Field work is an aspect of operations and asset management that presents many challenges to utilities. Managers need efficient ways to instruct crews on the location and details of work. Field crews need intuitive and focused software tools that enable them to find and accomplish their work. But paper-based processes are still used for field work at our utility and many others. Why? Because typical mobile solutions are difficult to deploy, license, secure, integrate with enterprise systems, and maintain over time. Our resources are already stretched thin, so adding or expanding a complex solution is just not feasible.
This presentation proposes the mobile work management solution of our dreams. Imagine a solution that is simple to implement and addresses the variety of field work that our organization needs to accomplish. Our field personnel could deploy lightweight apps to their mobile devices in just minutes, log in seamlessly with their existing corporate credentials, and access their work instantly. They could work without internet connectivity, and their updates would be automatically synchronized to the enterprise when connectivity is re-established.
This dream mobile solution would enable the secure, unimpeded flow of digital information between the office and the field, accelerating our essential business workflows. We could quickly add as many users as needed to accomplish the task of the day. The solution would recognize that all field work has a location, and leverage our existing facility GIS to define work locations. Data captured in the field would include the information most relevant to our business, including work status and results, GPS breadcrumb trails, redline sketches of situations, and proposed edits to asset data.
We believe that the mobile work management solution of our dreams is within reach with today’s technology, and that it will truly lower our cost of doing business.
Android Application Components with Implementation & Examples
Distributech 2015 - Mobile Work management
1. Mobile Work Management –
What Do Utilities Dream Of?
Darin Warke
GIS Supervisor at UniSource Energy Services
Jon Fairchild
Technical Product Manager for Mobile & Web, Schneider Electric
February 4, 2015
4. UNS Energy Overview
●Comprised of 3 regulated utilities
●Approximately 657,000 customers throughout Arizona
●Tucson Electric Power (TEP) – 414,000
●UNS Gas – 150,000
●UNS Electric – 93,000
●Recently acquired by Fortis Inc. of Canada
●Using ArcGIS by Esri, ArcFM by Schneider
Electric and Smallworld
5. Current Field Solution
●Customized GIS Viewer with edit capabilities
●Redlining and Inspections
●Cathodic Protection Annual Survey
●Elevated Pressure Bi-Annual Survey
●Electric and Gas line locating
●Customized searching, reporting and tracing functions
●Fully disconnected via local file geodatabases
●Field data edits synchronized through custom ArcGIS Server feature service
6. Dream Field Solution
●Reduce or eliminate customizations when warranted
●Robust out-of-the-box functionality
●Configurable for a variety of use cases
●Rapid turnaround of user change requests
●Disconnected and Connected workflows
●Integrations to existing GIS and Work Management investments
●Seamless access to back office resources
7. Challenges
●Very rural service territory
●Corporate security infrastructure not ready
●Balancing user expectations
●Budget – Capital vs. O&M expenditures
●The industry is driving us toward cloud based solutions
●Our IT infrastructure is currently driven by capital dollars
11. Simple…
●to deploy and configure for many scenarios
●to use in the field with or without connectivity
●to build workflows and integrations
●to maintain and upgrade
16. Sensor-driven
●Mobile outage response with photos
●Mobile design and as-builting with GPS
●Predictive maintenance with Schneider Electric ProRelay Box
17.
18. OpEx savings of a Simple, Spatial, Secure
Mobile Solution:
●Reduced maintenance costs for software and
servers
●Reduced IT administration
●Reduced or eliminated printing costs
●Significant gains in end-user productivity
●Reduced fuel usage and drive time to work sites
19. ●Initial implementation of solution in 2 days
●First field user trained in 90 minutes
●Data processing and reporting in less than 1
hour per week
●Multiple enhancement requests for product
delivered in as little as 3 weeks
●Product quality improvements reduced LES
data plan usage
OpEx Benefits at
Lincoln Electric System
UNS Energy is comprised of 3 regulated utilities (Tucson Electric Power, UNS Gas and UNS Electric) with approximately 657,000 customers throughout Arizona. My primary responsibility is as the GIS Supervisor for UNS Gas but I do oversee aspects of GIS operations for UNS Electric as well. As you can see, we have a very large (and if you are familiar with Arizona) a very rural service territory. UNS Gas and UNS Electric are primarily Esri and Schneider Electric clients. Tucson Electric Power is primarily a Smallworld client with a growing Esri footprint.
As a product manager, one of my primary roles is to understand technology requirements of our utility and telecom customers, and then propose products that strike the balance between the low-cost configurable app that works OK but doesn’t fully meet your needs, and the custom solution your users expect that can be incredibly expensive to build and maintain.
With mobile technology, this balance is no easy nut to crack, because the primary business driver is a need for improved collaboration, between many parties working in the field and in the office, that have disparate skill sets. Meanwhile, utilities have less resources and more responsibilities. So you need efficient and effective ways to send instruction to the field, bring information back in to the office, and tie all of this together to achieve business goals.
Through our research with a lot of customers, I can sum up the essential requirements for utility mobile solutions with 3 S words: Simple, Spatial, Secure.
SIMPLE
To deploy and configure so you can use a single consolidated solution that deploys rapidly for multiple scenarios such as inspection, damage assessment, outage response, leak survey, underground locates, and construction as-builting
To use in the field with or without connectivity, so crews can view work, share status, and record results in the form of tabular data, photos, and redline sketches
To build workflows and integrations that tie mobile processes into the business and enterprise systems
To maintain and upgrade through frequent release of enhancements with automated deployment, so users can always have the latest technology
SPATIAL
Leverages your existing GIS investment including data and software
Allows spatial-based dispatch of crews so you can create work associated with features and locations in your GIS
Shares relevant GIS information with field crews so their work can be informed by it, and enables them to provide feedback for improvements to the GIS data
SECURE
The solution must have consistency in security policy, using the IT processes already in place
Asset and other sensitive enterprise data must live on-premise behind the firewall, where corporate IT manages access to it
All access is to mobile solution is authenticated and communications are encrypted
What would a solution to these requirements look like? Here’s what it could look like to a field crew…
First of all, a map view, giving geospatial context to the work that needs to happen. So it would include backdrop layers, asset data, and the location of work
Also, tools such as search, so that crews can find assets and customers relative to their current location, and identify to query the map for detailed information about a location
And it would provide a list of current work for the user, perhaps multiple types of work listed together, and integrated with the map view, so crews know exactly where they need to go and what they need to do, and they can see detailed instructions about their work and capture status and results
Back in the office…
As we have heard a lot this week, sensors will continue to play a larger role in utility operations.
The basic example is camera, which for example with mobile outage response can provide photos of the situation
Mobile design and as-builting can benefit from onboard GPS
And how about more sophisticated, like the Schneider Electric ProRelay Box, which is used for on-site testing of transformer relays… it could provide measurements as results of an inspection managed on the mobile app
Here is the architecture of our dreams which will enable this mobile solution.
Mobile Apps are native and optimized for your devices and their accessories, lightweight, and carry only the functionality your crews need to do their jobs. They connect to the enterprise for asset and customer information, and to mobile services for details of field work.
The Utility enterprise has existing systems that will participate in the mobile solution, including Active Directory for security policy, enterprise systems such as GIS, CIS, ADMS, and work management systems, and office apps such Microsoft Excel for reporting and analysis.
Both the mobile apps and enterprise systems connect to Mobile Services. This is the lynchpin where mobile tasks and workflow are managed. As a vendor, we want manage and scale the mobile services in a data center, thus reducing deployment and admin costs for ourselves and our customers. And even though these services are outside the utility enterprise, access is based on existing active directory security policy, and sensitive asset and customer data still lives within the enterprise firewall.
Regarding the CapEx/OpEx issue, Darin is right. With the subscription-based hybrid-cloud solution of our dreams, our customers are at least partially paying through operating expenses.
The way to navigate this hurdle is to show your organization the operating expense savings that will be realized with a simple, spatial, and secure mobile solution that has a cloud-hosted back end.
For example…
But this all academic without some real metrics.
One of our customers, Lincoln Electric System, shared with us some benefits they realized with their mobile solution:
Initial implementation of the solution in 2 days (previous custom solution required 6 months)
First field user trained in 90 minutes (previous app required 1-2 days of training)
Data processing and reporting in less than 1 hour per week without GIS analyst (previously 2-4 hours per week by GIS analyst)
Multiple enhancement requests to product delivered in as little as 3 weeks
Product quality improvement reduced LES data plan usage approximately 40% before customer could report a problem with high data plan usage
The mobile solution of our dreams is a consolidated solution that is simple, spatial, and secure that meets utility business needs without expensive implementation, customization, maintenance, and in the end increases consumer satisfaction and lowers the cost of doing business