Two days before the dramatic February 2002 ice storm hit Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, Ben Brandt, manager of procurement and resources services for Oklahoma Gas and Electric (OG&E), assembled his team to plan for the counterpunch. Closely reviewing weather reports, the storm team began the forward staging of people, material and equipment to get ahead of the impending event.

OG&E and its primary alliance distributor/partner Utiliserve (Corinth, Texas) co-habitate inventory at the central OG&E warehouse in Oklahoma City. With Utiliserve employees on site with their OG&E counterparts the two companies faced a literal “acid test” in protecting and restoring customer power through the storm. Leaving nothing to fate, Utiliserve began releasing “storm anticipation” orders to Hubbell Power Systems (HPS, Centralia, Missouri) as well as to other key suppliers to support OG&E, REC and municipal Utiliserve customers. All parties involved concentrated available resources to protect and restore power customers as the storm bore down on the region.

On site in Oklahoma City with two “war rooms” in operation (T&D), most of the required distribution material shipped directly from the central OG&E warehouse to district warehouses across the impacted service area with a four-hour turnaround. Transmission product requirements involved more direct shipments from suppliers to the areas of need. At the HPS central warehouse in Missouri, the immediate processing of orders was underway with all storm orders placed in a priority status and production geared to the demand generated from the impacted areas. The HPS objective was to have material on site at the hour requested. To meet the goal, the company shipped material directly from four geographically dispersed plants in addition to material shipped from the main distribution center in Missouri.

Throughout the effort, OG&E crews, engineers and contractors in the field maintained vigilance in anticipating needs and relaying the requirements back to central distribution where utility, distributor and manufacturer account representatives met the call with a mammoth coordination effort.

OG&E and its distributor partner found response times greatly improved as truck transfers were avoided and employees of both companies worked through the difficulty of the storm in a familiar warehouse setting and culture shared by both companies at the central OG&E warehouse.