The Deployment Challenge: Technology vis-a-vis the Business Case
Deployment Strategy
National Fuel’s AM/FM/GIS team quickly came to the realization that a fast way to bring the project’s deployment to a screeching halt was to overburden the team’s limited resources by trying to bring up too much too soon. Deployments never occur without at least some degree of unexpected problems. Therefore, incremental deployment helps narrow (somewhat) the problems that can surface. Furthermore, and even more critical, incremental deployment lends itself to justifying the business case for each of the applications planned to be rolled out. The criteria used in these assessments of the individual applications included costhenefit ratio, quality of service, data integrity and reliability, and timeliness/accessibility of system data. These criteria were the driving forces behind the prioritization methodology.
In order to expedite the system’s usability as well as to minimize cost outlays, National Fuel’s AM/FM/GIS team decided to take a unique approach to its deployment by adopting a mixed raster-vector hybrid system of maps. This hybrid approach was accomplished by scanning, warping and edge-matching all of its operating maps into a seamless, raster operating map within which pockets of vector would be populated over time as replacement work and new mainline was installed. An enhanced ETAK landbase was used as the reference landbase to which National Fuel’s maps would be warped.
This overall approach offered National Fuel the distinct advantages of bringing a digital system “up” in a relatively short time period, and gaining the benefits more quickly by eliminating redundancies sooner. By shortening the implementation period, the backlog of jobs to be posted to the master model during the transition window was also kept more manageable.
Transitioning Technologies
Every effort was made to minimize internal cultural shock in terms of the system’s functionality. In as much as National Fuel’s hardcopy system was workable, albeit technologically based on “pen and ink,” much of the system was replicated digitally. Intergraph’s FRAMME system was the base system being implemented, although it was heavily customized to meet NF’s requirements defined in a detailed specification. The customization was delivered in modular fashion due to its extensive nature.
|
