Successfully integrating multiple utilities and supporting technologies
The plot can be sentand picked up later. While paper mapscould be more easiIy duplicated using large-format
copiers, the GIS system allows for the production of geographically accurate color maps that depict multiple
levels of data and detail.
personnel from other departments that were not originally part of the Project Team. Not unlike
most user-driven projects, the application specification process resulted in requirements that
required more money to develop than JUD had remainingin its implementationbudget. The
painful processof prioritizing application developmentfocusedon core requirementsthat each of
the four utilities (electric,gas,water, wastewater)needed,then branchedinto utility specific
applications. Once prioritized, application developmentwas completed.
The Issue of Reengineering
GIS came at an opportune time at JUD. Immediately after the Feasibility Study, the utility began
transitioning from an organization organized by uti Iity (electric, gas, water, wastewater) to a
functional organization (engineering, operations, C&M, etc.). Based on this reorganization and
the related need to revise processes, the environment was right to change business processes
even further by implementing GIS.
The process of defining applications also involved discussing and revising the way certain
processes were accomplished. In some cases, the JUD project team defined a workflow diagram
and projected how data and work-flow procedures would change with the new technology. For
example, the GIS eliminated the need for redundant data entry, meaning that some personnel
could be reassigned to other tasks and that people or departments could take on additional
responsibilities.
EqualIy beneficial is the standardization of processesthat have occurred across all four utilities
and wil I continue to add benefits to JUD over time. Already there has been significant cross-training
with an emphasis on people learning more about activities outside of their specific area
of responsibility.
Data sharing requirements and protocols have never been a major issue at JUD. As the system
has been deployed and as users have grown familiar with it, groups of users have been
authorized to perform different things to different data. For example, water department personnel
may edit, draft and change data related to the water network. Electrical engineers, although they
have access to the same data, cannot make changes to water department data. This is in keeping
with the system’s objective to make data more available to anyone who needs it, while retaining
data security and integrity.
Work design, estimating, and posting is another area where dramatic change have taken place.
In the past, work sketches were created using manual or CAD drafting practices and then
manually entering the construction units into the AS/400 work estimating system. Now job design
work is completed on GIS, including importing DXF subdivision data, creating the job sketch and
laying out all its component parts of the job. Furthermore, throughout the approval cycle,
supervisors and engineers are able to red-line and change the system design. The job’s
construction units are digitally fed to the AS/400 system for job estimating and materials
management.
Although a manual plot of the work sketch still is used by construction people in the field, those
who are tracking the status of the work are able to do so using the GIS. Then, as red-line drafts
come back to the central office, changes can readily be made. Since the jobs were designed in
the GIS, after the jobs have been built and the sketchesmarkedwith the as-builts,the processof
postingthe data to the masterGIS databasecan occur in a more timely fashion than before.
The work design, estimating, and posting process alone is expected to have a major positive
impact on customer service. In the past, a customer service representative had to thumb through
plat books to find customer location and then estimate the cost to extend service. Using the GIS
functionality, these tasks will be done for them as part of the subdivision import and work order
design process.
Implementation Summery
In retrospect, project success is the result of several key factors:
- Active support by the Division’s CEO and key management. A key factor enabling the
current success at JUD is the active support of the Division’s CEO, an engineer by training
who understands the technology’s potential benefits. His ongoing support of and vision for
the technology have helped to focus attention on the initiative.
- Use of industry consultants and external data conversion companies. The role of the
consultant at JUD took on significance for at least three key reasons:
- The AM/FM/GIS project would have been a first-of-a-kind large-scale implementation for
the utility
- The corporate-wide nature of the system benefited from the involvement of an
independent third party
- JUD hoped to implement the project in a business environment that included significant
resource constraints and increasing work load demands
- Phased, thorough, user-driven approach. The phased approach, beginning with the
- Feasibility Study in 1993 provided several advantages:
- Gathered requirements directly from the users. This process did not dictate a system to
users; rather it provided them the opportunity to design a system that met their needs. This
generated user buy-in from the beginning.
- The feasibility study and pilot project provided several opportunities for management
go/no-go decisions.
- Incremental funding decisions
- The Pilot provided hands-on use with JUD specific data and functionality
- Full implementation focusing initially the basics - data and data maintenance expanding
to custom functionality
Summary of Functionality
JUD expects to complete full implementation by the end of June 1997. This includes all data
conversion, orthophotography creation for all of Madison County, and the development of the
following core GIS functionality:
- On-line access via GIS to customer, meter, and work management information on the
AS1400
- PC access to GIS and the AS/400
- Corporate-wide networking infrastructure
- Land and facility data maintenance applications
- Data query and access applications
- System navigation applications
- Work design, work sketch, and work estimating applications
- Batch plotting and address cross reference application
- Miscellaneous other minor applications
Summary of Benefits
Few activities take place within JUD without requiring some knowledge of the transmission and
distribution facilities. Therefore, the rapid access and dissemination of this information
throughout JUD is of strategic importance to improve customer response and to provide safe,
reliable, and effective utility service. GIS is providing the means to economically achieve the
corporate-wide accessibility to facility- and customer-related information required to efficiently
design, build, maintain, and operate JUD’S utility networks. JUD expects numerous tangible and
intangible benefits from GIS implementation of which the primary benefits are as follows:
- Significant quantitative labor productivity enhancements, improved asset utilization,
decision support, and cost displacement benefits.
- Significantly improve the integration of corporate data and systems.
- Facilitate changes in current business processes. GIS is a strategic component of the
reengineering of JUD’S business process and of the corporate computing environment.
- Improved geographic and facilities data sharing with City and County organizations. City
and County participation will provide many implementation economies of scale, labor
productivity enhancement and product quality enhancement for all parties involved.
- Improved security of maps and facility records by having the digital data backed up on a
regular basis.
Small utility GIS implementations PROS and cONS
Implementing a GIS at a smaller utility has several advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages of Small Utility GIS Implementation:
- There may be less politics than in a larger organization--fewer organizational entities exist
such as districts, divisions, or operating companies, which all may want to do business
differently.
- Improved communications largely due to the fact that most of the system’s users may be in
the same building or in close physical proximity.
- Improved access to key management. In the case of JUD, its CEO has been an active
champion since the project’s inception.
Disadvantages of Small Utility GIS implementation:
- SmalIer utilities may not have undertaken a project of this magnitude before. For example,
smaller utilities often do not spend the time to analyze the GIS data requirements and to
define system requirements prior to system implementation. This results in reworking
database designs during the implementation process.
- Smaller utilities often lack systems integration, networking, UNIX, and other technical
experience/expertise. The systems administration personnel have to be knowledgeable
about many different technical disciplines including UNIX systems administration,
networking, GIS software, Oracle software,
- Smaller utilities tend to under-resource project implementation. In JUD’S case, only one
employee was assigned to the project on a full-time basis and this person’s responsibility
was primarily administering the UNIX systems. The result is that key decisions regarding the
design and content of the GIS may be deferred to the point that the lack of a decision
negatively affects the overall project. Equally important, the lack of human resources on a
project may mean that it takes longer to get things done.
Future Plans
One key future functionality for JUD is to build and interface to JUD’S gas, water, electric
engineering packages to eliminate the duplicate network data maintenance and to facilitate more
thorough analyses of the networks. This interface, accomplished with Stoner, Windmil, and
Cybernet engineering analysis software, wil I help JUD gauge the impact on the network caused
by its ongoing expansion and reconfiguration.
A second interface is planned to link JUD’S existing SCADA system with the GIS to assist with
outage management efforts. Where a larger utility might simply buy a third-party outage
management software package, JUD is building a subset that will display outages as they are
phoned in, offering a cost-effective, reduced-scale alternative.
clearly is achieving big system objectives with its GIS. In doing so, project managers were
pragmatic in their decisions to limit some of the desired system functionality. At the same time,
however, they simply exercised the same rigorous cost-benefit analysis that any prudent utility—
regardless of size--is compelled to undertake in this era of competition and scarce resources.
