Ivory tower gets wheels
Case Study - Mobile Computing at MidAmerican Energy Company (MEC)
Before describing the use of mobile computing at MEC, we need to provide some
context. MEC is a utility based in the Midwestern United States with approximately 1.3
million gas and/or electric customers in a service territory of approximately 10,000
square miles. MEC captures both gas and electric distribution facilities in their viewing
environment; and it is used by approximately 400 employees, both in the field and on the
desktops.
Figure 2 MEC service area
When the AM/FM project started at MEC, one of the goals was to provide facility
information to crews in the field. There were three motivations:
- First, crew safety. The field crews had been relying on the radio for any
information they could not see or that was not on a map in the vehicle. Their
safety would be enhanced by having direct and immediate access to complete
information about the distribution network.
- Secondly, to enable decisions to be made in the field. If they had tools to look at
the data, field crews could decide which facilities to work on first.
- Thirdly, data clean up. Since migrated data will differ from the source data and
the source data itself was not 100% correct, MEC knew that their data had errors.
The best people to provide correct information were the employees that worked
with it every day.
Users of mobile products at MEC include locators, servicemen, crew supervisors and
some crews. Locators can be either company or contract employees. Their primary job
is to locate our underground facilities on request. Servicemen are primarily responsible
for installing services and performing minor repair work. Crew supervisors have
responsibility for their crews. The use by crews is fairly limited. It depends on what type
of device was available for their use along with the size of the truck and the size of the
crew.
Four applications at MEC have been especially effective:
- Meter Locates Used primarily by locators and servicemen. It locates an address
either by the customer name or meter number. It supports both gas and electric
meters. It decreases response time to locate trouble and service requests.
- Valve Isolation Used primarily by crew supervisors and crews. This application
identifies the valves that need to be operated in order to isolate a section of main.
It provides a list of all of the valves that require operation and a list of the
addresses that would be impacted. These are all highlighted and centered in the
view. This application decreases response time to gas leaks and assists in
decision making in the field.
- Disconnect Trace Another tool used primarily by crew supervisors and crews.
This application identifies the first operable control device (fuse or switch)
upstream from the problem area so that power can be shut off and work
completed. It is widely used to speed up storm restoration and trouble shooting
outages. As with the valve isolation trace, a list of the addresses impacted by
operating the control device is provided and all features impacted by the operation
are highlighted.
- Circuit Trace This is a tool used primarily by crews during major storm
restorations. It is especially helpful in allowing crews that are not from the local
area to work safely and effectively on an unfamiliar network. It traces a circuit
from beginning to end so that the crew can then drive the circuit to discover any
problems.
These four applications have expanded the use of geospatial information technology at
MEC by a factor of 20:1. For each person who works in the office to maintain the digital
model of the distribution network, twenty field employees or contractors use mobile
applications to work more safely and more efficiently.
For hardware, all company locators and servicemen use Norand 6640C machines that
mount in a rack in their vehicles. A few of the crews are equipped in a like manner, but
they also use HP laptops that are not ruggedized. Two things that we found out about
display was that a dark background would wash out when the device was used in the
field. As a result, we switched to a white background and discovered that on all but the
brightest days, the product was usable. On the days when even white backgrounds would
wash out, the use of sunglasses were all that were required to correct the problem.
Becoming Mobile / Acceptance at MEC
The reactions toward adopting new mobile computing technology varied according to the
culture of the two companies from which MEC was formed. In one, the employees had
mixed emotions. A number of them, especially the company locators, accepted the product pretty easily. They recognized that it helped them in their job because now, in
the digital world, a number of things were at their fingertips. In the old world of
microfiche and paper maps, they had to dig through the media, and the data they found
could be as much as six months old.
In the other company, the field employees were a little more hesitant. Where there was
resistance, we won their hearts and minds using one of two approaches. First, we would
work on converting one of the respected employees in the service center to the product.
From there on it was easy. If we could not get one of their own converted, we used the
second approach. We would concentrate on one of the supervisors (preferably one that
they respected) and convert them. Although acceptance is not 100%, the areas of
resistance are pretty isolated. Our success in acceptance can also be attributed to support.
As an IT staff we made some promises regarding timeliness and effectiveness of support,
and thankfully we were able to keep them. Now we are at the point that it is almost
impossible to swap out hardware for about 90 to 95% of our mobile users unless you
bring the machine with you and the mobile application is already working. In other
words, they want their mobile applications and will not give them up.
Conclusion
Applications that existed only as hopes and dreams in universities and IT departments
have become the tools that utility field employees not only prefer to use, but refuse to
give up. The use of geospatial technology has increased by an order of magnitude over
the AM/FM/GIS elite who initially championed it. Their pioneering work over the last
few decades has spread from the artificial environment of computing centers, through
more normal office environments, to jostling trucks on dusty roads and emergency crew
trucks beside downed power lines. The ivory tower got wheels.
