Automation and Savings at New Brunswick Power

Énergie NB Power is a group of companies that serves more than 360,000 direct and indirect customers in the Canadian province of New Brunswick.

New Brunswick Power Corporation (NB Power) operates one of North America’s most diverse generation and interconnected transmission systems. Economic generation from a variety of sources—oil, hydro, nuclear, coal, and Orimulsion®—is reliably delivered to over 360,000 direct and indirect customers through a network of more than 32,000 kilometers of power lines and numerous substations and terminals.

Key Facts about NB Power:

· New BrunswickLand Area: 73,440 sq. km

· Network of power lines: 32,000 km

· Number of customers: 363,000+

· Industrial Substations: 48

Deciding to automate

With hundreds of thousands of customers spread out across 44,000 square km, NB Power faced numerous challenges related to geography, resource allocation, and overall effi ciency, especially in its engineering department. In 2003, it became clear that line designers were up against a potentially overwhelming workload, and simply adding more designers to the team was not a viable long-term solution. NB Power needed to make significant gains in productivity on an enterprise-wide scale.

To support this effort, the organization had already invested in a comprehensive information technology (IT) strategy to improve resource planning and efficiency. Components included new GIS and outage management systems.

NB Power wanted to add an asset management tool that could generate work orders and keep track of completed work on a daily basis. This tool needed to be compatible with the new GIS and outage management applications, as well as integrate with a trusted scheduling application that had been in place for nearly 20 years. Ultimately, NB Power wanted an asset management tool that would allow line designers to focus on design jobs while GIS staff focused exclusively on data integrity and analysis — instead of redrawing work orders.

Improving productivity

To understand how much everyday workflow has changed for NB Power employees, we should start with the company’s original workflow process:

Before

By automating field design using Powel’s StakeOut, NB Power has eliminated four steps entirely, and reduced the amount of time spent on other steps by 60 percent or more.

After

In addition, the NB Power team automated its work order system so that the field design application and the organization’s in-house estimating/planning and scheduling systems can trigger each other to complete defined actions automatically.

For example, when the field design server receives a job that meets certain criteria, it automatically exports the data to the estimating/planning and scheduling systems. Once these applications process the data, they in turn prompt the field design application to move the job to the next action. This has eliminated several estimating and planning tasks that were formerly executed manually.

To improve efficiency even further, NB Power has automated select management approvals. Data validation checks are performed when a job is posted to the field design application server. A custom estimating procedure assesses the job, and if it exceeds a pre-defined value the application generates an email for management approval.

Finally, NB Power used the field design application’s custom scripting to make sure all data fi elds are completed. These scripts also ensure the data integrity of each job. Customized action scripts also automate simple processes such as changes in job status or responsibilities, while complex scripts allow a designer to request an action in the field (e.g., easement request, GIS update) and generate an email request that is sent to the appropriate department when the designer synchronizes with the application server.

All of these customizations enable NB Power designers to increase efficiency, reduce manual processes, share data across the enterprise, ensure the integrity of engineering and facilities data, and extend accurate field design data to GIS, outage management, and other critical decision support systems.

Running the numbers

The business case for integrating automated field design with GIS is clear for NB Power. Consider the following side-by-side comparisons, showing approximate times for each task in the work order process.

ROI

By eliminating four process steps and significantly reducing many others, the field design application enabled NB Power to minimize total time designers spend in the field per job and improve personnel utilization considerably.

Today, NB Power is adding map viewing software to all crew trucks, so the utility can share information with the mobile workforce more rapidly. The application bundles maps, graphics, and external data in one package, and provides customized views of service areas, utility infrastructure, customer details, land base (such as outages), GPS-driven crew locations, service requests, and other field data.

Custom ROI Models

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