Historically, larger gas outages have been a rare event. However, the effects of severe weather incidents resulting in outages is growing across the country. Severe storms, impacting coastal and river communities with flooding, and increased wildfire and high wind events are causing disruption all over the United States.
Most outages seem to be managed manually with inputs from various systems. Major weather events, as well as the recent over pressurization events, brought to light a distinct gap in the gas utility industry – that is the ability to manage outages and restorations visually in a comprehensive, unified, and digital fashion.
NGA Support for Gas OMS
In an effort to improve outage management for their members, the Northeast Gas Association (NGA) and its operations group began evaluating the feasibility of developing a digital gas outage and restoration tracking system.
NGA worked with UDC and member emergency operations management staff to identify what they would need in a complete outage management solution. The goal was to put together a solution that could provide a basic process workflow and include a leverageable software that could be configured or enhanced for the needs of each utility. It needed to utilize common technology and provide mobility and dashboard communication capabilities to aid the NGA’s mutual assistance program.
UDC invested in building out the defined requirements including software development to provide an application that could be leveraged to fit, and be fitted to, each utility.
OMS Application Development
Members of the Northeast Gas Association came together with UDC in several workshops to define and refine a common workflow for managing a gas outage. Using these nine primary functions, UDC developed the base Gas OMS application that can be adjusted or configured to match those of member or non-member gas utilities.
Learn more about the primary functions of Digital Utility Gas OMS in our short video presentation featuring a process walk-through in conjunction with back office and mobile application overviews for each step.