Salt River Project has more than 150 different T&D work and asset management information systems. Now the company is working toward one tightly integrated solution. With an implementation date of next July, Kevin Huff, manager of asset information and technology services at Salt River Project will present the benefits of such a system at Finepoint’s Circuit Breaker Test and Maintenance Training Conference in October.

Huff’s session, “Integration of Work and Asset Management Software,” will take place on Thursday, Oct. 9.

Huff will share the 10 major benefits of a centralized asset management system. SRP’s core solution will be the Maximo system, originally from MRO Software, which is now part of IBM. The company will be integrating Cascade, its substation program into Maximo and installing a dashboard system called Obvient to record and release information.

“The dashboard tool allows very close to real-time information on asset and work that normally would not be available without some type of research. With 150 systems, different systems have multiple views of the same data,” Huff said. “The industry has built great information gathering tools, but we have not capitalized on the information we gather and that’s one of our goals of this project: is to see that data and put it in a form that makes it more readable and more useable by management--to be able to make decisions in a more timely and accurate manner.”

The new system will be helpful with the new NERC reliability regulations being implemented, according to Huff.

“Overall, consolidation of systems and process brings more standard practices thus improving work performance, asset performance and safety,” he said.
SRP has been working on this new system for about four years, from the start of the initial proposal. It has performed process and design work and now is into the integration and testing phase.

“We’re not on fire right now, so we want to implement something that is going to be a good, solid solution, whatever time it takes. One of the goals of our whole project was to not spend a lot of money and take enough time to do it right. So we have a rather small team compared to some of the teams you’ve seen in the past,” Huff said.

The benefits and functions that will come out of this integration include:

• Collecting, Accessing and Managing Data
• Managing Units of Work
• Simplifing System Architecture
• Asset Management Project Knowledge Sharing and Ongoing Governance
• Workflow Standardization and Automation
• Mobile Functionality
• AMP Partnership with Business - Standards, Policies and Procedures Management
• Contract Management
• Scheduling and Resource Management
• Financial Tracking
• Improving Quality of T&D Work

Huff has been in his current role for five years. Previously he managed the corporate project management office for four years after managing the GIS group at SRP.