See if this process sounds familiar to you: When an event occurs, you review a spreadsheet and notate crew assignments on magnetic boards. You copy that data into a spreadsheet on the computer. Then you email or call supervisors to communicate and update those crews. As the storm increases, you open storm centers and those centers communicate with local offices, passing info back and forth as needed, and releasing personnel when you think things may be passed.
That was the process used by one of our utility partners, ComEd (Commonwealth Edison), before they switched to ARCOS’s resource management software. It involved 11 steps and was used to manage as many as 800 crews at a time.
It worked, but it wasn’t efficient. Often, it took hours to figure out what areas were hardest hit. Company leaders initially didn’t know how many crews were active or how many contractors to send out. Updates were not made in real-time, and not always communicated with everyone who needed to know them.
The ARCOS Solution: ARCOS Crew Manager
With ARCOS, ComEd moved from an 11-step process to a four-step one and shaved hours off their response times. They eliminated much of the manual work by using an online portal that everyone in the company who had access to could see, allowing for instant coordination. Adding additional complexities or criteria into crews is easy, as ARCOS can configure how your interface works to fit your needs, both in the initial setup, and if anything changes down the road.
ARCOS Crew Manager helps you pair crews with work and equipment to speed up restoration. You can instantly see who is available and ARCOS can automatically assign them. You can make informed adjustments on the fly and push them immediately to the field and get full situational awareness in real-time. And you can even pre-plan so your crews can get out faster.
This solution can be used on an everyday basis as well as in emergencies, making the switch between blue or grey skies seamless. You can always see where each crew and resource is at any given moment, or at any point in time as you anticipate your needs. Users can also easily integrate your contractor crews into the same system with Resource Assist, while identifying and plugging any gaps in minutes, not hours, as an event progresses.
Customize With Ease: Viewing Data and Reporting
You control the views in your Crew Manager, and can make perspectives for any situation. Set up different screens to review blue sky and storm events. Choose which resources and crews you want to see with a few clicks. Manage your department, get an overview of the entire company’s response, or switch back and forth as needed.
Your ARCOS Crew Manager solution can be configured and color-coded so you can see employee classes at a glance, all shift times, accommodation needs, and contact information. ARCOS tracks how much time each employee, crew, and staff as a whole works. All of the data is available in exportable reports in real-time, and in the future as you review your response.
Real, Verifiable Results
When you use ARCOS crew scheduling software, you have one source of truth for all of your information. You’ll have high confidence in the data because you can play back the entire event before, during, and after restoration. Furthermore, detailed reporting, automatically logged in the system, allows for easy invoice verification. This will help you increase cost recovery through transparency and access to a complete, accurate history.
Could ARCOS utility resource management software save you from tedious manual processes around managing crews? Contact ARCOS now to learn more.
