Integrated Mobile Work Management and Mobile GIS
Richard Webb
Gyronita Consulting Ltd, 26, Branbling Road
Horsham, West Sussex, RH13 6AY, England
Alan Brown
Procis Software Ltd, Alexander House
19, Fleming way, Swindon, Wilts
SN12NG, England
Faced with continuing pressures to improve operating efficiency Severn Trent Water
(UK) has embarked on a project to implement an integrated field system that links work
management and GIS together. Utilising the technologies of handheld computers and
mobile communications, the field system has been used as a tool to realign the business
process of managing the work on the geographically dispersed network of assets. The
business benefits are seen to be significant with a target for all field workers of a
productivity gain of 25 - 35 %. Pay back for the project is under two years.
Introduction
Severn Trent Water is the second largest Water Company in the UK. It has a history of
steadily improving operating efficiencies year on year. This paper sets out the reasons
why it decided to invest in field systems and describes the approach adopted in
implementing them.
Section 1 Business Issues
Business Climate
Pressure from the regulator, customer and shareholder all serve to emphasise the need to
improve the efficiency of the business. Recently Severn Trent Water (STW) has
recognised that developments in portable computing devices, along with the advent of
Wireless Communications, provide an opportunity to redefine the business process of
managing the field workforce, using the new technologies, to enable an improved service
to the customer, whilst at the same time achieving considerable savings.
Business Benefits
The implementations of field systems affect the areas of the business that relate to the
operation of the assets. All Utilities have the same features of geographically dispersed
assets, geographically dispersed customers and geographically dispersed work force.
Introducing mobile work management allows the business process of allocating tasks to
the field worker and monitoring the progress of the tasks to be streamlined. It delivers
benefits in improving the productivity of both the field workers, and the dispatching staff
based in the office. In a typical Utility 50% of the staff can be classified as field workers
and fall into the scope of such a concept. It is feasible to anticipate an improvement in
efficiency up to 25% - 35% from each field worker.
Business Model
The benefits from introducing mobile working are maximised by viewing the business as
divided into two parts. The diagram below illustrates the new business model.
The field working half of the business is the mobile workers, and the aim of the
realignment of the business process is to keep the field workers out in the field as much
as possible, because the customers and assets are geographically dispersed.
The centralised support component of the Company are the functions that manage the
field activity, whether it be generated from customer service, maintenance, operations
activities, or reactive work to respond to breakdowns, outages or heavy weather events.
