Operator-owned facilities are spread throughout a utility’s service area: electric power substations, natural gas pipelines, high-tension lines, flood/wastewater control, and even residential power all represent locations where utilities regularly dispatch highly trained service technicians, electricians, and line workers. Modern utility operators are no longer sending their employees to faulty sites with a truck-full of schematics, service manuals, and facility drawings and a paper work order with little to no explanation of the problem. Rather, today’s mobile workforce management systems have computerized these large data for rapid access on ruggedized, user-friendly, laptops and even handheld devices such as specially configured PDAs and Blackberry™ devices. Additionally, these computers and handheld devices are outfitted regularly with GPS receivers for remote location monitoring, such that the utility operator can more efficiently direct and oversee its field personnel from a centralized location presented on a map display, helping to quickly close the work order.

Working through our sibling firm, KEMA Consulting, our firm has significant experience in the planning, design, engineering, and implementation oversight of, real-time mobile workforce management systems applicable to utility operators to manage the location and activity of their field personnel, equipment, and vehicles safely and more cost effectively, including: