Mobile Mapping and Enterprisewide Field Computing

Introduction
Allegheny Power is an investor own utility serving a 29,000 square mile area in parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland. Approximately 900 construction workers serve 1.4 million customers.

As part of a major restructuring effort in 1996, three major operational computer systems were implemented: Severn Trent Work Management, M3I Outage Management and Smallworld AM/FM (GIS). During this effort Mobile Computing was identified as a key technology that could be implemented to further extend the benefits derived from the major systems. However, early in the analysis phase it was determined that the major systems had to be in place before a Mobile Computing program could be effectively implemented. As a result, the program was put on hold until early 1997.

When the program was restarted, the Mobile Computing Team agreed that other types of mobile applications were valuable and should be considered for the future (including GIS and Outage Management), but the real interest at that point was the development of a work management system. Extending a work management system to the field promised major productivity gains stemming from increased efficiencies. The mobile work management system would provide each crew with a daily list of scheduled work to which timekeeping and as-built information could be reported. This information would be sent to and from the mobile units in a daily batch process. The system would completely eliminate the paper reporting process in place at the time. A vendor was selected and development began.

What we learned right away, though, is that it is difficult to take a large, office-based system and attempt to mold it into a field tool. The process of trying to adapt our existing work management system to the field posed a number of problems, particularly in terms of moving data between the office and the crews. After working on the project for a number of months, we realized that what we needed was software designed specifically for mobile settings – software that interfaced with our office system but provided functionality suited to the field. Ease of use was key.

This was a lesson that would guide us during the next year of development. At that time, Allegheny Power was already providing a high level of customer service and was heavily automated in the office. Like most utilities, we are (and was at that time) looking for ways to get stronger and more efficient in the face of impending competition. How, then, would we find major new sources of productivity gain and provide even higher levels of customer service?

A big part of the answer, we decided, involved automating activities that have resisted automation in the past. These activities tend to be “field operations” tasks that are highly mobile in character.

Having already determined that pen computing hardware had evolved to a point where it could support demanding field applications, Allegheny Power decided to broaden its field initiative. In 1998, we selected and began working with three vendors specializing in different types of field applications: M3i (outage management), MapFrame (GIS), and PAD Systems (mobile work management). We also decided on computer hardware, selecting Walkabout Computer’s Hammerhead pen tablet. Designed specifically for use in outdoor settings and weighing only about three and a half pounds, this high performance tablet computer can be used in or outside a vehicle.