidated Natural Gas Co. (CNG),
based in Pittsburgh.
West Ohio Gas is well on its way toward accomplishing its ambitious corporate objectives.
Company executives estimate that on average more than 1,000 customers will be added to the
system annually over the next three years. What’s more, the utility is working to expand natural
gas services to no fewer than seven communities in the west central part of the state.
The corporate objective is to reposition the company to flourish in the new marketplace. In
doing so, the company will provide energy services to that marketplace and diversi~ outside the
rate base into niches lying in and around the energy industry.
The company moved to do just that by organizing itself in late 1994 into self-managed work
groups. Rather than operate with layers of hierarchy, West Ohio Gas now has but two layers: A
Strategy Group that identifies corporate goals, and 16 Business Groups tasked with deciding how
those goals will be met. This approach increases flexibility, fosters innovation and speeds
decision making, having driven decision making to “front-line” troops.
As part of the company’s reorganization for growth, West Ohio is moving equally swifily to
remove inefllciencies left over from the days of monopoly service territories and cost-plus
ratemaking. One key element has been the utility’s commitment to deploying GIS.
Only a few years ago, information about the utility’s facilities - everything fi-om pipes to meters -was
kept on main line cards and services cards. While these paper records were well maintained,
their sheer volume made them unworkable. What formerly was a mere inconvenience threatened
to become an acute disadvantage in an increasingly competitive, post-Order 636 industry where
quick and accurate answers to customer queries area minimum requirement to competitiveness.
Without even a manual mapping system and saddled with difficulty in accessing and maintaining
existing gas facilities records, the company launched an initiative in 1992 to procure a GIS as a
strategic information system for West Ohio Gas.
The Heart of a GIS
GIS has gained widespread use among natural gas and other utilities in recent years. The reason
is straightforward: GIS technology is used as a tool to manage spatial information about
facilities; their relationship to customers, products or services that these facilities carry; and the
land environments in which they operate.
Seen this way, natural gas distribution networks share one thing in common with
telecommunications networks, electrical distribution systems and rail systems; each has an
incredible number of outside plant facilities located at specific X and Y coordinates on the earth
that can be mapped. These mapped records, maintained over the past 100 years on paper, vellum
or microfilm, have always been bulky, are easily disorganized, prove time-consuming to find and
often are difficult to coordinate. More importantly, as an increasing number of local distribution
companies, - including West Ohio Gas - have learned, paper-based systems simply cannot meet
the time constraints of “what-if’ scenarios necessary for decision making in today’s competitive
environment.
On occasions an eight hour turnaround is needed to determine what facilities are needed to add a
customer. With an old information system, West Ohio Gas couldn’t analyze facilities fast
enough to know what kind of changes were needed, if any at all.
This and related issues were opposite to West Ohio Gas’s growth, competitive and customer
service objectives. As a result, the utility identified the corporate-wide implementation of GIS as
a primary strategic objective. To help achieve its goals, West Ohio Gas hired a consultant to
assist in the GIS planning, procurement and implementation effort.
