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Each year, companies are being pressured to do more with less. There is an infinite amount of work to do, but always a finite amount of resources to use. Being able to pick up the slack from unproductive, painful, manual processes can be a game-changer when it comes to your bottom line. Luckily, you’re not on your own and ARCOS can help.

So, What’s The Problem?

In a recent survey, we asked companies in the critical infrastructure space to think about their processes and tell us where they’re losing the most productivity time. We asked them to rank processes on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the most time-consuming. 

Our responders shared that they ranked creating schedules and following through on reporting as a 9.9 out of 10 difficulty. Whether it’s trying to get specialized employees into rigid shift structures according to your business or union rules, or spending time trying to figure out who the eligible employees are that can fill empty shifts, ARCOS works as your personal shift management assistant.

Another interesting response to our survey had to do with what tasks cause management to struggle at critical infrastructure companies, and honestly – we weren’t surprised by the result. 60% of the folks that took the survey listed managing work, reporting and productive time as their biggest struggle. 40% of those also lose valuable time getting the correct workers, with the correct skills, into the correct shifts, in the correct order. Automating this manual process could change the way managers and supervisors structure their day, leaving more time to focus on priorities and production.

How Can We Help?

With ARCOS, the manual, time-consuming processes described above can be a thing of the past. All the time spent with handwritten notes, spreadsheets, whiteboards, and manual phone calls and texts can be reduced and, in most cases, eliminated. With ARCOS shift management, you can complete processes that take several hours a day and shrink them down to mere minutes. The technology now exists that will enable you to spend more time on value added activities than emails and phone calls – here’s how Shift Management solutions from ARCOS  helped Duke Energy overhaul their plant operations and drastically help their day to day operations. 

The ARCOS Sunday Read focuses on the holiday that just passed – Thanksgiving. And while we as a business are thankful for the utility and critical infrastructure markets, we aren’t the only ones.

We totally agree with these op-ed pieces we found that express how thankful we should be for having reliable gas, water, and electric.

What you do to keep everything running is often overlooked. Thank you. We admire your hard work and dedication.

The Sunday Read shares JD. Power’s findings that business customer satisfaction with Electric Utilities climbed this year. ARCOS is proud of our customers and glad we could play a part in improving caidi/saidi scores. Our own, Jim Nowak, explains how in this Energy Central article.

The ARCOS Sunday Read is re-racking an important blog we ran a few weeks ago about keeping #compliant in the face of regulatory scrutiny. How can a business polish up their transparency? Read-on and find out!

How will utilities be impacted by distributed energy resources (DER)? The answer is, no one is sure yet, but with the growth of solar, wind, electric vehicles, energy storage devices and natural gas fueled generators, the output from DERs is helping address demand, replacing aging infrastructure and becoming the industry’s top area of investigation and support.

In Ontario, Canada, the IESO says over 4,000 megawatts of DERS were contracted or installed over the last 10 years. It has given customers a reduction in costs and addressed inadequate attention to regional load growth. According to Black & Veatch’s 2019 Strategic Directions: Smart Utilities Report Survey, a top industry poll of energy producers, DERs were sighted as the number one application to examine over the next 3 to 5 years. With a predicted energy drain thanks to increased EV acceptance and other factors, DERs are expected to aid and sometimes carry future power grids.

Analyzing the Analytics

Integrating this decentralized system of outside power producing entities into the fold is a task that needs to have a focus on the right analytics and interpretation of customer consumption data. Most utilities are doing due diligence by studying the growth of DERs now. If these alternative power options for generation can be optimized, how much can they feed into a system? Is it making a difference? Are they curbing peaks and leading to less outages? Are the most affected outage areas seeing a decline in restoration crews thanks to the power DERs are providing?

As outages happen and crews are sent to respond and restore, a tool such as the ARCOS software suite can report on when, where and exactly what happened. This data can then be unified with smart meters and other measuring instruments to gain clarity on exactly what DERs are doing for a utility’s service area. Matching up the historic record of response calls over time can easily show a decrease of outages in identified trouble areas and can verify if DER implementation is having a positive effect, needs routed a different way, or the energy provided increased.

DERs are only going to continue to grow. They will be a part of tomorrow’s energy landscape and a solution to some of today’s problems. Is your utility ready to effectively utilize distributed energy resources? How are you researching DERs impact on current grids and planning for future implementation? Contact ARCOS and let’s start a conversation. 

Airline ground crew scheduling is an expensive problem. Inevitable delays cause canceled flights, missed connections and has a vast and long-reaching ripple effect across all operations. If one open shift is left unattended, it can create a cascade of cost and waste which reduces industry profit, reliability and customer service. Crew costs are only second to fuel charges so it’s in a carrier’s best interest to efficiently use all and any resources possible to resolve shift management disruptions. But how?

Traditionally, two models have been used, short-range and long-range planning. Short-range planning has always been applied to make ground crew assignments when under the gun of restrictive time restraints. It’s the last-minute changes that happen when someone falls ill, has a commitment they must attend to, or a family emergency occurs. Long-range planning has tried to manage schedules months in advance but has fallen flat thanks to inclement weather and too many last-minute requests for swaps, PTO or absences thanks to aforementioned short-range shift issues. The problem with both is they have been handled manually or inefficiently at great cost to airlines.

ARCOS RosterApps handles both models with ease while improving efficiency by automating the process of shift trades, swaps, bids and PTO requests with employee self-service functionality. That means a drastic drop in delays, a cut in cancellations, and a rise in customer satisfaction scores. Carrier profit is also increased as crews are completely manned in a fraction of the time it took to do things the old way. Phone call after phone call, bulletin boards, and paper spreadsheets are eliminated so airlines can be at their optimal shift management performance and in the skies faster. The benefits are many as our new white paper and Piedmont Airlines case study point out.  

Learn more and schedule a demo. If an airline wants KPI’s to rise and put an end to shift management worries, ARCOS RosterApps is the answer.

Across the nation, scrutiny has never been higher for Oil and Gas operators. Staying in compliance with regulations is critical, but sometimes unexpected events occur that can affect operations and become costly lessons in regulatory management.  

In Colorado, the Colorado Air Pollution Control Division has issued fines to Oil and Gas companies for preventable offenses such as – 

• Emissions
• Failure to fix a leak within 5 days
• Failure to monitor and perform repairs
• Faulty Recordkeeping
• Violations in Reporting

– and the prices are high. The fine for failing to fix a leak costs up to $15,000 a day while reporting errors have seen fines skyrocket from $29,000 to $76,000. In Colorado alone, 2018 fines totaled $5.2 million and are estimated to surpass that mark for 2019.

What if the Oil and Gas industry had plans in place that could instantly issue repair crews, dispatch correct monitoring, maintain a historical record and keep reporting on track?

Compliance Made Easy

Automating shift management and improving reporting processes is a solution that’s worked well for the utility industry. Most utilities face the same regulatory issues Oil and Gas companies do and employ software like the ARCOS platform to keep in compliance.

ARCOS can call out additional staff during unplanned emergencies, organize and dispatch crews and keep a historical record of everything that happened. Reporting that used to take days can be done quickly and correctly without errors or guesswork.

Oil and Gas operators can also think ahead and put maintenance teams and routines in place. It’s a proactive stance that allows organizations to know who needs to be where and when – and after the work is completed, have easily accessible documentation that fulfills all regulations and required procedures. 

Improved Reporting to Reduce Fines

By implementing an automated resource management system and an indisputable digital record, Critical Infrastructure industries can end violations, reporting infractions and fines. It takes a change in the way Oil and Gas companies have always done business, but it’s a transformation that reaps many rewards including saving money, time and keeping violations at bay. Find out more! Contact us and let ARCOS show you solutions that work hand in hand with regulators’ checklists and help keep you in compliance. 

With winds gusting up to 88 mph, Thursday’s ‘Bomb Cyclone’ left approximately 462,000 households without power in Northeast. Yes, that’s a lot of households, but the economic costs to local communities is extreme. The Bomb Cyclone is estimated to have an economic cost of approximately $720M per day.

As dry, strong winds picked up and blew across Northern California, PG&E decided to take their largest preventative measure against wildfires ever – they cut power to nearly 800,000 residences and businesses. A good number of California’s population was affected – with large parts of Santa Rosa, Petaluma and other major cities north of San Francisco darkened.

The community cost of the shut-off is estimated to be as high as $2.5 billion. Doing the math, that translates to over $1,560 per customer meter per day – multiply that by the 800,000 meters impacted, and that’s a staggering $1.2 billion dollars PER DAY. 

What became immediately clear to us was the staggering community cost of the shutdown and bomb cyclone – which can translate to all outages regardless if you’re in California, the Northeast or anywhere. The community cost of not being able to conduct normal business – whether that’s someone working from home, or a restaurant, or a large manufacturer – is far greater than the inconvenience. 

The faster utilities can restore service, the quicker they can alleviate the rising cost to the community. That’s where ARCOS comes in. 

When ARCOS is deployed for resource management, the time it takes to restore power is shortened which reduces the costly toll an outage can cause to a community. From calling up an ICS structure, to using Callout to man crews, to managing crews and getting them on a scene, ARCOS’ full situational awareness can efficiently manage an event for faster restoration and in turn, a community can find its way back to normalcy without incurring any more expense from their own pockets. 

We know more wildfires are coming. 30% of the pine trees in Northern California are dead because of a bark beetle infestation. That’s a lot of fuel to burn. We know more weather events are coming too. By responding and restoring services just 1 day sooner, proactive utilities like PG&E and others can help reduce the community cost of outages. ARCOS is proud to provide the solutions that can help electric, gas and water utilities restore service faster and reduce the impact on local economies. 

All utilities use rosters – and they come in many types for different reasons. One of the most important is for the exchange of crew information during a storm or emergency. 

The main divergent in rosters is formatting, and the device of record used. Some utilities use the common roster, a roster that was developed to standardize the process. Others use a roster of their own design that was created over time. Contractors developed rosters that were focused on their business practices and fast payment. And while some utilities digitize and streamline their roster efficiency with ARCOS, others still rely on whiteboards, spreadsheets and paper. 

When considering a roster for the exchange of personnel information, comparing the variances between roster systems is a valuable exercise and can help evaluate how mutual assistance will be rolled out in any type of situation a utility can encounter.

History of the Common Roster

The escalation of weather-related emergency response situations like Hurricane Katrina placed utilities in a state of confusion. Although rosters had been in use by utilities and contract companies for years, each had their own roster template which made launching mutual aid complicated and restricted communication between organizations. This made full situational awareness almost impossible to achieve. ARCOS automation aided response time but the efficient filling and dispatch of restoration crews started to become a logistical nightmare. Utilities knew they needed a rostering change to ensure the safety of their lineman and contractors and increase the exchange of information so restoration times could be reduced.

In 2015, the Southeast Electric Exchange formed a subcommittee to address the problem. Representatives from over 10 individual utilities were put to the task of defining a common roster that all member utilities could adopt. The common roster had to be simple and in a standardized format that could cover the SEE’s required mutual assistance resource information data.  

The process was to be intuitive-

•       IOUs and contractors fill out the information in the standard template and send it along to other IOUs when mutual assist is required.
•       Each IOU would create and maintain a translation program to reassemble resource information into their format.
•       Resource information would then be automatically loaded into the IOU’s particular system.

The SEE subcommittee’s initiative was successful and they were able to socialize the common format with other RMAGs and secure acceptance among member utilities. While common rosters are proving to be a good alternative to the way things have always been done, they aren’t the whole answer.

Internal Rostering

While the common roster has its place, many utilities use their own homemade internal rosters. What has been tried, tested and deemed true is something they just don’t want to get away from – and who can blame them when a Hurricane like Florence slammed into the east coast? What works, works. However in this kind of system; integration of rosters from one individual organization into another can still be a problem, especially when the mutual assistance call goes out to a neighboring utility or contractor group who has their own way of doing things. If each partner is using a completely different roster system – common, homegrown or something else, restoration efforts can suffer. Mix in a reliance on spreadsheets, whiteboards and paper and a utility can only operate so far without starting to make mistakes, duplicating efforts, or losing vital situational information. 

When you are in the pressure of a restoration, you have to be nimble enough to adapt and adopt to the real-world scenario of accepting a non-standard roster to get crews out.    

So, which Roster is Best?

If you are an innovative utility, the choosing of a roster type is not an easy one to make. Staying flexible is key. Keeping what you have is a great option but when the template of a common roster that can be easily translated and transferred to anyone in your restoration or daily operation group is used, it can be a tough thing to argue against.

ARCOS says, “why waste time arguing”?

Our solutions work with any format of roster and we can even mix the two discussed above. ARCOS Resource Assist can bridge the gap between utilities and contractors so you can have instant clarity on which resources are available. It also delivers seamless integration with the ARCOS platform so every aspect of your responses can be managed in the same way effectively reducing the amount of manual work and data re-entry experienced in your current processes. Utilities can cut response time, speed up restoration and increase efficiency when requesting outside resources.

Find out more and request a demo or learn more about our latest innovations here.

It’s happening – an ever-shallow pool of employee prospects is shrinking even more. And what’s the butter on top of the bread is that long-time employees are being offered recruiting incentives to leave their current jobs to work elsewhere. It’s leaving HR scratching their heads wondering what to do.

The Business Collective gives a few tips on how to curb employee turnover like recognizing employee contributions, but is that enough? Should retention bonus that are normally offered to executives, managers and key staff be offered to all (Forbes has a few ideas on how to do it right)? You can give out more PTO time, but who will be working when the other workers are out? There’s already a lack of qualified skilled help.

Some would argue it really begins during the hiring process. It’s about finding the right people that fit the company culture and have the desire and drive to invest in the long term of both themselves and the organization. Studies have pointed out that on average, it costs 6 to 9 months of the salary of the job in question to replace the exiting employee. If the right people are in the right jobs, companies can save hundreds of thousands of dollars in re-training costs, lost productivity, the loss of in-house knowledge and the rebuilding of customer relationships.

Shift management can also hold a key. What if an employee could self-manage their shifts from a mobile device or a manager had a full work calendar visible at a click and could make requests for PTO or shift swaps happen instantaneously? If an employee feels empowered, they are more likely to stay. ARCOS solutions provide just that.

The bottom line is your organization must do something and something quickly. The employee of tomorrow won’t be around if you don’t have them or keep them today. Finding a way to invest in the worker and have them invest in your company is the first step toward a long history of employment, and never having to worry about retention or hiring ever again.