| GISdevelopment.net ---> GITA 1999 ---> Exploiting Field and Mobile Technologies |
Mobile Geoengineering: Extending the office to the field
Richard Webb
Systems Strategy Manager, Southern Water
Alan Brown
Managing Director, Procis Software Ltd
Richard Webb
Systems Strategy Manager, Southern Water
Alan Brown
Managing Director, Procis Software Ltd
This paper outlines the reasons why field systems should be considered by Utilities as an
enabler to assist the Company in improving its internal efficiencies. It looks at the
benefits to be gained and outlines the approach adopted by Southern Water in
implementing a 200-unit roll out of a mobile GIS system. The paper also identifies the
next steps to be taken to deliver additional benefits to the business. The final section
includes a perspective from the supplier of the Southern Water System, Procis Software
Ltd.
1. Business Drivers
Utilities today are facing pressure from several quarters, all of which result in a drive to improve internal efficiencies. Whether in Europe or in America our customers are becoming more demanding: higher levels of service; better quality of supply; improved responsiveness; compensation if the standards are missed.
The regulators are charged with ensuring the right balance between business profitability and customer charges. Within the UK Water Sector, one of the mechanisms used is that of ‘comparative measures’ and is used in the absence of a competitive market, as each Company has a monopoly within its own area. This approach means that any best practise from one utility company is adopted as the benchmark against which the other companies are measured. Each company is driven to steadily improve its performance in order to maintain its position, in comparison to the other companies, The Electricity and Telecommunications sectors do have more of an open market, but the regulator still plays an active role in influencing the regime within which the Companies compete. The end result from the regulators’ activities is to maintain pressure on the utilities to improve their internal efficiencies.
Shareholders also add to the pressures of a utility company. There is an expectation that dividends will be maintained if not improved year on year. The investors also expect that share value will increase above the rate of inflation over the medium to long term. Given that the customer and the regulator are looking for a reduced charge, the shareholder’s expectations would appear to put the pressure on from the opposite end of the spectrum.
There is a further driver for the Water Industry of water quality. There is an ever increasing set of water quality standards, both in the quality of drinking water, evidenced by the recent legislation in pesticides, and in the quality of the waste water effluent discharges, as seen in the ECUrban Wastewater Directives. For some of these increases in quality standards the regulator has allowed for the cost to be passed through to the customer. More recently the engineering work required to meet the increased standards is expected to be met from profits, not by increased charges to the customer.
All these four areas drive the business to look at ways of increasing the internal efficiency, as one of the few ways in which to deliver the means to address the various external demands.
2. From where do the internal efficiencies come?
The drive for improved internal efficiencies is nothing new and for any company there will be a history of eficiency initiatives. However the law of diminishing returns (see Figure 1) is in force and any company wishing to progress in improving internal efficiencies will not achieve it by repeatedly returning to the areas already addressed as the magnitude of benefits will not be derived. The challenge all companies face is ‘where next’?
Figure 1
If a review is made of Companies who have gained a competitive advantage, often they have taken advantage of a new combination of technologies or ways of working. They have looked for a new enabler that can give them a way of increasing efficiency, and if at all possible, improving the product or service to the customer at the same time.
Field systems are iust such an enable.
3. Why field systems?
Field systems combine two areas of technology that have been in existence separately for some time - telecommunications and handheld terminals. The development of the infrastructure for cellular phone, which has now reached the stage of having vey good coverage over most populated areas, has meant that it is a new tool available to use to communicate with the work force. Similarly, development of handheld devices has reached the stage where they are both cheap and sufficiently powerful to be considered as a realistic and cost effective tool to use.
This ability to equip the field worker with this tool is important for any utility organisation as the nature of the business is ‘geographic’. If the question is asked ‘where are the customers?’ the answer is ‘geographically dispersed’, If the question is asked ‘where are the assets that deliver the product to the customer?’ the answer again is ‘geographically dispersed’. If a further question is asked ‘where are the workers, who are operating and maintaining the asset to provide the service to the customer?’ the answer should be geographically dispersed. Currently the workforce is based in offices or depots and for each task to be undertaken on the assets, or customer visited the worker has to leave from the office or depot because all the job information and support data about the task is only available there.
Using field systems as a new way of working can be introduced, where the field worker is considered to have a mobile office. His information on tasks plus support data is given to him on the handheld, and is delivered via the telecommunications links, The field system is an enabler to let the field worker operate in a new and more efficient way. The benefits from introducing this way of working will be likely to yield a significant return as it is being introduced into a ‘green field’ area, i.e. an area where there was nothing before. In the graph of the law of diminishing returns it is early in the curve giving big increases in efficiency for small amounts of investment.
4. Where are the benefits?
The business case for investment in field systems covers both tangible and intangible areas. The experience within Southern Water shows that there is a strong case to be made for investment in field systems. The tangible benefits include improved efficiency through reduced traveling time, less standing time, and less wasted time.
Traveling time is reduced firstly because it is possible to send the field worker direct to a job. The difference from the old way of working is that the field worker can do a ‘home start’ and be directed to the first location without having to visit the office first. Investigations have shown that this initiative alone can free up an hour per day for productive work.
Reviewing the working day has shown that there are frequent occasions where a visit to the depot is required in order to obtain a copy of the relevant record or other supporting information. If the data is provided to the field worker electronically these journeys to the depot can be significantly reduced, The fact that the field worker has the relevant information to hand also means that the work crew are not left standing whilst the data is obtained from the Depot.
A further area of benefit is derived from the field worker having accurate up to date information to hand. Research with the field workers has shown that there are frequent occasions where the length of a job has been extended because the information was out of date or inaccurate. This problem has arisen from the time when paper records were the only practical way of providing the field worker with records. One outcome of this was that each worker had their own paper based set of records which were kept up to date with the information of which that worker was aware. However the drawback was it did not contain the knowledge that other workers had with the net result that there were many partially up dated records, but not one was complete. Now, with the master record maintained held centrally and distributed electronically there is no reason for the field worker to have out of date records thereby minimizing the risk of wasting time on site.
The intangible benefits are improved responsiveness, improved customer service and confidence by the field workers that the record is right. The introduction of communications that can handle packets of data means that it is possible to pass an instruction using the printed word instead of by voice. Whereas using two way voice communications may take up to one hour to contact a field worker if he/she is away from the vehicle, using transmitting packets of data means that the work instruction is receive in textual form, The field worker is alerted to the fact that a new message is awaiting his attention using a pager system, and the response time is reduced significantly. This in turn improves the customer service.
A final area of benefit of using the field system is in providing electronic forms. The field workers are required to complete a significant number of forms currently on paper. By making the forms electronic the process of data capture, verification and onward transmission is improved significantly. The benefit is not only in the improved process for the field worker, but it also brings benefit to the support o~ce, in that it reduces the administration effort required to collate and enter the information onto the corporate systems.
Overall it is estimated that field systems can bring a benefit in improved productivity to the field worker of 15°/0- 25°/0. Additionally the transfer of data to and from the central oticefdepot electronically yields a further benefit of 5°/0- 10°/0reduction in the administration effort.
If a field worker is defined as someone who spends more than 50°/0of their time out of the office, it has been estimated that up to 50°/0 of all staff come into this definition. If this is true, the benefits are very significant.
5. What has been done to date?
Southern Water has implemented a mobile GIS, which provides a copy of the network records to the field workers deploying 200 mobile units. These units are pen based PCs and are installed in the field workers vehicles. The PCunit can be detached from the vehicle installation allowing the field worker to go ‘walk about’.
The records are kept up to date through connection to the wide area network when the field worker visits the depot. In addition the mobile GIS has a sketch facility which allows the field worker to provide a record of any changes or additions made to the network graphically. These sketches are transmitted across the network to the up date team, who are based at a central location. Using the information in the sketch, the master electronic record is updated, and as a final step a copy of the corrected master record is sent back to the mobile GIS unit automatically. Figure 2 shows an illustration of the process.
A further facility is the provision of electronic forms. The electronic template for the form is created in the up date office, and is transmitted across the network to the mobile GIS units automatically. The field worker uses the electronic template to complete the form. The data is validated according to the rules built into the electronic form template. Once completed the form data file is transmitted across the wide area network to the server in the update o~ce, from whence it is transferred to the appropriate corporate database. All this achieved without a piece of paper in sight!
Figure 2
6. What’s next?
Building on the experience gained to date Southern Water is embarking on the next phase of field systems development in transmitting job instructions to the field worker electronically. Firstly a scheduler is under development that will optimise the allocation of jobs to the field worker, taking account of the skill set, work force availability, priority of job and location. In addition, because of the need to accommodate unplanned work, as well as planned, the scheduler will operate in real time.
The job details will be transmitted electronically to the field workers, either using the existing wide area network system or by wireless data communications. The system will be designed to utilise any appropriate telecommunications technology thereby allowing for the fast changing nature of telecommunications.
Further development is expected in the handheld terminal products. Three levels of sophistication of handheld terminal are specified, since not all field workers have the same need of power and functionality within the handheld unit, The market place for handheld units is developing rapidly and it is expected that there will be several options for each type of unit required.
7. The Suppliers View
Meeting changes in business expectation
Southern Water is a very good example of a forward thinking Company making technology work. However, from a supplier viewpoint, gaining a competitive advantage has a slightly different connotation.
To allow our Customers to benefit from new technologies, software and technical products we need to provide leading edge but realistic solutions. Backing winning technologies so as not to lead our Customers to buy a “Betamax”.
The Customers expectations are changing to include increasing empowerment of field personnel at ever decreasing cost of deployment with faster and simpler implementation, They even go as far as expecting future access to information that they have not even planned for! Is this the mobile super highway?
Keeping Pace with technology
The supplier and the customer both wish to gain benefit from new technologies and are being helped by the current trends in mobile computing. These include:
Flexibility is the key to the continued success of a field system. Whereas in the past, suppliers have tended to provide discrete mobile applications (e.g. mobile work management (MWM) mobile GIS (MGIS) etc) it is now vital that an appropriate mobile product provides for all customer requirements in a given business area.
A common technical architecture is required that allows applications to share modules and data whilst still meeting a full set of requirements. The product should be scalable from small implementations, perhaps using local data storage on the mobile device, up to major corporate implementations. The latter may utilise central database servers communicating via Internet or Intranet, LAN or wireless links.
8. Conclusions
Field systems provide a new enabler for Utilities to deliver a significant improvement in e~ciencies in the activities of field workers. The advent of low cost good coverage mobile communications combined with low cost high functionality handheld computer devices present a new way for Utilities to respond to the external pressures that result in the drive to improve internal efficiencies. Given that for any typical Utility the staff considered as candidates to work as field workers could be as many as 50°/0of all staff, field systems are an opportunity that no one can afford to miss!
1. Business Drivers
Utilities today are facing pressure from several quarters, all of which result in a drive to improve internal efficiencies. Whether in Europe or in America our customers are becoming more demanding: higher levels of service; better quality of supply; improved responsiveness; compensation if the standards are missed.
The regulators are charged with ensuring the right balance between business profitability and customer charges. Within the UK Water Sector, one of the mechanisms used is that of ‘comparative measures’ and is used in the absence of a competitive market, as each Company has a monopoly within its own area. This approach means that any best practise from one utility company is adopted as the benchmark against which the other companies are measured. Each company is driven to steadily improve its performance in order to maintain its position, in comparison to the other companies, The Electricity and Telecommunications sectors do have more of an open market, but the regulator still plays an active role in influencing the regime within which the Companies compete. The end result from the regulators’ activities is to maintain pressure on the utilities to improve their internal efficiencies.
Shareholders also add to the pressures of a utility company. There is an expectation that dividends will be maintained if not improved year on year. The investors also expect that share value will increase above the rate of inflation over the medium to long term. Given that the customer and the regulator are looking for a reduced charge, the shareholder’s expectations would appear to put the pressure on from the opposite end of the spectrum.
There is a further driver for the Water Industry of water quality. There is an ever increasing set of water quality standards, both in the quality of drinking water, evidenced by the recent legislation in pesticides, and in the quality of the waste water effluent discharges, as seen in the ECUrban Wastewater Directives. For some of these increases in quality standards the regulator has allowed for the cost to be passed through to the customer. More recently the engineering work required to meet the increased standards is expected to be met from profits, not by increased charges to the customer.
All these four areas drive the business to look at ways of increasing the internal efficiency, as one of the few ways in which to deliver the means to address the various external demands.
2. From where do the internal efficiencies come?
The drive for improved internal efficiencies is nothing new and for any company there will be a history of eficiency initiatives. However the law of diminishing returns (see Figure 1) is in force and any company wishing to progress in improving internal efficiencies will not achieve it by repeatedly returning to the areas already addressed as the magnitude of benefits will not be derived. The challenge all companies face is ‘where next’?
Figure 1
If a review is made of Companies who have gained a competitive advantage, often they have taken advantage of a new combination of technologies or ways of working. They have looked for a new enabler that can give them a way of increasing efficiency, and if at all possible, improving the product or service to the customer at the same time.
Field systems are iust such an enable.
3. Why field systems?
Field systems combine two areas of technology that have been in existence separately for some time - telecommunications and handheld terminals. The development of the infrastructure for cellular phone, which has now reached the stage of having vey good coverage over most populated areas, has meant that it is a new tool available to use to communicate with the work force. Similarly, development of handheld devices has reached the stage where they are both cheap and sufficiently powerful to be considered as a realistic and cost effective tool to use.
This ability to equip the field worker with this tool is important for any utility organisation as the nature of the business is ‘geographic’. If the question is asked ‘where are the customers?’ the answer is ‘geographically dispersed’, If the question is asked ‘where are the assets that deliver the product to the customer?’ the answer again is ‘geographically dispersed’. If a further question is asked ‘where are the workers, who are operating and maintaining the asset to provide the service to the customer?’ the answer should be geographically dispersed. Currently the workforce is based in offices or depots and for each task to be undertaken on the assets, or customer visited the worker has to leave from the office or depot because all the job information and support data about the task is only available there.
Using field systems as a new way of working can be introduced, where the field worker is considered to have a mobile office. His information on tasks plus support data is given to him on the handheld, and is delivered via the telecommunications links, The field system is an enabler to let the field worker operate in a new and more efficient way. The benefits from introducing this way of working will be likely to yield a significant return as it is being introduced into a ‘green field’ area, i.e. an area where there was nothing before. In the graph of the law of diminishing returns it is early in the curve giving big increases in efficiency for small amounts of investment.
4. Where are the benefits?
The business case for investment in field systems covers both tangible and intangible areas. The experience within Southern Water shows that there is a strong case to be made for investment in field systems. The tangible benefits include improved efficiency through reduced traveling time, less standing time, and less wasted time.
Traveling time is reduced firstly because it is possible to send the field worker direct to a job. The difference from the old way of working is that the field worker can do a ‘home start’ and be directed to the first location without having to visit the office first. Investigations have shown that this initiative alone can free up an hour per day for productive work.
Reviewing the working day has shown that there are frequent occasions where a visit to the depot is required in order to obtain a copy of the relevant record or other supporting information. If the data is provided to the field worker electronically these journeys to the depot can be significantly reduced, The fact that the field worker has the relevant information to hand also means that the work crew are not left standing whilst the data is obtained from the Depot.
A further area of benefit is derived from the field worker having accurate up to date information to hand. Research with the field workers has shown that there are frequent occasions where the length of a job has been extended because the information was out of date or inaccurate. This problem has arisen from the time when paper records were the only practical way of providing the field worker with records. One outcome of this was that each worker had their own paper based set of records which were kept up to date with the information of which that worker was aware. However the drawback was it did not contain the knowledge that other workers had with the net result that there were many partially up dated records, but not one was complete. Now, with the master record maintained held centrally and distributed electronically there is no reason for the field worker to have out of date records thereby minimizing the risk of wasting time on site.
The intangible benefits are improved responsiveness, improved customer service and confidence by the field workers that the record is right. The introduction of communications that can handle packets of data means that it is possible to pass an instruction using the printed word instead of by voice. Whereas using two way voice communications may take up to one hour to contact a field worker if he/she is away from the vehicle, using transmitting packets of data means that the work instruction is receive in textual form, The field worker is alerted to the fact that a new message is awaiting his attention using a pager system, and the response time is reduced significantly. This in turn improves the customer service.
A final area of benefit of using the field system is in providing electronic forms. The field workers are required to complete a significant number of forms currently on paper. By making the forms electronic the process of data capture, verification and onward transmission is improved significantly. The benefit is not only in the improved process for the field worker, but it also brings benefit to the support o~ce, in that it reduces the administration effort required to collate and enter the information onto the corporate systems.
Overall it is estimated that field systems can bring a benefit in improved productivity to the field worker of 15°/0- 25°/0. Additionally the transfer of data to and from the central oticefdepot electronically yields a further benefit of 5°/0- 10°/0reduction in the administration effort.
If a field worker is defined as someone who spends more than 50°/0of their time out of the office, it has been estimated that up to 50°/0 of all staff come into this definition. If this is true, the benefits are very significant.
5. What has been done to date?
Southern Water has implemented a mobile GIS, which provides a copy of the network records to the field workers deploying 200 mobile units. These units are pen based PCs and are installed in the field workers vehicles. The PCunit can be detached from the vehicle installation allowing the field worker to go ‘walk about’.
The records are kept up to date through connection to the wide area network when the field worker visits the depot. In addition the mobile GIS has a sketch facility which allows the field worker to provide a record of any changes or additions made to the network graphically. These sketches are transmitted across the network to the up date team, who are based at a central location. Using the information in the sketch, the master electronic record is updated, and as a final step a copy of the corrected master record is sent back to the mobile GIS unit automatically. Figure 2 shows an illustration of the process.
A further facility is the provision of electronic forms. The electronic template for the form is created in the up date office, and is transmitted across the network to the mobile GIS units automatically. The field worker uses the electronic template to complete the form. The data is validated according to the rules built into the electronic form template. Once completed the form data file is transmitted across the wide area network to the server in the update o~ce, from whence it is transferred to the appropriate corporate database. All this achieved without a piece of paper in sight!
Figure 2
6. What’s next?
Building on the experience gained to date Southern Water is embarking on the next phase of field systems development in transmitting job instructions to the field worker electronically. Firstly a scheduler is under development that will optimise the allocation of jobs to the field worker, taking account of the skill set, work force availability, priority of job and location. In addition, because of the need to accommodate unplanned work, as well as planned, the scheduler will operate in real time.
The job details will be transmitted electronically to the field workers, either using the existing wide area network system or by wireless data communications. The system will be designed to utilise any appropriate telecommunications technology thereby allowing for the fast changing nature of telecommunications.
Further development is expected in the handheld terminal products. Three levels of sophistication of handheld terminal are specified, since not all field workers have the same need of power and functionality within the handheld unit, The market place for handheld units is developing rapidly and it is expected that there will be several options for each type of unit required.
7. The Suppliers View
Meeting changes in business expectation
Southern Water is a very good example of a forward thinking Company making technology work. However, from a supplier viewpoint, gaining a competitive advantage has a slightly different connotation.
To allow our Customers to benefit from new technologies, software and technical products we need to provide leading edge but realistic solutions. Backing winning technologies so as not to lead our Customers to buy a “Betamax”.
The Customers expectations are changing to include increasing empowerment of field personnel at ever decreasing cost of deployment with faster and simpler implementation, They even go as far as expecting future access to information that they have not even planned for! Is this the mobile super highway?
Keeping Pace with technology
The supplier and the customer both wish to gain benefit from new technologies and are being helped by the current trends in mobile computing. These include:
- PDA’sare becoming more powerful
- Price/performance ratio is improving
- Data communications services are due for a big improvement
- Infrastructure methodologies and software are now available for mobile systems
Flexibility is the key to the continued success of a field system. Whereas in the past, suppliers have tended to provide discrete mobile applications (e.g. mobile work management (MWM) mobile GIS (MGIS) etc) it is now vital that an appropriate mobile product provides for all customer requirements in a given business area.
A common technical architecture is required that allows applications to share modules and data whilst still meeting a full set of requirements. The product should be scalable from small implementations, perhaps using local data storage on the mobile device, up to major corporate implementations. The latter may utilise central database servers communicating via Internet or Intranet, LAN or wireless links.
8. Conclusions
Field systems provide a new enabler for Utilities to deliver a significant improvement in e~ciencies in the activities of field workers. The advent of low cost good coverage mobile communications combined with low cost high functionality handheld computer devices present a new way for Utilities to respond to the external pressures that result in the drive to improve internal efficiencies. Given that for any typical Utility the staff considered as candidates to work as field workers could be as many as 50°/0of all staff, field systems are an opportunity that no one can afford to miss!