City Power (Johannesburg, South Africa) is focusing on improved customer care while ensuring long-term sustainability and reliability of the entire operations of its network.

The distribution utility has been restructured from the merger of 11 electrical divisions from individual municipalities and is working to gain control over work management processes. City Power's staff of 2000 serves 270,000 customers in and around Johannesburg. The distribution network has 13,000 transformers feeding 2300 km (1429 miles) of underground and overhead cable.

City Power recently signed a contract with LeT Systems for the installation of a workforce management package. The software is part of the eRespond outage, network and work management solution, and is designed to automate dispatch and mobile service operations. This flexible, scalable module should provide significant improvements in customer service.

The eRespond package taps into real-time input such as crew schedules, crew locations, geographic area, crew/job priority, status, equipment availability, job type and average time to complete. The system will automatically dispense incoming job orders to the most appropriate crew. In the event parameters are not met, the work assignments are routed directly to a dispatcher for distribution.

All essential data will be archived and available to City Power for scheduling, workload leveling, single job dispatch, and future work planning and forecasting. The software also allows field crews to call in time sheets and reports from any location directly to the dispatch center.

Dispatchers can prepare and issue switching orders through input into the dynamic model of the distribution network. This allows the results of any individual action to be viewed prior to actual execution by the field crew at the site.

Reduced call response times, more efficient routine maintenance and robust crew reporting should result in great customer satisfaction.
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