Background
A major Municipally Owned Utility (MOU) in Canada currently utilizes many software systems to manage their utility operations and planning. The MOU was formed through mergers and acquisitions of smaller utilities which has resulted, in the short term, in an amalgamation of redundant systems. The high-level goal of this engagement is to collaborate with internal subject matter experts to document the foundational requirements for a Network Model Management (NMM) platform in preparation for procurement.
Challenge
The MOU estimates that crucial data issues impact over 100 critical processes identified, as part of an assessment conducted by the engineering and technical staff. From an operational and data quality perspective, these efforts to manage data-related issues cause delays in response time, a lack of trust in data reliability, and necessitate field data re-verification. Beyond the impacts to core utility metrics, personnel spend 30-80% of their time resolving data-related issues translating to annual costs of $2.3M to $6.1M.
Approach
EPE supported the streamlining of data management across operational and planning systems by defining the functional and non-functional requirements for an integrated system to enhance data-driven decision-making capabilities.
Solution
The requirements were accompanied by documentation mapping the data architecture, defining user roles, and analyzing whether to implement the software platform on-premise or hosted in the cloud.