An AM/FM Implementation experience: We’re done!
Rick DeBoer Union Gas Ltd. 50 Keil Drive N. Chatham, Ontario N7M 5M1 Canada phone: (519) 436-5274 fax: (519) 436-5263 rdeboer@ciaccess.com
Abstract
As of April ls’, 1998, Union Gas has filly implemented it’s AM/FM system across the eight operating divisions of the company. The author will share the Union Gas experience over the past eight years from the initial Feasibility and Scope Phase of the project through to it’s Implementation phase. This paper will focus on the implementation issues that were critical to the success of this large multi-year project. The areas of focus will include defining the Feasibility and Scope of the project, Prototyping and Developing the Application, Running a Pilot, Pre-Implementation (Post Pilot Phase) and finally a phased Implementation. While describing the above, the author will share and highlight those areas that surprised them, what they learned, and will also provide recommendations of those things that were critical to success. While sharing the experience, the author will also share some key themes which were of paramount importance and key to the success of their project, such as the importance of remaining on schedule, data quality, client involvement and a team approach that includes all of the project participants right from the start. Company Statistics Union Gas is a major Ontario natural gas utility which provides energy delivery and related services to over 755,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in southwestern Ontario (approximately 35,000 sq. kilometers) and also provides gas storage and transportation services for other utilities and energy companies in central Canada and the northeast U.S. Union Gas operates approximately 24,000 kilometers of pipeline which moved in excess of 27 billion cubic meters of gas in 1996 for revenues in excess of $1.3 billion. Union Gas is a wholly owned subsidiary of Westcoast Energy Inc., a leader in the North American natural gas industry. Head-quartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Westcoast’s interests include gas pipelines, processing, storage, distribution, power generation and gas services businesses. In 1996, Westcoast had assets of $9.6 billion with revenues of $4.9 billion. Background AsofAptil is', 1998, Union Gwhassuccessfilly implemented it's``fo~dation'' AM/FM project. Although this implementation arguably marks the end of a significant project effort, it also marks the beginning of a new strategic information system for Union Gas. This massive multi-year project was completed not only on-time but within budget, something that is not as common as it probably should be within large corporations. The project team feel that there were many contributing factors that led to this success, and this paper will attempt to point them out through the chronicle of events that took place over the past 10 years. The beginnings Union Gas first considered the potential of Automated Mapping and Facilities Management (AM/FM) approximately 15 years ago. Since that time, several studies were conducted with the assistance of outside consultants and industry experts, the last of which occurred in the late 80’s. The latest of these studies not only outlined the existing business problems that Union Gas faced regarding mapping and record keeping, but it also outlined the opportunities that such a system would provide. The conducting of these studies outlined the first of many critical success factors which we believe contributed to the overall success of our AM/FM project. Use consultants where appropriate: External consultants are a great resource of experts in the industry that can help an organization identifi the initial feasibility of new technology such as AM/FM. Union Gas made extensive use of outside consultants and industry experts to help it identifi the needs and potential of this technology. This is a critical step, especially early in the process when the expertise within the organization is basically non existent. Building on the various consultant’s reports and recommendations, Union recognized the need to complete its own internal review of the business problem. This was required to change the consultant’s terminology and general concepts into in-house terminology and specific processes that all employees could buy into. A small project team was assembled to complete a thorough review of the feasibility and scope of such a project including a detailed project plan and cost benefit analysis. This effort outlined Union’s second critical success factor. Complete a thorough internal review of the projects feasibility and scope: In order to validate the business needs and potential of such a significant project, it is necessary to complete a thorough internal review of the project’s feasibility and scope. This requires the assemblage of a small team and a significant amount of effort to study the problems and resulting opportunities of such a project’s impact. Through this process, a detailed Feasibility and Scope Report must be created documenting all significant components of such a project including:
Create a well defined implementation plan: A large AM/FM project requires a clearly documented project plan with clearly defined objectives and well defined steps. At Union, our plan outlined all the key steps that we felt were required to successfully implement this technology. They included:
Gain executive support for the project: Although some of your executive would already have been involved in the project prior to this point, especially the sponsoring department’s executive, it is imperative to receive unanimous support from all the effected departments via their senior management. If you do not receive support and approval for the project from the very beginning, you will certainly fail during many of the challenges and stumbling blocks that such a massive project implementation is destined to have. Once that initial executive support is obtained, your work is not done in this regard. Continual executive support through ongoing communications is also important since a large multi-year project such as this is destined to experience executive changes throughout its life-cycle and when problems arise (and they will arise), you must feel certain that the companies senior management is totally behind the project’s implementation. Assuming you have done all your homework and clearly identified the benefits of the project’s implementation, you will receive your executives support to begin your project. At Union, we were seeking approval for the first three steps in our implementation. Our plan was to prove the benefits and validate the costs associated with the project by running a pilot. Starting the project After Union received executive approval to proceed, we assembled a larger dedicated project team which we attribute as the next critical success factor. Assemble a full-time dedicated project team: Any large project like this is a lot of hard work and requires a dedicated project team. The team members should be carefully selected to ensure a synergistic team of energetic individuals that represent the various disciplines required to create a balanced team of technical skills, business skills and management skills. The team should be comprised of members from all the affected departments within the organization, which at Union were the Engineering Department, the Information Technology Department and the Operating (prime client) Divisions. Another component of a successful team include the involvement of outside contractors and vendors. Once our project received approval to proceed, we needed to formalize our relationships with our hardware/sotlware vendor and our conversion contractors. The involvement of these outside contractors as part of the overall project team is critical to the ultimate success of the project. Their involvement as early as possible in the design and development process will certainly benefit the project in the long run. These vendors are industry experts and therefore can make significant contributions to your project during these definition steps. The selection of these outside project partners is also a conference paper in itself, but suffice it to say that Union went through all of the appropriate steps to select its vendor and contractor partners. Such a large project will only be successfid through true teamwork and therefore the assemblage of a knowledgeable team is of paramount importance. This team must also be dedicated 100°/0 of the time to the project to take advantage of and benefit from the large learning curve associated with AM/FM technologies. The well defined implementation plan identified previously includes a couple of additional assumptions, one of which is the next critical success factors. Prevent scope creep: A project of this magnitude is itself a significant challenge, so managing its scope is very important. It is very easy to allow changes and additions within the scope of the project, and each individual change or addition may itself not represent a significant impact on the overall project (schedule or cost) but the cumulative impact of the many changes and additions that will come up will certainly affect and may lead to the demise of your project. So it is very important to ensure you implement what you said you would. Successfidly implementing your original scope (which if you did your homework up front, should meet most of the requirements and needs ), even if it is less than perfect is much better than unsuccessfidly implementing the perfect solution. Once you have successfully implemented your original project, you will have a base system in place that can certainly (and will certainly) be modified, added to and enhanced over the years ahead. A failed (perfect solution) project is very difficult to revive because of the damage done through its failure. With your project team assembled (with appropriate representation from all affected departments) and your project scope in mind, you must design and develop your AM7FM system. Regardless of which hardware/software platform you select, the system will need significant developmentienhancement to suit the needs of your business. This effort requires significant involvement of all departments sited as end users of the system to ensure that the design meets the business needs of the corporation. This involvement is achieved in the first place by the diverse project team and secondly by involving representative users from your client groups in the key design activities. After a significant design and development effort (which again is itself an appropriate topic for a paper) it is imperative that you run a Pilot, our next critical success factor. Run a Pilot: There is no better way to validate your project assumptions and designs than to run a pilot. When you implement a technology as significant and new as AM/FM, it is very difllcult to portray and envision what such a system can and will do for your users without letting them try it. It is also very difflcuh for your clients to verbalize and anticipate their requirements during the design effort without some hands-on prototyping and ultimately using the system via a pilot. It is during this pilot phase that they actually get a chance to see the technology at work and can really appreciate what it can and therefore should do for them. After running our pilot, we completed a pre-implementation phase of the project which really consisted of two steps. The first was to complete a detail review of the pilot results, including a verification of our costs and benefits. These findings were then presented to our executive seeking approval to proceed with full Implementation. Implementation Once approval to proceed with full implementation was received, we then focused on the second step within our pre-implementation phase, that being to make the necessary modifications to our software based on the pilot findings. Do not underestimate the tremendous amount of work required here to modi~/enhance your rulebase software if you truly want to be responsive to the user needs that were identified through the pilot. During this step, we also needed to re-negotiate with our conversion contractor for the fill implementation component of our conversion. Our full implementation was a phased approach, our next critical success factor. A phased divisional implementation: At Union, we recognized the size and length of our implementation to be a significant factor that could contribute to the successlfailure of the project. Since our implementation phase itself was a five year effort, we recognized the need to subdivide it into manageable pieces. By phasing our implementation one division at a time, we could limit the accumulation of backlog, we could realize the benefits of implementation with every division as they went online, we could conduct a phased training effort, and we could implement a phased in support system. In addition, a phased implementation also gives incremental targets by which progress can be monitored and success measured. During this phased implementation, we also realized another critical success factor. Manage client expectations: Make sure the client departments not only get what they expect but also expect what they get. During our first implementations, we had some problems with this in that our clients at times expected more than what the system could give. One area of significance was client expectations regarding data accuracy. When users viewed information on the computer, it was natural for them to expect that the information was 100% correct. And when you think about it, even sixty year old records look brand new after being digitized on the new system. So it is important to educate the users on the process used to create the data and the inherent errors that will exist for several reasons. Just the effort of merging several different source records together, each of which can and will have errors on them, to form one digital picture of what exists at one particular locations, will result in problems. Not to mention that your conversion effort, which has human beings doing the work, will also result in errors due to misinterpreted records and human errors. Your project will never be able to afford 100°/0 accuracy from your conversion effort, so even “in-spec” data will contain errors. It is important to communicate this to your clients so they know what to expect. How you communicate this and other project information to your clients is the next critical success factor. Frequent and ongoing communications and client involvement: You must have ongoing and frequent communications to all affected departments of the company to ensure that you can manage expectations. At Union we held frequent communication sessions with all tiected employees including specific kickoff and close-off meetings for each divisional implementation. We also created a semi-annual newsletter that provided project specific information to all effected employees. During each division’s implementation, we also required active participation from the clients in the data conversion activity. At Union this involved dedicated client resources to answer all conversion contractor queries regarding record problems. We also involved the clients in our quality assurance process to ensure they became fhmiliar with our data acceptance process. This active involvement again helped in the overall education process of the client which helps achieve client buy-in to the new system. Another important aspect, and often underestimated and therefore overlooked, is the education and support of your clients regarding the new system, our next critical success factor. Training and Support: Do not underestimate the impact this technology will have on your organization. At Union, although some had limited CAD experience, most of our clients were going from manual drafting techniques into this new automated technology. We also implemented field devices to users with little or no computer experience at all. A quantum technological leap such as this requires a significant up front training program and a subsequent extensive ongoing support process. At Union, we recognized this from the beginning and developed an extensive class room training program with on the job follow-up and a help desk for ongoing support. Another issue that Union had to deal with was the ongoing technological advancements being made in the computer industry, which leads to our next and final critical success factor. Ongoing Hardware/Software Support: I recall when we first started the prototyping and development effort on the project, we purchased a VAX mini-computer as our original hardware platform. Before even finishing the development effort, the technology had changed and we sold our VAX for the all new UNIX based workstations and operating system. This technology was the latest and greatest around and we were on the leading edge. We implemented our Pilot and our first Division on this UNIX platform. Before we were ready to implement our second division however, UNIX had fallen out of favor and 0S/2 was the newest thing. Despite 0S/2 being our corporate standard at the time however, we recognized the industry trend and decided to quickly migrate to Windows 3.1 and NT. Soon Windows 95 came along, and so we moved to that, which along with Windows NT 4.0 on our servers, is our current platform. As with the Hardware and Operating System Soflware outlined above, we went through similar changes and upgrades with our application software as the vendor constantly came out with new and improved releases. In order to take advantage of the new enhancements and functionality provided by the software upgrades, you must stay current on both the hardware and sofhvare fronts. The point I am making with this is to not underestimate the resources that will be required to implement and maintain an AM/FM platform at your company. Although significant benefits can be realized by constantly upgrading both Hardware and Software in terms of both price/performance and new and improved fi.mctionality, it also requires significant efforts to initially implement, administer and ongoingly support such a platform within your organization. Conclusion The Union Gas AM/FM project implementation has certainly been a challenge. A project of this magnitude would normally be destined for failure, were it not for the critical success factors highlighted within this report and summarized below:
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