The Geospatial Utility—More Than Just Assets
Electrical Distribution
BC Hydro was one of the early adopters of GIT with the integration of their Work Management
System (WMS) to their AM/FM/GIS system in the early 1990’s. The “Distribution Construction
Design System (DCDS)” allowed service planners to extract a work area from the GIS database,
update a screen print in the field, then prepare a design using the GIS. When the design was
completed, compatible units were passed automatically to the WMS for estimating, material ordering
and work order tracking. DCDS automatically produced a variety of drawings (permit, construction,
plant alteration, etc.) and the GIS database was automatically updated when the line department
confirmed that the job was complete in the WMS. This enabled BC Hydro to vastly improve its maps
and asset records during the 1990’s without additional drafting resources. Previously, many map
types and record updates were simply either not being done and/or they were not consistent
throughout the province.
Figure 3. Enabling of the distribution job
flow process using BC Hydro’s geospatial
Distribution Analysis and Design application.
During the year 2000, as part of BC Hydro’s Enterprise GIS initiative, their original mainframe
AM/FM/GIS system was migrated to a new GIS platform and DCDS was redeveloped into the new Distribution Analysis and Design (DAD) application. DAD is used in much the same way as DCDS was except that it has an easier user interface and provides significantly more functionality for the service planners.
DAD can support work being done a job at a time (WMS related and by far the majority of activity) by service planners as well as work that is done a map at a time by drafters for updating records as a result of maintenance or other processes. In addition, utility customers and property developers benefit from reduced cycle times for service installations.
While DAD is a custom application for BC Hydro, much of its functionality has been incorporated
into a new vendor product. It is currently being marketed to electric and gas distribution utilities
under the name Design Manager
TM.
