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Severn Trent Water is the world's fourth largest privately-owned water company - serving over 8 million customers across the heart of the UK.
Brooklyn Consulting worked with engineering consultancy, Grontmij, business performance improvement services consultancy, Synergy Management Associates, and systems integrator, CSE-Servelec to deliver STW's telemetry replacement and integration programme. The projects/tasks we undertook are outlined below.
The Challenge
Helping Severn Trent Water (STW) to become a telemetry-enabled business.
This would be achieved through the development and implementation of alarm volume reduction strategies and a Remote Asset Monitoring Policy (RAMP) framework, in order to take a standard, risk-based approach in response to asset and service-level failures, supported by the design and implementation of an integrated telemetry system, and the integration of multiple data sources to provide Business Intelligence across to company.
The RAMP alarm event notification strategies aimed to "deliver 'The Right Action' 'To the Right Recipient' 'With the Right Skills' 'With the Right Information' 'At the Right Time'." The Business Intelligence would provide performance metrics (e.g. hours run, kilowatt hours, starts per hour), identify possible impending failure conditions (e.g. increasing power consumption'), and could provide best-performing asset indicators (e.g. manufacturer X has the 'best' pumps so that should influence whose pumps we procure).
STW's legacy telemetry system needed replacing and integrating with its two work management systems and business intelligence tools. However, the system replacement and integration would also be accompanied by significant business change to the company's processes, procedures and culture.
In addition to the telemetry replacement and integration programme changes, STW was in the middle of significant organisation change; the organisational and reporting structures were changing, and the two telemetry control rooms were to be merged and re-located. We needed to determine what the single control would look like (i.e. number of control room technicians and their responsibilities) both at the point of implementing a single control room and then when the RAMPs were implemented, resulting in a reduced volume of control room-destined alarm event notifications.
The end result would allow STW to better monitor, manage and understand the value and performance of its assets with the aim of achieving:
- Reduced number telemetry alarms
- Automated delivery of alarm call-out communications
- Reduced control-room manpower requirements
- Improved control-room and field communications
- Reduced emergency call-outs to failures (i.e. they can be attended to as part of routine planned maintenance or during normal working hours), leading to reduced [overtime] hours, mileage, fuel usage and emissions
- Ability to improve planned asset maintenance scheduling
- Identification of best performing assets/asset manufacturers
- Identification of failing assets
- Improved asset energy usage efficiency
- Improved event identification and management (e.g. wet weather, power failures)
- Improved long-term asset management and capital investment planning
- EU Working Time Directive compliance
Project 1 - Telemetry Configuration Management Process
Analysis, review and re-design of the Telemetry Configuration Management process.
The existing configuration management process was analysed and modelled, and a facilitated review of the pros and cons of the process was undertaken. Additionally, the stakeholders were encouraged to propose suggestions for the future process.
The design of the future process was undertaken, taking into consideration and preserving the good aspects of the existing process as well as addressing the identified issues.
The general goals and objectives of the future Configuration Management process were:
- To provide a consistent and effective process and support for managing configuration
- To improve the management and quality of configuration through rigorous enforcement of standards
- To provide a robust control mechanism for governing what configuration is defined and applied to the Telemetry System
- To ensure that all requests for configuration are recorded, approved and processed to defined standards
The future process was reviewed and agreed by the stakeholders.
Project 2 - Telemetry Alarm Management Process
Analysis, review and re-design of the Telemetry Alarm Management process.
The existing alarm management process was analysed and modelled. Essentially, the existing telemetry system forced all alarm notifications to control-room personnel, where the process they followed was almost always to just to identify the appropriate recipient and then notify them of the alarm condition.
The modelled process was reviewed by the stakeholders and future process requirements captured.
The future process was designed taking into consideration STW's aim to a have standard, risk-based approach in response to asset and service-level failures, and the future telemetry system's ability to deliver those asset/service-level failure notification directly to the most appropriate recipient (control-room, field service personnel via mobile or PDA, field services via work management and scheduling system).
The future process was reviewed and agreed by the stakeholders.
The new telemetry system's ability to directly notify field services personnel and to do so via different technologies was culturally very different and associated business change and engagement activities were required.
Project 3 - Field Resource Rota Scheduling Process
STW's existing system for managing field service personnel's contact details and their on-duty and on-call commitments/availability was being replaced - the functionality would be included in the new telemetry system.
Because the on-duty and on-call lookups would be performed by the telemetry system (rather than by a control-room operator), the completeness and correctness on the information in the new system was critical, therefore the new processes and associated system support needed to take these requirements into consideration.
The future process was designed to support strict control of the on-duty, on-call, and lone-working information and also to notify when no cover was available. Additionally, we worked with the stakeholders and systems integrator to design the functionality and user interface.
The scheduling system needed to provide functionality that would help STW achieve EU Working Time Directive compliance.
Again, the impact of the change for stakeholders required communications and engagement activities to be undertaken.
Project 4 - Telemetry End-to-End Testing Process
Analysis, review and re-design of the Telemetry End-to-End Testing process
In order to verify the quality of the data reported to the telemetry system by the monitoring equipment on site, End-to-End Testing is required to be carried out on a regular basis and in a consistent and standard manner.
STW operate a testing programme which attempts to test each telemetry point every two years. The sheer number of telemetry points and the resources required to carry out the testing (both from fields services and the telemetry service configuration team) means that the testing target can not be achieved.
Additionally, variations in the testing methodology adopted by field services (or contractors working on their behalf) mean the testing quality may be inconsistent. In order to ensure consistent quality, a standardised and agreed testing process needed to be developed and implemented. The new process and associated procedures were developed, reviewed and agreed with all the regional stakeholder representatives.
Facilitated workshops were also conducted to determine how the Remote Asset Monitoring Policies (RAMPs) would influence the end-to-end testing regime and frequency, or necessity to test.
Project 5 - Information Analysis
The sheer breadth and depth of the data that would be acquired and used by the business processes and shared between the integrated systems needed to be clearly understood and agreed.
Therefore, in order to aid communication between the technical parties and the stakeholders, we developed data models which represented the information of the integrated systems.
Project 6 - Detailed Design with IT Supplier
We carried out a review of the systems integrator's detailed designs in order to ensure the designs met the user functional and process requirements and we worked with them to clarify issues and find solutions to any design problems.
Project 7 - Configuration Management, Alarm Management & End-to-End Testing UI
We worked the systems integrator to design the user interface for the Configuration and Display Management, Alarm Management, and End-to-End Testing sub-systems, consulting with the stakeholders to ensure the UI was intuitive and supported the business processes and procedures.
Project 8 - Reporting and Management Information
Some business processes and procedures needed to be supported by processed (rather than raw) data. We undertook an analysis to identify high-level reporting and management information requirements. These requirements formed the basis of more detailed investigation and report specification.
Project 9 - Application Testing Specification reviews
We conducted in-depth reviews of the system integrator's testing specifications for the Configuration Management, Alarm Management, and End-to-End Testing functions. We then worked with them to collaboratively update the specifications.
Project 10 - Business Engagement and Business Change
STW's telemetry replacement and integration programme involved a significant business change element. Every part of the business that was 'touched' by the telemetry or work management systems needed informing, re-assuring, and listening to.
To that end, we met with the business, ran workshops to elicit requirements and feedback, delivered roadshows across the STW estate to convey important concepts, assessed the change gap and training needs and demonstrated the software in action. The demonstrations involved building RAMP-compliant configuration and associated displays (interactive SVG mimics).
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