Gas Compliance/Maintenance Process Improvement Utilizing GIS

In October of 1998, the gas portion of SCE&G was in need of a new system to handle all of the facilities covered under DOT 192. The program that handled the maintenance of all facilities was an old VSAM mainframe system. The problem was that all of these activities involved multiple date calculations for maintenance scheduling and therefore the program was deemed non-compliant for Y2K. This opportunity not only enabled an update of the programming but also allowed for the examination of different practices that had evolved over the years in the different divisions. A standardized plan was then developed that would improve efficiencies at a time when everyone was being asked to do more with less.

The problem was attacked on two separate levels. The first level involved developing a new database and programs to handle the storage and maintenance of the compliance information. The second was to examine the field practices currently being used to perform maintenance. The main focus of this presentation is the field practices.

Valve Maintenance
Valve maintenance was the first process examined. It was believed that it would be easier to re-engineer the process if it was understood first-hand how the field personnel performed their jobs. Everyone in the GIS department was required to spend time in the field turning and maintaining valves, and it was an eye-opening experience. There had been suggestions from the field that too much time was spent driving from valve to valve. After spending some time riding with them, the GIS staff understood what they meant. Most everyone agreed that the process could be improved but no one was really sure where to start. It had taken almost fourteen months to correct the differences between GIS and the mainframe database. When it was finished there was a one to one relationship between mainframe maintenance data and the valves in GIS as well an increased mutual understanding between field and programming personnel.

This procedure became the foundation for the new maintenance system. The valves were plotted by the last date operated to provide a visual depiction of the geographic distribution of valves being maintained each month. Some offices had sorted the valves by gridsheet so there was a north/south pattern, whereas other offices compiled the gridsheets in a more random manner. Sorting the valves by gridsheet was a quick and dirty way to at least provide some order in the absence of a spatial tool such as GIS. With GIS, significant improvements could be made. It was decided to focus on the largest division as a pilot, and less than two months were available to solve the problem and implement the solution. A new maintenance schedule was needed before the start of the next year.