In 2001 EPCOR selected a work management system with visions of one application serving
the needs of Power Distribution and Transmission, Power Substations, Water Treatment
Plants, and Water Distribution. The product chosen had a plant work management focus but
was based on new technology, allowing for future enhancements. In 2002 the application was
rolled out for functionality in the first three areas. Now in 2003 the WaVE (Water IVARA
Enhancements) Project is enhancing the existing system used by other areas of the utility by
tailoring and customizing the product to meet business needs of water distribution.
EPCOR Water Services Incorporated (EWSI) is aware of the potential benefits of improving
work management functionality and realizes the significant roles of their Geographic
Information System (GIS) and Water Network Information System (WNIS). They invested an
abundant amount of initial research and business process modeling when considering the
upgrades of their GIS and WNIS applications. The resulting decision was to start by
consolidating the WNIS applications into a single Work Management System (WMS) using
methods able to support GIS integration.
In the City of Edmonton, EWSI's water distribution system consists of 3,100 km of pipeline,
14,570 hydrants, and 44,700 valves. Work orders for preventative and corrective maintenance,
capital work, and emergency repairs maintain the city's infrastructure. The Work Management
System will capture and organize all applicable data. To ease Water Distribution staff with the
system's overwhelming functionality, WaVE included custom tools for efficiency. A simple
yet effective example is the Multiple Update Tool that assigns the inspector and date checked
to all facilities listed in a specified work order.
WaVE provided an excellent opportunity to establish paper maintained preventative
maintenance (PM) programs in the Work Management System. Non-electronic PM programs
included:
chamber maintenance (CM);
chamber checking (CC);
hydrant purging (HP);
winter hydrant checking (WC);
leak survey (LS); and,
cathodic protection (CP).
WaVE introduced the Area-Run-Facility concept to migrate all the PM programs, including
Unidirectional Flushing (UDF), into the single application. The result was drastic
improvement for the overall data handling, as shelves upon shelves of paper documents can
be eliminated, as well as the enhancement of search and analysis capabilities.
Includes figures.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 280 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 12 |
| Published : | 04/18/2004 |
