Customer
It is a leading public utility company providing gas and electricity for 24.2 million customers in Southern California. It is the largest utility Company in the United States, serving more than 6 million customers within 20 miles of the coastline.
Problems to be Solved
In 2014, Company sought to prevent a repeat of the San Bruno accident near SFO. Multiple homes caught fire due to a gas leak, eight people died, the properties got destroyed, and 499 victims received $565 million as part of a financial settlement. The state, federal, and California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) also imposed a fine of more than $4 billion on those responsible. The CPUC’s post-incident report determined that the incident’s root cause was higher salt and moisture content in the air, which accelerated the corrosion and rusting of riser gas pipes. Risers connect the main gas service point from the street to the home street, and they have a 10% higher chance of failing when they are near the coast, resulting in gas leaks and fire. The CPUC has mandated that 6 million homes within 20 miles of the coast be inspected for gas leaks and potential fire hazards, allocating millions to cover the inspection/repair expenses over ten years. Regulatory compliance needs the deployment of contracting company staff with limited skills in the area of riser inspection. The higher attrition rate of contractors significantly reduces the quality of inspections and remediation. The limited funds and compressed timeline to complete the checks require planning/scheduling tools. Additionally, a highly user-friendly and workflow-driven mobile app to improve data capture quality and minimize follow-up action needs to minimize non-compliance audits. The CPUC in their post-incident report determined the root cause to be higher salt & moisture content in the air which was accelerating the corrosion and rusting of Riser gas pipes. A riser connects the main gas service point from the street to the home street and has a 10% higher chance of failing when near the coast, resulting in gas leaks and fire. The CPUC has issued a mandate that 6 million homes located within 20 miles of the coast must be inspected for gas leaks and potential fire hazards, and allocating $300 million to cover the expenses over a span of 10 years.
The regulatory compliance needs deployment of contracting company staff with a limited skills in the area riser inspection and also higher attrition rate of contracting staff significantly reduces quality of inspections and remediation, the contracting staff on-boarding is also one of the key challenges without impacting corporate computer network security guidelines. The funds and timeline to complete inspections requires planning, scheduling, need to be well orchestrated, and data capture quality and follow up action need to be workflow driven to minimize non compliance audit.
Solution
- The proposed cloud-based mobile application suite leverages existing service point details of 8 million customers to identify and prioritize riser inspection by region and type of riser. Anica Inc’s engineering team did a deep dive analysis about streamlining the process needed, factoring in the skill set of inspectors (crew), the timeline to inspect, and funds available to complete 8 million inspections. The team also addressed the concerns around the time it takes to onboard contracting staff and the attrition rate to address cyber security risks mandated by Company’s corporate security. The team built a quality review flow as part of an end-to-end process, where 15% of work completed by contracting staff undergoes inspection by public utility company employees. To enable on-fly inspection, the team enabled direct-wifi to transfer of inspection data to on-site auditors without cellular connectivity. The team also designed a highly user-friendly workflow-driven mobile app for inspectors to minimize training time and achieve accurate data capture. We designed and deployed riser inspection applications to inspect and repair the risers. The application addressed the following challenges;
- In 2014, the public utility company needed apps with Android and iOS cloud or mobile ecosystems; most apps were monolithic. Since using the cloud represented a considerable risk to their cyber security team, it took an extra 6-8 months to develop and authenticate the application for use in a cloud environment.
- To reduce the time it takes to roll out applications with required security approvals using the cloud, in phase one, we decided to go with data exchange between the Mobile app on the tablet and the ERP application through secure Bluetooth communication. The application design framework enabled cloud integration in phase two, stabilizing the process and user experience.
- We have implemented two-factor authentication to increase security and encrypted data on tablets to support customer data privacy if the tablet is lost. As contractors interact with a new cloud application, the 5-factor background check requirement to access the enterprise network was no longer necessary. We worked with the engineering team to replicate the paper format with context-rich visualizations.
- The public utility company decided to use contracting field staff with oversight from their employee to inspect and correct the service points that required repairs. Due to a high attrition rate of contractors leaving (an average time of 10 months), they needed to onboard new contract staff within one day instead of 5 days.
- The application provided a guided workflow with specific images of what to look for and where on the equipment to reduce training time and lower the level of technical competency needed to perform an inspection.
- The application should provide context-rich visualizations and actionable asset insights, allowing users to take follow-up actions based on inspection data in infraction codes. It encourages data-driven follow-up work and guides them through the workflow process in one visit.
- The application needs to be able to work offline with offline maps, as cellular connectivity can be spotty/unreliable in the workspace. In addition, it must adhere to company data privacy and cyber security requirements; customer information should be encrypted for privacy in the event of losing the tablet or during data transmission.
- Deployed the application in 18 months with minimal support from the public utility company’s internal staff, and change management was seamless and minimal.
- The application leveraged the existing system of records of 24.2 million service records data in the ERP application, driving continuous process improvements and identifying the top 2 issues in the pipeline based on distance, age, and infraction codes captured during the inspection.
- The complexity of the problem provides a chance to think big, invent and make use of; distributed app design, cloud computing, and mobile technology. It can improve user experience, enhance adherence to regulations, optimize operational performance, boost field staff productivity, reduce onboarding and training time for field staff members and help save billions by avoiding regulatory fines and negative publicity.
Business Outcomes
Within 12 months, Ariya successfully deployed the application; this reduced contractor onboarding training time from 2 Weeks to 4 Hours. Phase two saw positive end-user feedback and application stability, which obtained the necessary approval from the cyber security team for cloud-based data exchange between backend ERP and tablets. The data capture and repairs met regulatory requirements.
The customer and end-user were happy with the simplicity, stability, ease of use, and low cost (1 million, 1/10th the cost of similar complexity solutions implemented at a public utility company). The near real-time work order status improved management decision-making from 1 week to the same day. Without the need to shuffle paperwork, and constant talk with dispatchers through automated workflow, context-rich visualization resulted in doubling the productivity of field crew and inspectors and eliminating administrative staff to process paper-based data.
Till today the crew has completed an inspection of about 3 million homes and 100K repairs to prevent gas leaks. The success of the Riser inspection solution resulted in leading the implementation of the inspection of high-pressure gas meter sets spanning around 24K square miles in 2016. Eight more cloud-based mobile solutions cost $4.2 million to support the service request of 2.4 million electric customers and the inspection of gas storage locations distributing gas to around 21.8 million customers.