Spanning the inception of our company in 2005 to present, we have established an unparalleled track record of partnering with North American utilities to provide the highest quality of business process support services for large utilities and small municipal coops alike. Our wide range of experience and depth of utility business knowledge has cultivated lasting relationships and partnerships with our clients. To date, UDC posts over 1,000 GIS work orders weekly in support of our gas and electric utility clients.
The following is a sampling of utility clients, including PG&E, Dominion Energy, Portland General Electric, Avangrid, Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Coop, and Northwest Natural, for which UDC has assisted and continues to work with on various business process support projects.
Maintaining PG&E’s Production Gas and Electric Data
UDC began our longstanding partnership with PG&E by leading the initiative to convert the utility’s electric and gas distribution and transmission assets from CAD to GIS. Since the completion of the conversion and implementation effort, UDC has been actively engaged with maintaining PG&E’s production gas and electric GIS data and enhancing the GIS configurations and applications. Many of these projects have been some of PG&E’s most critical and have served to establish shared enterprise systems and asset knowledge across the organization.
UDC continues to update the GIS through multiple data verification and enrichment projects, helping to resolve open conversion issues and create accurate links between source documents and GIS assets. We currently provide support to various implementations and maintenance programs across PG&E’s electric, gas, and power generation lines of business.
With our data support, PG&E has been able to focus its internal team on high-value tasks including:
- Cleanup activities
- GIS data anomaly research, and
- Mobile as-built, distribution management system (DMS), and public safety power shutoff (PSPS) initiatives
Work Order Design and Redline Posting
For this ongoing maintenance initiative, UDC accesses gas and electric work orders through SAP, leveraging a combination of design and field notes, equipment lists, design sketches, and other documentation to map new primary and secondary features in a proposed state and update in-service features. Applying PG&E’s ArcFM GIS editing tools, UDC populates the appropriate attributes and creates the required relationships while maintaining connectivity with active features. UDC also assists in maintaining the utility’s San Francisco mesh network using the ArcFM Underground Facilities Management (UFM) editing tool configuration.
Gas Transmission Spatial Alignment
As part of PG&E’s efforts to keep its GIS current, UDC is spatially aligning the utility’s completed station feature lists (SFL) and pipeline feature lists (PFL) into the Gas Transmission GIS using the utility’s established process and Intrepid tools. The project progress is currently being tracked in PG&E’s Workflow Manager Tool.
Posting Support for Dominion Energy’s Electrical Distribution System
UDC has collaborated with Dominion Energy in recent years on multiple GIS initiatives in addition to providing project management and consulting services for construction mobility use cases. UDC has been actively engaged in the utility’s initiatives to fully migrate several of its subsidiaries from Smallworld to Esri technology. Our support has spanned all phases of the transformation lifecycle, from planning to build and deployment activities for full data migration.
These efforts are helping to support Dominion Energy’s company vision of standardizing all gas operating companies on the Esri platform and leveraging the GIS more effectively.
GIS Electric Posting
Dominion Energy Virginia (DEV) and Dominion Energy North Carolina (DENC) have engaged UDC to provide ongoing work order posting support for their electrical distribution system in the GIS. Using virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), UDC is verifying connectivity and ready-to-post facilities that were designed in ArcFM Designer, AutoCAD, or Work Manager through updating the electrical model to reflect changes from as-built records and redlines.
UDC’s efforts are helping to create a more detailed and complete distribution model as well as supporting a two-day posting goal for ARNU (accelerated residential new underground) mapping.
Managing Workstream Data Quality at Portland General Electric
UDC leverages multiple sources and systems, including Maximo, AGOL, and IQGeo, to provide quality control data management of PGE’s various GIS vendors. UDC also provides feedback audits to PGE’s subcontractors in addition to managing contractor project questions through our in-house developed Problem Action Response (PAR) system.
Beginning with a few workstreams, PGE extended this engagement to include the following workstreams based on UDC’s high-quality work:
- Primary and secondary design posting
- Pre-design cleanup
- Secondary cleanup
- Service as-builts
- Emergency outage sessions
- Session conflict management
- Fiber optic management
- Streetlight as-builts and designs
UDC’s quality control and posting support has allowed the utility to focus on other advanced initiatives, such as implementing ADMS, improving the downtown mesh network mapping, and creating new AGOL applications for enhanced data management and operations.
Fuse Replacement
UDC is supporting PGE’s recent initiative to replace fuses in wildfire risk areas. UDC is managing all steps of the fuse replacements – mapping new fuses and updating existing fuses in the GIS using field notes from PGE crews.
Ensuring Utility Network Data Compatibility at AVANGRID
UDC first collaborated with AVANGRID’s United Illuminating team to stand up the utility’s Esri GIS platform. Today, UDC is providing services to support gas GIS implementation initiatives for AVANGRID companies Southern Connecticut Gas (SCG) and Berkshire Gas Company (BGC). Our support is helping the utility align its gas and electric companies under one GIS technology and laying the foundation for a successful ArcGIS Advanced Network Management implementation.
To help Berkshire Gas Company (BGC) and Southern Connecticut Gas (SCG) AVANGRID companies maintain their new Utility Network GIS, UDC is making updates to the data using as-built and maintenance job records. Through the data upkeep of its Utility Network assets, the utility is ensuring that its GIS features remain compatible within the new model.
Along with helping to maintain a current and accurate GIS for BGC and SCG in the Utility Network, UDC is supplying GIS services as needed, including updates to the data model, symbology, and attribute rules as well as support for web applications, systems, and workflows. UDC is additionally providing training to AVANGRID end users.
SSVEC’s Initiative to Maintain Steady State
Completing all tasks within SSVEC’s Amazon WorkSpace, UDC is supplying resources and assistance with posting work order information to SSVEC’s GIS to help the utility maintain steady state. UDC is leveraging SSVEC’s WorkStudio Infocenter Work Manager and asset registry system to accurately update all stations in the ArcMap version.
Supporting New Gas Service Work Orders at Northwest Natural
UDC assists NW Natural in managing the influx of primarily new gas service work orders completed in the field, including standard installs, curb and curb valve services, and service double offs, by mapping and updating the services using the proper placement and dimensioning measurements from the source documents.
Included with this project, UDC GIS specialists:
- Identify and document any conflicting information that may require an audit and
- Leverage SAP Fiori and IQGeo to compare the as-built information to reports from Clevest.