Project Highlights:
- Dominion Energy Inc
- Headquartered in Richmond, VA
- ~7.5 million Customers / 16 States
- 11,000 mi natural gas transmission
- 6,700 mi electric transmission, 58,000 mi electric distribution
Dominion Energy concluded the design phase of a multi-phase initiative to fully migrate its gas distribution and transmission data from a GE Smallworld environment to Esri’s Advanced Network Management platform for two of its subsidiaries, Dominion Energy Ohio (DEO) and Dominion Energy West Virginia (DEWV). This second phase migrated ten percent of the utilities’ data to a functional Esri development environment as well as configured and installed Esri core software associated with the effort, including the ArcGIS Utility Network (UN), the Utility and Pipeline Data Model (UPDM), and ArcGIS Pipeline Referencing (APR) architecture. By dedicating an entire phase to planning and preparation for the new platform, Dominion is ensuring a successful implementation for its users and organization.
Design Phase Goals
As a follow-on to the discovery phase work completed by UDC in 2020, the design phase aimed to deliver a functional development environment capable of demonstrating designed core Esri functionality and document the designs of DEO’s and DEWV’s future Esri-based GIS. Beyond conceptually designing an Esri-based GIS, the project focused on laying a solid foundation for change management and data governance to support the organization’s vision for full migration and future capabilities going forward.
Moving to an Esri environment will provide enhanced mapping capabilities for the utility as well as help to better support DIMP reporting, inspections, and other business process areas. Leveraging core ArcGIS functionality, Dominion looks to implement standardized processes to aid in improving the quality and consistency of workflows for supporting Public Utility Commission (PUC) audits, creating building studies, and mapping mainlines, stations, and valves.
Dominion Energy’s specific goals for migration include the following:
- Improve GIS data maintenance tools to maintain gas transmission assets in a linear referenced framework, maintain gas distribution, and support traceability between pressure systems
- Enable web and mobile user access for viewing gas facilities and operating enterprise GIS applications including various field mobility applications for collection, maintenance, and inspections
- Develop GIS business process flows and technical designs for a more complete, flexible GIS that can support future operational needs, current and future integrations, and changes in regulatory reporting requirements
- Define an Enterprise Asset Data Strategy incorporating SAP and ArcGIS
- Undergo a digital transformation and improve data integrity
Migration Planning and Approach
Migrating a representative subset of data in advance of full migration, Dominion was able to test and validate business process workflows using a tailored UN asset package. This opportunity permitted the UDC and Dominion migration team to identify one hundred business use cases and workflows to predetermine the best solutions for addressing each with the right technology.
While Esri commercial off-the-shelf tools (COTS) address many of Dominion’s requirements, the team defined other areas not addressed ahead of full implementation, including third-party software topics, custom design needs, and integration use cases. Establishing the use cases in this phase is helping to ensure all GIS requirements are addressed in the design of the utility’s UN implementation, thus enabling the utility to achieve its desired level of functionality in the new model.
Applying HEIDE
UDC’s HEIDE (High-fidelity Export Import Data Exchange) auto-migration tool was leveraged to migrate DEO’s and DEWV’s data subsets from the GE Smallworld datastore schema to Esri’s UPDM 2020 and UN model. HEIDE simplified and automated the data transformation process, provided the utilities a highly iterative approach to QA/QC of their source data, and validated the source to the UN data mapping. Developing the data model iteratively helped Dominion align with its goal of identifying data that is incompatible with the UN model’s requirements prior to full production migration, thus supporting spatial and network integrity of the migrated data.
Benefits of Dominion’s Migration Approach
Through this phase, Dominion has ensured it will be able to replicate all its current workflows from Smallworld within the new Esri GIS. The utility also took advantage of this planning phase to identify and design solutions for desired workflows it did not currently have addressed, with strategy documentation in place for addressing future use cases that may arise.
UDC configured ArcGIS Pro and APR for either gas distribution and/or transmission process workflows during this phase, training Dominion users in testing gas transmission and distribution editing applications in addition to ArcGIS Enterprise Portal. This preliminary work has helped to instill confidence in Dominion’s GIS users, managers, and stakeholders as the project moves forward by helping the organization to see and understand firsthand how the new technology supports improved business processes.
Migration Design Phase Components:
The aspects of the Esri Platform Migration Design project include:
- Mapping business process flows to supporting applications and integrations and identifying gaps
- Developing use case strategies for future use cases not currently addressed by the legacy solution
- Adapting Esri UPDM 2020 to Smallworld gas distribution and transmission schemas
- Defining source to target mapping for Smallworld to Esri UN migration
- Configuring ArcGIS Pro and APR for gas distribution and transmission utility networks; configuring ArcGIS Pro for business process workflows
- Loading generated HEIDE asset packages
- Providing on the job training for testing editing applications and ArcGIS Enterprise Portal
- Collecting requirements and supplementing the inventory of gas business cases for future designs
Devoting a phase to the design of its full migration plan – building the integration patterns, recording solutions for identified gaps, documenting strategies for future use cases, and developing the conceptual migration plan, Dominion Energy can move forward to the next phase in its migration journey with confidence in its data and the future capabilities full implementation will bring.