Project Highlights
- Headquartered in Newark, Ohio
- 34,000 Gas Members
- 1,000 Miles Distribution Pipeline
The Energy Cooperative’s Gas Compliance Solution represents UDC’s first end-to-end GIS compliance management implementation. Their solution uses a single tool for planning, scheduling, creating, assigning and dispatching work, completing work in the field as well as monitoring and reporting compliance for leak surveys and critical valve inspections. In addition, it assists the utility to track activities, exceptions and follow-on tasks associated with gas leak repairs.
TEC Compliance Goals
The Energy Cooperative (TEC) wanted a GIS-based solution to increase the quality of its survey and inspection data and enhance its compliance reporting process for existing compliance work and possibly cathodic protection work in the future. The cooperative’s search led it to investigate UDC’s Digital Utility® – Gas Compliance Manager® as a single solution for automated digital compliance management to achieve improvements in three primary areas:
- Replace its paper-based data collection method to improve quality of survey and inspection data with web and mobile applications.
- Ensure all the required data is provided for leak scenarios encountered in the field.
- Streamline compliance reporting, reduce reporting effort, and increase ability to see and track compliance status and progress.
Solution Configuration
The first step to building TEC’s gas compliance solution was for UDC to create two environments with data provided by the utility – one for development and one for testing. A two-day requirements workshop was conducted to review the provided data and the utility’s desired Compliance Program and Activity configurations. During the requirements process, the need for additional customizations was identified and UDC was able to provide those via change order request.
Configuration, Development, and Testing were separated into two phases which allowed UDC to leverage their own development and testing environments before deploying to TEC.
UDC responsibilities included building the following Programs for TEC.
- Yearly Critical Valves Program – this workflow allowed field users to:
- Indicate valves that were not accessible in the field
- Auto-send email notification to specific users that a facility is not accessible in the field
- Generate follow-on work to be assigned and make the facility accessible
- Indicate a gas leak on a specific facility
- Generate leak repair maintenance work to be assigned based on leak grade and compliance regulation dates
- Update the last inspection date on the valve feature class in GIS, based on form completion
- Quarterly, Triennial and Yearly Line Leak Inspection Programs (Leak Surveys) – this workflow allowed field users to:
- Draw GPS Location of Gas Leak
- Add a Gas Leak record to the GIS
- Generate Leak Repair maintenance work to be assigned based on Leak Grade and Compliance Regulation dates
- Grade 1 Leak Recheck Program – this workflow allowed:
- SQL Agent and Post Processing tool to push GIS updates to Compliance Manager
- Generate Leak Recheck work to be assigned based on the defined Compliance Regulation criteria
Unique Solution Elements
TEC’s gas compliance solution incorporated the following elements to match its compliance process:
MS Office 365 Authentication – integration with TEC’s Authentication so users could log in using their Microsoft username, which provides a level of security and allows for ease of user management.
Validation Logic for Inspection Fields – unique validation rules were developed in the Leak Investigation form to ensure users were populating the correct fields based on previously entered data.
GPS Integration – integration of the iOS mobile devices with TEC’s Arrow Lite GPS receivers used in the field to further improve data collection while using familiar tools.
Historical Critical Valve Import – to generate the upcoming work events, TEC’s existing critical valve GIS data was imported into the Compliance Manager application which allowed for seamless scheduling.
Update GIS Data – integration of TEC’s GIS with Compliance Manager; using a SQL Agent and Post Processing tool GIS inspection dates are updated based on completed work. Upcoming maintenance work is generated in Compliance Manager based on GIS inspection dates and defined Compliance Regulation criteria.
Training and Production Launch
UDC provided two types of training sessions, Super User (Train the Trainer) and System Administration. The Super User training was highly focused on the utility’s Compliance Manager Program configuration but also included user workflow topics. The System Administration training was highly focused on administrative configuration, deployment components and troubleshooting. Following training completion, TEC’s solution was put into full production in its back office and field.
TEC Business Benefits
TEC’s gas compliance solution is meeting the objectives outlined by the utility for enhanced compliance management. Using the Compliance Manager web and mobile components, TEC has achieved a fully digital means of performing and supporting compliance work. Using built-in validation logic on required inspection forms, it can ensure accurate leak record keeping. Using the dashboards contained within their solution it can spatially manage and track compliance status and verify work completion as well as support compliance reporting without additional manual preparation.
For more information on how TEC is managing digital transformation at its organization, see Automating Change and Compliance at The Energy Cooperative.
Services Employed
- Solution Architecture & Design
- Application Development & Deployment
- System Implementation
- System Integration