FAME Goes Mobile with Colorado Field Inventory

”When the bird and the book disagree, always believe the bird.” -- James Audubon

Prelude on Mobility and Field Inventories
Technical advances have made mobility a popular topic in our industry in recent years. The problem is, when we’re all taking about a large topic, we may be addressing very different sectors of the subject. The mobility issues to be discussed here involve taking data from an central office-based AM/FM system to the field in disconnected mode and returning data collected in the field back to the office system.

UtiliCorp desired mobility for its AM/FM systems for two main applications: mobile mapbooks and field data collection. We began with a field data collection pilot in anticipation of a pending merger with a utility company that had no maps. The plan was to pilot field data collection in 2000 and employ the methodology developed for a large scale field survey to begin sometime in 2001. We hoped that this pilot could assist the mobile mapbook effort by pushing desktop maps out to the field data collection system.

I began this odyssey believing that taking the book to the bird would improve the description of the bird. The field office participating in this pilot project set a simpler target--develop field data collection methodology that was an improvement over scribbling on the back on an envelope.

If you’ve never been on a similar voyage, our goals will appear absurdly small (we do have larger more sophisticated sounding goals, which can be created by any short brainstorming session). Unfortunately, the rocks of technological complexity surround this very attractive mobile touring spot. It is my intent to point out some of the more treacherous rocks and provide some clear navigation points to aid in reaching the goal.

The Odyssey Begins
Our odyssey in search of a perfect field inventory began early in the year 2000. Staff for UtiliCorp’s AM/FM system, FAME, were receiving a flurry of phone calls from field staff in Canon City, Colorado. The Canon City staff had been capturing latitude and longitude points using consumer grade GPS units. They wanted help getting these points correctly into FAME because the points were landing on the wrong side of the street as often as not.

Those with experience in enterprise-wide GIS solutions are now wisely shaking your heads and inwardly screaming “Nooooo.” To expect your corporate AM/FM system to accommodate the desires of a small field office while allowing self-trained non-IT staff to collect vital data would surely be the kiss of death. Any manager who has endured the wars of diverse internal agendas would be strongly inclined to run for the hills.

But wait. UtiliCorp’s goal for its high dollar, multi-year reengineered AM/FM system was to decentralize map maintenance, putting tools in the hands of the local design and field staff and making them responsible for their facilities information. During the growth of our project, many corporate and district level needs for this mapped data had been discovered. Many stakeholders now expected our system to provide timely and accurate information about facilities. Canon City was saying that in order to provide this information they needed to be able to take measurements in the field, bring them into FAME, and have it all make sense.