Experiences with an integrated planning environment
Once a work request is initiated, the engineering supervisor or manager has access to all new
work submitted (Item 2). Based on the supervisor's deeper understanding of the nature of the
work, as well as the work priority and designer availability, the work is assigned to a designer,
planner, or engineer. Using the scheduling functionality within the WMS, the supervisor is able
to perform efficient scheduling. Based on the workflow of the WMS, the steps of the work
request are automatically defined and serve as a guide to both the supervisor as well as the
resource assigned to perform the work. The supervisor's tool is the WMS. The interface between
the WMS and the graphical IPE is through the use of shared tables. Standard units, workflow
information, and cost information is shared between the JD and the WMS so that the end-users
of the planning environment have access to relevant WMS information. The supervisor will also
have access to the updates and modifications to the work request performed by the resource
performing the planning exercise. This is available in a tabular format.
Similar to the high-level system architecture diagram of Figure 1, the business processes are
centered about the GIS-based graphical IPE (Item 3). The IPE consists of the graphical job
design, core GIS, and engineering analysis. Within the GIS workspace environment, a designer,
engineer, or planner has access to all relevant information from the WMS, including schedules,
costs, and inventory, as well as the ability to perform engineering analysis and optimization. It is
important to note that from a role-based end-user perspective, there is never any requirement to
leave the GIS environment, all applications are seamlessly embedded into the GIS as though they
were an integral component. This reduces training time and eases the burden of end-user
acceptance. The engineering analysis component allows the end user to identify capacity and
voltage violations and to more appropriately size equipment. (Load flow, motor start, and shortcircuit
analysis are a part of the end-user's daily job function.) The engineering analysis module
also offers the end user optimal switch-order planning and capacitor placement. With the IPE,
the end user is not required to run a batch-mode translator between the different systems, nor is
there any requirement to massage data prior to use. The designs performed using the job design
tool employ corporate standards that are derived from the WMS. Business rules guide the enduser
to make designs that follow corporate and industry standards. As the design has been
performed graphically and is spatially enabled, it enters a proposed state until the construction
has been performed in the field. Using the graphical design also eliminates the need for
numerous draft resources to draw the proposed construction in a manner that is suitable for
archival. A comprehensive job package is automatically generated for crews, including a bill of
materials, job instructions, special instructions, and a detailed construction drawing. Once work
has been completed, the user of the planning environment makes the changes to the proposed
changes to create the as-built changes. At this point, a cost variance can be performed and the
state of the construction is updated within the central facilities repository.
Figure 2: High-Level Relationship between Systems and Business Processes
An important interface is from the WMS/JD system to the warehouse and inventory management
system (Item 4). The purpose of this interface is to enable the resource tasked with planning to
validate material availability and perform material issues and returns for material forecast and
requisitioned bill of materials for a particular job. This interface serves to eliminate frequent and
iterative calls between the planner and the warehouse or the arbitrary substitution of materials by
field crews. The interface between the WMS/JD system and accounting system allows the utility
to capture accounting as well as activity-based work (Item 5). Crews are able to automatically
update as built changes and perform field verification through the WMS (Item 6). Future plans
are to offer the crews considerable WMS functionality through the use of a mobile data system.
Model updates to the outage management system are performed on an incremental basis directly
from the central facilities repository (Item 7).
