Public Power - November 2008 - (Page 24)

Jackson’s GIS Search First-hand field experience contributed to universal buy-in of the GIS system at Jackson Energy. Included in the project team was, left to right, Bill Gordon, Electric Foreman; Mike Stegall, Water Foreman; and Cindy Knievel, Manager of New Accounts Services. posting, and IT functions, participated in the on-site visits. The on-site visits sealed our pending recommendation, and led to a very good relationship with four valuable contacts that we called on during brainstorming sessions throughout our implementation phase. “It was good to see other utilities’ applications of an outage management system and mobile dispatching system and to make friends for future networking,” emphasized Monte Cooper, JEA manager of operations. We knew we wanted a Web deployment for use by the casual GIS viewer and we anticipated using the mobile application to pull updates to and from the field. Having two of our field guys on this trip allowed them to make hearty recommendations that would endorse the migration to our other field users and support a utility-wide buy-in of the new system. Finally, throughout all product and reference evaluations, the GIS project team cent. This estimate was based on the team’s belief that the efficiencies associated with the potential solution would not be realized until year four of the product life cycle. The team also considered the annual “soft savings” that would be realized across all divisions in greater efficiencies and improved processes; after converting a conservative 10 percent of those soft savings to hard savings, the net present value of the project increased to $306,000. We conducted a telephone survey of vendor references to save the time and expense of on-site visits, but the GIS project team wanted to be sure that what it saw in the benchmarks paralleled an actual production environment. So team members and other selected staff visited vendor customers at their sites to talk with organizational peers to discuss system specifics and practicalities and view, firsthand, any customizations the user utilities had made to the software for their specific operations. Twelve employees of all five JEA units, including two foremen from the distribution department representing the field mobile work force and others representing engineering, dispatch, GIS 24 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2008 The project team that visited GIS vendor references on-site represented all five utilities and mobile, engineering, dispatch, GIS posting, and IT functions. Seated, left to right: Hameen Harris, electric system engineer; Teresa Irvine, manager of application development; Cindy Knievel, manager of new accounts services. Standing: Michael Johnston, vice president of information technology; Jim Ferrell, vice president of operations; Bill Gordon, electric foreman; Monte Cooper, manager of operations; Scott Dahlstrom, senior manager of business analysis; Mike Stegall, water foreman; and Jon Taylor, supervisor GIS/SCADA. PUBLIC POWER

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Public Power - November 2008

Public Power - November 2008 Contents Perspective 10 Questions Capturing Knowledge Before It Retires Jackson’s GIS Search Keeping a Job Journal Japan Tackles the Kyoto Protocol Getting to 20 by 10 Damless Hydro Power Earthquake: The Hidden Disaster For Engineers Safety For Governing Boards DEED Hometown Connections Parting Shot

Public Power - November 2008

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