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2002
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Challenges of Implementing GIS in a gas utility
Like most other utilities that have spent many years fine-tuning their business processes BGE
were acutely aware that the level of service provided to customers is directly related to the
effectiveness of those processes. Therefore when they set about examining the technology
they were mindful that GIS must, as a minimum, be capable of replicating those processes
and to justify the expenditure it must substantial enhance/improve productivity. This was the
premise from which BGE began the design of their corporate GIS
Project Review
The major factors that influenced the successful outcome of the project are discussed here
under the following broad headings:
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Researching and learning about the Technology
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Understanding the Business
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Developing a GIS Strategy
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Effective Management Structure
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Developing an Implementation Plan
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Project Specification
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Project Deliverables
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Project Execution
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Design Phase
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Data Capture
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Training
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Introduction of GIS into the Organisation
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Conclusion
Researching and learning about the Technology
BGE were eager to implement a corporate GIS and had been monitoring the progress of the
technology for almost a decade. They did however differentiate between the hype and the
reality of GIS and while they remained committed to utilizing the technology, BGE were
adamant they would not proceed with implementation until they were satisfied that the time
was right.
They, like many other organisations had the experience of successfully implementing CAD
into their design offices. When they began looking closely at the state of GIS in the early
1990’s they realised that GIS was much more complex than CAD and that belief was further
reinforced by what they found during site visits to early implementers.
They found a lot of organisations involved in implementing the technology at the time were
‘stuck’ in the pilot phase for too long and that productive operational sites were rare and
difficult to locate.
The initial site visits revealed that organisations were not prepared for the huge data capture
problem that lay before them, many were attempting to do data capture in-house with
inadequate resources. Putting data into GIS and getting data out of GIS was problematic -
data capture tools were inadequate.
The Hardware was expensive, not very powerful and had very limited storage capacity.
Software was not reliable, it was still maturing and it was not user friendly. Vector data was
not as readily available then as it is now, all systems appeared to be using their own
proprietary formats, which made the transfer of data a major obstacle. The non-availability of
geo coded National Address data was also a discouraging factor.
Further investigation and research of literature on the state of GIS in general revealed that
virtually all organisations were encountering numerous obstacles in their efforts to implement
systems, notably the following:
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Lack executive management support
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Lack of user involvement
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Lack of business-oriented strategy
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No clear statement of requirements
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Insufficient awareness of technology
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Lack of competent skills
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Unrealistic expectations
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Insufficient staff to implement data capture
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Inadequate financial resources
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Poor data quality
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No clear GIS applications implementation plans
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GIS/IT responsibilities unclear
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Lack of ownership
While the above list is not exhaustive, it does highlight many of the issues faced by
organisations adopting the technology. Perhaps in many ways it explains the extraordinary
high failure rate of GIS projects and why GIS has in the past remained hidden away in the
back rooms of many design departments for so long.
It was clear that many of the above issues stemmed from a lack of understanding of the
technology and unrealistic expectations. ‘Expectations’ that were fuelled by GIS vendors who
understated the limitations of an emerging technology to meet even modest business needs.
In the early nineties BGE remained ‘unconvinced’ and decided to continued monitoring the
progress of the technology – this was despite all the hype about GIS. However by the midnineties
they witnessed the dramatic drop in hardware cost and the huge increase in
computing power and storage, which coincided with similar improvements in GIS software
functionality. It was really only then that operational systems delivering real and tangible
benefits to organisations began to emerge. The numbers were small but were enough to
influence BGE to start more serious planning.
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