Steven A. Radice
Few people in the utility transmission and distribution business need convincing that the above- and below-ground asset infrastructure – be it electric, gas or water – is a critical component that is today showing unmistakable signs of age. And, most utility managers understand that the field workforce tending to that infrastructure is also aging and retiring at an increasing rate. These issues of aging infrastructure and aging workforce are often examined independently in articles, papers and presentations to industry forums. Although richly worthy of attention in their own right, it is the interaction of the two, the dual threat of asset infrastructure aging simultaneously with the workforce maintaining it, that should be a particular concern of utility management, regulators, employees and customers. This article describes components and ramifications of each of the aging challenges and discusses the technology solutions that are evolving to meet those challenges independently and, more importantly, together in an integrated manner.
When a utility field technician or crew is dispatched to complete a series of inspections and maintenance orders at, for example, a substation, one can assume that they are experienced and fully trained to do so. With the median age of utility industry employees currently at 49, this would certainly be a valid assumption. Indeed, for the utility industry, there is a large group of well-experienced, well-trained current employees in the 45- to 54-year-old range. In executing the various procedures and tests involved in inspections and maintenance work, these employees are drawing directly on the considerable expertise and familiarity with the assets they have developed over some 25 years of work in the field.
Although inspections and maintenance procedures are well documented in many cases and the subject of frequent refresher training for crews, the personal knowledge component is just as important. Knowing the peculiarities of a given asset type – even down to the model number – is a valuable additional aid to properly conducting an inspection and, if necessary, making repairs. As these lead technicians and crew chiefs age, however, an increasing number are taking advantage of utility retirement packages in order to leave on or, in some cases, before their scheduled retirement dates. When such individuals leave, that individualized knowledge goes with them. And, with strict cost controls in place at most utilities, hiring replacements is a lengthy and demanding process. Even once hired, the time needed to achieve the same level of personal knowledge is measured in many years, not months. With the increasing use of contractors (also exposed to the aging workforce factor), utilities might not even be in a position to hire new employees who will eventually be developing the in-depth skills needed for field work.
So, when a relatively new lead technician or crew goes out next year to do that same inspection series at a substation, the personal expertise brought out to the job with them may be significantly lower than in prior years. No doubt they will exert their best efforts, will follow documented procedures, and be subject to on-site personal review by a field supervisor. But that innate ability to sense what the status really is for a given piece of the asset infrastructure will be lessened.
At the same time as this aging workforce factor is coming into play, those same assets and infrastructure being maintained are also aging, thus requiring more and lengthier inspections and maintenance procedures and, in some cases, replacement. Newspaper headlines and TV news stories the last five years have all too often featured a failure, sometimes spectacular, of a given piece of electric, gas or water infrastructure that at the very least led to service interruptions or, more dramatically, produced significant damage and human injury as a result of its failure. Much of that infrastructure is composed of operating assets that utilities of all types must continually inspect, maintain and replace to ensure reliable performance. And, while a good portion of the nation’s utility asset infrastructure is in satisfactory condition, an increasing percentage of it is nearing (or exceeding) its planned operating life and therefore requiring field work to maintain or replace it. In such work, utility employee personal knowledge of individual assets as well as the overall transmission and distribution network is critical.
Faced with this impending crisis, how should energy and utility companies respond? There are two major components to the solution:
1. Capture procedures in real time as they are performed in the field.
2. Break down the technology silos between asset and workforce management.
Real-Time Data Capture Key to Continuous Improvement
Before information such as procedural processes, planned vs. actual work, equipment change-outs, etc., can be shared, it must first be captured. And, a retiring technician can not be expected to outline effective procedures developed over 25-30 years of experience in return for a gold watch at his retirement party. Therefore, it is critical that utilities empower their technicians with the ability to document procedures as they are performed – and modified – in the field. The best vehicle for this activity is a Web-enabled mobile device (e.g., Blackberry, Smartphone, laptop, etc.) backed by a robust mobile platform.
Technicians empowered with such mobile devices not only have a wealth of beneficial information at their fingertips (more on this later). They can also capture vital data which can help future technicians perform the same work more efficiently. For example, a technician dispatched to replace a breaker at a substation may note that the instructions detail a procedure which is not the optimum method based on a recent experience with the same breaker. Therefore, he can adjust the procedure on the fly and capture that information for use by other technicians and crews across the utility, as well as third-party contractors – regardless of their level of experience. In this way, not only is a single technician continuing to improve his effectiveness; he is also helping to implement continuous improvement across the enterprise.
The information, once captured, is typically stored in an enterprise asset management (EAM) system which serves as the “system of record” for the assets and the work performed against them. By tightly integrating the technician’s mobile device with the EAM and other enterprise systems via a robust mobile platform, the technician can close work orders at the time the work is completed and have that change reflected across the enterprise. As a result, the status of the assets, bills of materials, parts inventory, and other data are updated in real time so that the rest of the enterprise has access to accurate information regarding the asset.
Integrated Systems Break Down the Silos
Another key ingredient to dealing with the aforementioned “dual threat” is sharing the information once it’s captured. This can be a real challenge since the work described above is typically generated in some form of utility asset management or work management system. Such a system consists of technology, certainly, as well as business processes, procedures and even accounting practices, all of which come into play in operating a satisfactory asset management program. For many years, such systems were “siloed” by the type of asset being installed or maintained; thus, all meters would be managed by one system (often a spreadsheet), all transformers and related substation equipment managed in another, and so on. In the last five years, however, there has been an increasing trend toward maintaining the history of all assets in a single enterprise-wide asset management system of record.
Ironically, this same silo approach also has applied to the utility field workforce, with meter and customer service personnel managed by one workforce management system, distribution personnel in another, and outage technicians in still a third. Like asset management, however, the trend in recent years has been toward a common workforce management system covering the entire enterprise field force. With both of these consolidation trends, therefore, the ability has arisen to take a more holistic and integrated approach to asset management and workforce management, both as separate disciplines but now also as a useful synergistic point of operational excellence. Nowhere is this outcome more helpful than in addressing the problems posed by an asset infrastructure aging as fast as the workforce that maintains it.
How would such synergy appear in a normal field environment? Let us use the example from above of a technician or crew going out to a substation for a series of inspection and maintenance tasks or orders. The very composition of the crew is a good starting point, in that the enterprise workforce management system would have facilitated the creation of a crew with the most appropriate skills to the orders at hand, and structured the assignment and scheduling of the work to achieve
maximum efficiency.
The orders to be accomplished would be generated by the EAM system, using a variety of triggers (time- and condition-based in addition to regulatory requirements) to determine the specific asset items to be inspected and maintained. These orders would be passed electronically to a mobile data terminal (MDT) carried by the technician or crew. On its screen would be details of the orders and assets, giving the utility employees a clear view of what needed to be done, but not how. In the past, the question of how would have been left to the combination of training and personal knowledge that
we assume exists today in most utilities. But with the aging workforce and asset infrastructure issue, the “how” may not be as clear today and in the future as a utility would prefer.
Here we can see the new abilities and benefits of an integrated approach to asset management and workforce management. In this scenario, besides passing down the order details, the upstream system would also send to the MDT a hyperlink or a file attachment for viewing by the technician or crew. The hyperlink would be a clickable reference to the specific detailed inspection and maintenance procedure for that asset, which would be resident on the device hard drive.
If wireless communications were available, one would see an internal Web site where details on the procedure were presented. Besides text information, the hyperlink can also provide graphical guidance, with detailed schematics of a given asset model, for example. Using the MDT’s zoom-in capability, the technician can see the diagram in great detail as needed. The technician thus has at his or her fingertips specific and always up-to-date guidance on how to achieve the work order objective in detail.
Whereas a hyperlink reference would be largely generic to a group of similar assets, another possibility which is even more specific is the attachments capability. In this case, detailed information relevant to that particular asset and order, such as a digital photograph taken yesterday by the previous crew working on it, would be made available on the MDT.
Any changes made that day can be captured via another digital photograph and sent back up as a file attachment as part of the order completion process. The difference between hyperlinks and attachments in this example, therefore, is largely one of specificity to the asset and order in question.
Another possibility would relate to a maintenance procedure (such as replacement of an asset grouping) which a crew might need to undertake following an inspection. Using software on the MDT and the wireless capability, the crew would be able to interface to other third-party applications that are resident on the device itself or accessible via the Web. For example, compatible units (CU) are a major component of new construction for the maintenance replacement of assets. With this third-party reference tool, the crew can access a library of available compatible units for the order in question, and determine what materials and labor should ideally be expended in the procedure. Whereas in the past this information would be on paper and well known to experienced utility or contractor employees, with this capability they can easily and quickly reference compatible unit definitions that are always up to date and complete.
Summary
As you can see, numerous benefits are achieved by capturing asset and work information in the field and breaking down the silos between work and asset management. Useful information is made accessible at the place and time where it is most needed to properly perform the work, certainly a tool and capability previously impossible. This tool, as a result, greatly helps augment the personal familiarity of the utility workers on the job with the asset and work to be done. The foregoing are but two examples of where a properly thought out and integrated solution architecture approach can greatly assist a utility in its daily work as well as meeting its long-range objectives of reliability. The overall capability, achieved only through a complete solution which incorporates a robust mobile capability as well as proper integration and coordination of enterprise asset management and enterprise workforce management, thus can play an instrumental role in helping utilities deal with the dual threats of aging infrastructure and aging workforce.
About the Author
Steven Radice is a Ventyx Vice-President for Utility Industry Solutions, with over 20 years experience and expertise in utility industry technology for the distribution business. He supports Ventyx account executives in shaping and selling enterprise technology solutions to meet the functional and technical requirements of utility customers.
Prior to Ventyx, Mr. Radice was Executive Consultant for SchlumbergerSema, where he worked with national and international utilities on implementing distribution system solutions. Mr. Radice was Vice President of Product Marketing at Utility Partners, a utility industry mobile software firm, and held Consulting Manager positions at Price Waterhouse and Deloitte. He also served as CIO at a large financial institution in the Southeast U.S.
