Utility Resource Management Blog

Bruce Duff, ceo of ARCOS, spoke today at the Riverside Company annual conference of portfolio companies. Along with Dave Tiley, senior operating partner of the Riverside Company, they shared ARCOS’ journey and how action and urgency have played key roles in our success. The strategic importance of creating and living your corporate mission vision was also highlighted. Solving the toughest challenges for critical infrastructure industries is something ARCOS takes seriously and we are very grateful for our partners who let us help them respond, restore and report to daily planned and unplanned events. Thank you, Riverside, for the recognition and chance to tell our story.

The world of tomorrow is here, but will it last for our kid’s kids? What are the steps Electric Utilities must take to really become sustainable? Our Sunday Read takes a look and lists a few. Can you think of others? https://www.fleetcarma.com/sustainability-electric-utility-industry-electric-companies-can-become-sustainable/

The ARCOS Sunday read dares to ponder what consumers think when utilities report losing millions of dollars but still beat Wall Street’s expectations. What can we do in terms of reputation management and justifying higher rates? How do we educate consumers on what daily operating costs truly are and showing that the industry is ultimately keeping rates down and more money in user’s pockets? Food for thought…http://bit.ly/2GCCBm5

Many of the businesses and industries (e.g., utilities, airlines, manufacturers, critical infrastructure) I work with at ARCOS every day have customers who depend on the smooth, uninterrupted operation of technology. Take the airline industry as an example. Aircraft makers design air-frames with multiple, built-in fail-safe elements. Planes have to be able to fly with a failed engine, land with broken landing gear, and have a backup power source, among many other redundancies.

For utilities who depend on cloud services to organize day-to-day operations, the principle is the same. A constant, unbroken “stream” of water, gas, or electric service is imperative to utility customers, and thus, fail-safe measures are built into the network to ensure this. There are a few different layers of redundancies that can be built into cloud systems. The first layer of redundancy should always be physical. If you need a server operating constantly to keep the system going, there should be a backup server in the event the first goes down.

Another important fail-safe layer is called location redundancy. In addition to physical hardware in a single city, it’s important to have redundant systems set up in other cities. If, for instance, there were a problem in ARCOS’s Columbus, Ohio, office, those services could be shifted to a similar facility in another city.

Finally, if a business relies on a vendor-provided service, it is imperative to have a layer of vendor redundancy. A good example is a business’ internet service provider (ISP). If constant internet service is critical to the business model, there should be a managed plan in place that if that ISP goes down, another one picks up immediately.

Ultimately, when uninterrupted service is a top priority, it is the responsibility of a business owner to look for every fail point and implement fail-safe measures to bridge that gap. These examples are just a few of the places that technology professionals and business managers can build fail safes into cloud systems to ensure service is always on point.

When a major storm impacts a region, the demand on that region’s water utility skyrockets. Pumps need monitoring, chemical doses need measuring, and urgent issues need swift resolution. Often, operations superintendents must document each action as well, meaning plenty of paperwork in an already stressful time.

An effective way to lessen the pressure on workers is to simply automate these workflows with a system like ARCOS’ Mobile Inspection. For water companies, having a system in place to deal with slower manual processes can help to mediate emergency situations, allowing employees to take care of other pressing matters, rather than fill out paperwork.

For the water industry, the benefits of automating workflows can be seen in routine maintenance work, like a hydrant inspection. The inspection itself is managed by a form that has to be completed, with each element verified to be done. After the inspection is complete, the team then has to check in with their manager and fill out an inspection form. By automating this system, workers can complete a hydrant check form virtually, and the team no longer has to check in with a manager in between jobs. This saves man hours and makes compiling GIS data much easier. A further benefit is that the ARCOS program stores data, such as hydrant inspection notes, for future reference. For instance, once a worker in the field completes a maintenance inspection and the ARCOS system collects the data, a utility manager at headquarters, or elsewhere, can tap into the ARCOS software to produce a pre-configured report such as a monthly operating report, or MOR. Managers can produce reports to assess the condition of field assets, identify system trends or fire off data to governing bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency.

In addition to saving hours, automated workflows can also be applied to assess worker progress and productivity. ARCOS’ Mobile Inspection program uses location services to update GIS information in real time. This, in turn, provides the company with data about how long the employee is at the job site, what work they did there, and many other KPIs.

This data can be used to create a system of goalposts. When a worker reaches a particular goal, they can move on to another, which provides the feeling of progress. It just goes to show that automating workflows doesn’t just help the company, but the employees as well.

The ARCOS Sunday Read considers how companies need to face social issues and a change in workforce ideas, ideals, wants, needs, desires and thought processes. Is this a way to address change management? The Harvard Business Review shares more: http://bit.ly/2UXVmU8

Every utility, at some point, will have to respond to an urgent incident. Whether a small power outage, a water main break, or a full-on natural disaster, a system needs to be in place to manage workers and supervisors as quickly and accurately as possible.

Many utility companies use a variation of the Incident Command System, or ICS, which was developed in the 1970s to help different departments work together effectively to fight wildfires in California. Since then, the structure has evolved into the National Incident Management System (NIMS).

Because utilities often need to coordinate with the federal government in the events of large-scale incidents, it makes sense for companies to adopt a similar command structure. ICS is also extremely flexible and able to be applied in many different scenarios. The core ideas of ICS revolve around melding multiple agencies together quickly by giving them a unified chain of command and common terminology to use. It also significantly cuts down on freelancing and otherwise duplicated labor, saving time and resources down the line.

The flexibility of the ICS system, however, means that few utilities use exactly the same version of the system. Some utilities may have extra or fewer roles within ICS, and roles that have the same title across multiple companies may have varying responsibilities attached to them.

A number of factors can affect these structural and organizational differences. Whether the company is owned by an investor versus a municipality, as that alters whom workers ultimately report to. The type of services provided can also change the ICS framework, as responding to a water main break will require a different structure than a downed power line.

All these variables make creating an ICS system that spans all types of utility companies complicated.  A good example of how to do this is ARCOS’ Incident Command Center. The Incident Command Center system can be tailored to each customer’s needs by altering the organizational structure and the duties within it.

Furthermore, the system is very scalable. For a small incident, multiple roles can be condensed to be done by one employee, allowing other workers to continue routine work while the incident is addressed. These roles can also be broken up to be performed by multiple workers in the event of a major breakdown. This flexibility is key to a successful ICS system, one that saves the most time and overhead while also making sure incidents are addressed quickly and effectively.

Get ready for a full look at ARCOS Incident Manager!

Go to our events page and register for our latest deep dive webinar! Find out for yourself how critical infrastructure companies are using ARCOS Incident Manager to automatically stand up their ICS or Emergency Response structures, creating templates for type and severity of events, building a central location for all necessary documents, and scaling events up or down with a simple click as they move through them!

https://www.arcos-inc.com/events/