Field Inventory - Do’s and Don’ts
Norm Covey Field Data Services, Inc. 311 OS. Wadsworth Blvd., Suite 103 Denver, CO 80227
Abstract
Field Inventory is usually performed in an uncontrolled environment. The operation occurs out of State when done by Contractors and, at best, in the remote reaches of a large service territory when done by the Company. The field work cannot be closely supervised nor can anyone supervise the great outdoors in which inventory occurs. Extremes in weather can be found year round. Difficult social conditions must be dealt with. Wildlife @ant and animal) is a problem. Distances and locations make logistics difficult. Finally, the process requires committed personnel willing to live a gypsy life-style. The work of field inventory is exacting and difficult. The ubiquitous circuit trace requires following miles of individual wires, perfectly. Determining the size and material of conductors, which is often needed, is an art requiring training, great skill and self confidence. Intuition and experience are needed in the art of efficiently determining the location of poles. The occasional need to closely approach each pole can be arduous - sometimes dangerous. Project specifications deeply impact the difficulty and, therefore, cost of inventory. Specific topics include: accuracy levels; client project commitment; clarity of specifications; project completion times; sequence of events; ultimate project expectations; bonding requirements; verification vs. acquisition; project deliverable; proposal requirements; data migration; locational requirements; and source content and availability. Proposal Requirements Clarity of Specifications in RFPs It is beneficial that RFPs for Electric Distribution System Projects be the result of extensive planning and definition. The effort will encourage vendor participation, reduce prices to the client and greatly enhance the chances for a successful project. A number of specifications are critical to the field inventory process and are routinely missed. Specific data items A list of the specific data hems to be inventoried should be included in the published RFP. Much inventory is easy and uncomplicated to perform. Listing the easy hems is not so important. Some items included in inventory are very difficult to perform and the data hard to collect. Listing the data hems is important as the impact on cost for some of the items is great. Many items lie in the range in between these extremes Aspects of inventory which require minimum effort and skill include spotting devices and collecting attribute information. Going to the pole, which is necessitated by reading height and class from brands and pole tagging requir~” mim;m’~m skill but lots of physical effort. Placing facilities in the landbase requires the ability to read and interpret maps and the skills needed to make measurements. Tracing circuitry by phase, which means following the circuit to the termination of each primary, requires great skill and unusual physical ability. Describing wire by size and type requires a confident attitude, extremely accurate eyesight and the ability to drive and perform the operation without getting sick. Each data item must be evaluated on its own merit. Size of job (Quantities) Actual counts of the items to be inventoried will be very usefid to vendors. If possible include numbers for poles, UG locations and primary devices. Number of customers is useful along with miles of primary conductor. Sources - content and availability Each source provided to the vendor should be evaluated and described relative to coverage, content and accuracy. It would be usefil if the client mentioned the purpose for which the source was provided. What is the vender expected to do with each source. Given twenty years experience in the industry involving dozens of projects, source materials have ALLWAYS been a problem. Not once have they been readily available consistently throughout a project. The problem can have a devastating effect on an otherwise successful project. The two specific sources that are most useful for the inventory process are landbase and circuit maps. Landbase is needed for organization of the graphics produced in the field. Circuit maps are used to organize work. Acquire vs. verify information There is a school of thought that says it is easier to verify information in existing maps than it is to collect new correct information from scratch. Consequently, the thinking continues, because only verification is called for, the inventory should be quite inexpensive. This is true to a limited extent. Specifically, only wire codes (wire size and material) are easier to verify than inventory. In ~ limited cases, entire distribution system maps maybe easier to verify, but the maps need to almost perfectly describe field conditions. From an inventory standpoint, verification means that all the information must be collected, but only that which was originally found to be wrong needs to be recorded (or corrected). Since corrections are harder to make than original input, only a few changes will quickly offset a lot of original input. Timing Knowledge of project timing requirements and the justification for the timing is important to vendors. Timing may be a fimction of client budgetary considerations or internal resources. Timing can greatly impact vendor prices and is a significant issue in determining needed production capabilities. Discussions regarding these issues can be very useful in creating a successful project. Volume Economies of scale effect field inventory markets as vendors evaluate projects based on size. Larger inventory houses, who most often also provide conversion, only look for larger projects as dictated by their organization structures and production methods. In the end fewer vendors compete for these projects, which may not benefit smaller utilities. Occasionally clients effectively downsize larger jobs by restricting the amount of work to be done in a year. This is probably done for budgetary purposes but also causes the unintended effect of obtaining less competitive pricing. Other project expectations Client expectations from the inventory project are often not addressed. In order for the vender to fully evaluate the project, the expectations should be explicitly stated. In addition to the usual expectations for map products and a data base, useful issues to address would be a list of applications that would need to be supported by the project data. Does the project need to verify or use any internal records - if so explain. Should the project update record keys such as pole numbers. Locational Requirements A major cost component of inventory is the accuracy level needed for the placement of facilities. Historically, manual methods have been used. Today, advanced methods are available. The advantages of each method should be evaluated. Relative to land-base - specification Facilities can be placed relative to mapped features in a landbase using traditional methods of measuring in the field. Accuracy of actual placement, using this method, is a combination of error in the landbase plus error due to placement. Given a landbase with a good selection of features in urban areas, error due to placement can be a foot or so. This error is not accumulated beyond the error inherent in the land and should be seriously considered. GPS - specification GPS is a hot item now-a-days which provides useful results given an accurate landbase. If GPS is attempted to place poles and facilities in an inaccurate landbase, the graphic appearance of the product will be unacceptable as facility locations may not be oriented correctly relative to the map. Our proposals often suggest that the GPS information be provided as an attribute to facility locations which have been placed manually. Many projects contain a requirement for GPS initially, which is later dropped after prices are evaluated. Accuracy of Data Any of the several Field Inventory companies in business today can probably produce perfect data. Not a single client would be willing to pay for it. The question is “What level of accuracy is worth the price.” Accuracy levels Accuracy considerations should be made in terms of cost. Using 98.5?40as a reasonable level of accuracy, perfect data would probably cost three times as much or more to produce. As the accuracy level drops, costs decrease, but not commensurately. Data at a 97.0°/0 accuracy level might come in at 90°/0 of the cost. We suggest that the best cost/value relationship be achieved. Measurement procedure If data can be counted as incorrect, it must be counted as correct when it is. The way to measure accuracy is to use the count of data items collected as the base, for comparison against the number found to be incorrect. If one hundred poles were inventoried and the data collected contained 1700 individual fields needed to describe the facilities, a 98.5°/0 accuracy rate would require that 1675 fields be correct. Conversly, the proposition that every forth pole could contain an error is difficult for some to justify even though forty errors in 100 poles is the effect of a 98.5°/0 accuracy specification. Field is the source of the data The accuracy of Field Inventory data must be judged in the field through a process of re-visits. It is reasonable for clients to commit fill time personnel to the process in order to evaluate all delivered products. Many clients do this. Staffing Field Inventory is, by nature, a people business. A business operated under the worst possible conditions. Projects are rarely done at home, supervision is never first hand (Supervisors don’t follow Editors around) and trained people cannot be found. The hiring of local people often becomes necessary. Retired employees and college students often seem to be pretty good prospects. Care should be exercised in the selection. Retired employees The arguments if favor of using retired employees include that these persons know electric systems (especially the one in question), they understand the clients operation, know who does what in the company and often are looking for an opportunity for extra work. The argument against selecting retired employees for inventory work is that they are retired. They don’t often need to work and can be less motivated. Plans to visit family and vacation have often become paramount and contribute to slowed production. Probably the most worst problem is that many skills useful in a utility environment are not really transferable to field inventory. In fact, our one successfi.d use of a retired utility employees was limited to the collection of wire codes (size and material). College students The arguments if favor of using students include that these persons are intelligent, may know electric systems (engineering students) and have trouble finding good paying jobs. The main argument against selecting college students is a lacking long term commitment. If they have discontinued school to work, they will return to school when money permits. If they have discontinued school due to lack of motivation, they will return to school after a taste of hard work. College students would be excellent prospects for field inventory if they would stay for the course of the project. Client Project Commitment Truly successful field inventory projects are a joint venture involving client and vendor. Each has a unique set of tasks. The tasks of vendors are most often considered and constitute much of the information herein. Not much is said about the client who must provide source materials, perform public relations, see to the turn around of information and help the vendor to schedule work. Source materials Every inventory project includes sources. At a minimum some geographic reference material is needed. This is usually a land base. The client often takes on the responsibility of providing this reference. Public relations At stake here is the clients relations with customers. The vendor should be supported in this area. Support may take the form of “Letters of Authorization”, vests printed with the client logo, newspaper articles or bill stuffers. It is also useful for the client to notify phone operators internally of the inventory effort and location. Local law enforcement also should be notified. Turn around The client is usually involved in some way in the day to day operation of the project. Examples include supplying requested missing data, reviewing deliveries for acceptance, answering questions regarding unusual situations and providing sources. Each of these items can greatly impact the inventory vendor. Workable project agreements specifi maximum turn-around times for these events. Failure to comply often means that data is not included in deliveries, acceptance is by default, assumptions are made regarding unusual situations and, in the worst case, work on the project actually stops. Scheduling Inventory should start in a reasonably sparse area and proceed into contiguous territory. The starting point and direction of progress needs to be determined by the client. The client also needs to impact any internal processes that effect the inventory - such things as source updates and construction scheduling. Project Scheduling Many factors should be considered when scheduling the project. The schedule should contain a list of significant events starting with project mobilization, the pilot, production and so on. A few events deserve a comment. All field inventory projects should start with a Pilot which should actually produce a sample of the final deliverable. The process is critical to determine that the vendor does in fact understand the specification and real expectations of the client. The client needs to verify that the vendor is capable of doing the job and that needs have been appropriately defined. Continuity Mobilization should be done only once. Work should continue in the field while the pilot is being evaluated, collecting data according to the original specification. If the specifications change due to evaluation of the pilot, the inventory vendor can usually update the records with a small amount of work. Stopping work in the field to evaluate the pilot is very expensive and indicates a lack of commitment to the project. Bonding Requirements Occasionally statutory requirements call for bonding. In cases where bonding is optional, it is questionable that real value is obtained by pursuing the requirement. While the certainty of the bond is obtained, the project costs probably increase much more than just the added cost of the bond. Costly When projects are bonded, the cost of project increases by the cost of the bond and also by the cost of the added risk taken by the vendor. It is not possible to speak for other vendors but the cost of the added risk is probably higher than the bond. Even bonds are very expensive. Restricted responses due to bonding The presence of a bonding requirement in an RFP will result in a higher project cost as stated above. In addition many vendors will simply not bid projects requiring bonds. Many vendors cannot obtain bonds. Other venders who can bond just will not. In the long run, bonding requirements will restrict responses to RFPs and may increase prices. | ||
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