Gas Utility Completes Geospatial Conversion and Acronym (AM/FM/GIS/Cad/CIS/GPS) Integration

Introduction
NYSEG is a wholly owned subsidiary of Energy East Corporation and provides energy delivery and related services to 811,000 electric and 250,000 gas customers throughout more than one third of New York State. A community partner since 1852 we play a large role in the communities we serve through various programs we have initiated in our service territory. NYSEG operates a gas storage facility and 7000 miles of gas pipeline to serve it’s gas customers in 230 cities, towns and villages.

Gas distribution maps and facilities records are the basis of the GBU’s asset documentation and engineering, construction, operations and maintenance activities. The automation of this information and making it available throughout the organization is seen as key to effective communication and to automating and improving critical engineering and operations workflows.

Project History
Gas franchise expansion projects beginning in 1987 provided positive change in gas mapping and records methodology but glaringly identified inefficiencies and out of date existing maps and records. The positive changes were the impetus needed to establish the need for change based on proven productivity increases based on advanced technologies. A major require-ment was an efficient, expedient methodology for base map preparation supporting fast paced construction and documentation for final as built maps and records. After several successful expansion projects, a plan based on solid cost and schedule projections was prepared, pre-sented and approved in late 1992 with more than 1650 activity items identified in the project.

The AM/FM/GIS project consisted of several primary goals:

The development of mapping standards.
The development of a detailed pkmimetric landbase for geographic referencing and control of gas facilities.
The automation of mains related information from as-builts and work orders.
The automation of service related information from existing manually maintained service cards.
The linkage of mains and services network with associated physical and operational information(attribution).
The reconciliation of customer, street addressing and premise location.
The production and electronic distribution of map books to the field.
Continual incremental improvement of the facility data and access.
Use of off the shelf software.