Enbridge Gas Distribution: Planned & Unplanned Outage Analytics

ANALYTICS AREAS

1. Which of the following analytics areas apply to your project (see definitions at end of document)? Place an “X” in the appropriate boxes.

Other: 

PROJECT OVERVIEW

2. In two or three sentences or a short paragraph, please describe this project (include business drivers, how project aligns with utility’s corporate strategy, project goals, results achieved/desired outcomes).

• Planned outages are required for a variety of reasons. An example is a Measurement Canada program whereby a sample of meters must be removed and tested annually to ensure accuracy.  Gas must also be interrupted when customers are moved over to new gas distribution mains during a replacement program.  But gas is also interrupted for unplanned reasons – for example when there is a leak on the service line or main, or when there is a 3^rd party damage. 

• We are evaluating the availability and reliability of the gas distribution system from the customer’s perspective. We are looking at planned and unplanned outages to confirm that we are meeting our regulatory requirements to perform periodic inspections on customer appliances and keeping unplanned outages to a minimum.  Through a root cause analysis of the unplanned outages, we will target proactive programs to reduce unplanned outages.

BUSINESS VALUE

3. Describe actual and/or anticipated QUALITATIVE (e.g. better customer service) and QUANTITATIVE (e.g. ROI, cost savings, revenue increases) benefits of this project.
   • Outages are never ideal from the customer’s perspective and the gas cannot be turned back on without an inspection of the customer appliances.
   • Unplanned outages are more inconvenient for the customer and more expensive to respond to – often resulting from a leak which must be responded to promptly.
   • There are certain regulatory requirements that drive planned outages – customer appliance in sections, meter exchanges. On a unit basis these are less expensive to respond to.  While it is not ideal for customers to have an outage and be home for their appliances to be inspection, most value safety and billing accuracy.
   • The value in this work is two-fold. First we want to confirm that we are meeting our regulatory requirement for periodic inspection of customer appliances.  Second, we want to avoid unplanned outages.  These are expected to have financial benefits and marginal improvements for customer satisfaction.

BUSINESS PROCESS IMPACTS

4. List the key business processes impacted (or expected to be impacted) and describe the nature of those impacts.

• The process of responding to a planned or unplanned outage will not change but we expect to target proactive replacement work, or inspection of customer appliances in a way that will reduce unplanned outages.
• There may also be some training and reinforcement around the work types and job plans that are to be used, and the recording of information through failure codes.

TECHNOLOGY

5. Identify the PRIMARY TECHNOLOGY COMPONENTS associated with this project including the technologies used (or expected to be used) for: 1) data collection/integration 2) data analysis 3) data presentation and 4) data storage.
   • Maximo is the system of record for Work and Asset Management at Enbridge Gas Distribution The data is extracted from a Datamart and analysed iin IBM SPSS Modeler.  Presentation is done using Power BI.

6. Identify the PRIMARY DATA INPUTS/ELEMENTS utilized and their sources.

• Primary inputs are work order completion data from Maximo. In order to do the root cause analysis this has also been combined with knowledge from our Operations team.  
  
  

PEOPLE

7. Identify the following individuals by job title (as applicable):

• Business-side Project Leader: _Asset Manager – Customer Asset Class

• Technology-side Project Leader: Systems Analyst___NA_________

• Executive Sponsor: _____NA__________

8. Identify and describe the role of external providers (e.g. strategy, consultant, design, development, implementation, ongoing operations).

• None – this is a relatively simple analysis to determine the size of a potential problem and then identify ways to resolve in a way that improves customer satisfaction and reduces cost.

9. Describe the investments required to implement and provide ongoing support for this initiative.

• Internal resources (identify type of internal resources, e.g. job titles and quantities of each (e.g. # of full time/# of part time, total FTEs):
• This has largely been completed by myself as part of a course that I am taking. The work has unfolded over the past few months on the weekends – perhaps 3-4 weeks of work?

• Technology investments (estimate/provide ranges for one time and recurring costs if possible or indicate that existing technologies were leveraged):

• Existing technologies were leveraged and no recurring costs are anticipated. The analysis may become even easier as the failure codes are better used.

BEST PRACTICIES/LESSONS LEARNED

10. What advice would you share with those either planning or implementing a similar initiative (e.g. best practices, lessons learned, what to do, what not to do)?

• The work orders that were used for this analysis have evolved over time and there are a lot of things that needed to be validated with the operations team to correctly interpret the data – for example while the Maximo Work Status was COMPLETE or CLOSE, the practice is to use a Completion Code as a Specification on the Work Order. This meant that it was possible (and common) to have a Work Order with a COMPLETE Status but CANCEL Completion Code.  The ongoing interaction with the Operations team, and expertise about how work had been recorded over the last ten years was very helpful.

CONTACT INFORMATION: