E-books & White Papers

Optimizing Utility Asset Management Using GIS Esri Canada White Paper EC5_0140_1111_11A Esri Canada | 4 Introduction Running a utility involves tracking and maintaining numerous physical assets – including substations, poles, transformers, vaults, transmission and distribution lines, pipelines and buried cables – which are typically distributed over a large area. As utilities work to achieve reliability and operational excellence while reducing costs, many have taken a step back to look at how they manage their assets to ensure they are receiving the maximum benefit from these assets throughout their useful life, and operating them without causing any risk to utility workers, the public and the environment. Doing more with what you have has become the norm among utilities today in the face of mounting pressure from internal and external stakeholders to keep rates low; improve safety, operational and financial performance; and demonstrate environmental stewardship. As a result, enterprise asset management has risen significantly in importance. For years, there has not been a globally recognized standard for asset management. In 2004, the British Standards Institute and the Institute of Asset Management issued Publicly Available Specification 55 or PAS 55, which provides guidance to asset-intensive industries on what needs to be done to manage physical infrastructure assets throughout their lifecycle in support of achieving business objectives. PAS 55 was updated in 2008, with feedback from more than 50 public and private organizations in 10 countries and 15 sectors. It provides a 28-point requirements checklist that covers all aspects of the asset lifecycle – from initial design to construction, operation, maintenance, renewal and disposal. Already a requirement for utilities in the United Kingdom, PAS 55 has been adopted by an increasing number of utilities in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. As the specification has been approved recently to become an International Standards Organization (ISO) standard for asset management, utilities in Canada are also expected to soon comply with PAS 55. Optimizing physical assets throughout their lifecycle involves managing information about them as well as other factors that directly impact the management of these assets, such as human, technical, financial and organizational resources. Mapping and geographic analysis will be essential to managing and harnessing this information. Knowing where assets are is only one part of the challenge for utilities; they also need to understand how assets relate to one another and how different factors impact these assets. Using geographic information system (GIS) technology, utilities can go beyond mapping to conduct advanced data integration and analysis. It allows utilities to intersect various types of information to uncover new insights about their assets and determine the best course of action to optimize their use. GIS supports PAS 55 compliance by enabling utilities to manage information about their assets' entire lifecycle and making it available to all stakeholders from a centralized repository. GIS can be integrated with enterprise resource planning and other asset information systems to provide better overall decision support and business intelligence. The visualization GIS provides gives utilities a comprehensive picture of their assets and enables utility personnel, especially mobile workers, to easily access an asset's maintenance history, specifications and other information so they can do their jobs quickly, effectively and efficiently.

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