At Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE), we follow a continuous improvement concept that focuses on a single key service question: “How can we improve customer service?” This focus helps link service, processes and technology to increased customer value. In the past when BGE customers called to report a service outage or request information, the automated response they heard was, to say the least, general: “Your power will be restored as soon as possible.” Today's response is quite different and much more customer friendly. “We are aware of your outage. A crew is currently on-site and making repairs. All service should be restored by 9 a.m.”

BGE (Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.) is in the business of taking on storms, but sometimes a major storm taxes our resources, our technology and our ability to communicate effectively with customers. In 1999, BGE experienced two of the worst storms in its long history, an ice storm in January and Hurricane Floyd in the fall. Post-storm evaluations, customer feedback and regulatory assessment clearly indicated that BGE needed to replace its existing obsolete Electric Trouble Operating System (ETOS) in order to provide better restoration information to customers. Service restoration activities were supported for nearly 20 years by ETOS, a computerized BGE system that was designed to analyze customer calls, determine outage locations and assist with crew dispatch to restore service. During large storms, employees were overwhelmed with too much paper, too much manual research and high volumes of verbal communications on the phone or radio to update information (Table 1).

Table 1. Storm Comparison

	Isabel	Floyd
Duration	8 days	8 days
Customers Affected	790,000	503,000
Phone Calls	712,000	290,000
Cases of Trouble	23,612	16,000
Total Personnel	6400	3300
Poles replaced	450	350
Transformers	306	210

Addressing Customer Needs

The goal was to establish consistent methods for customer care representatives who are responsible for initiating outage jobs, viewing the status of outages, and providing accurate and timely information to customers. Two major projects were undertaken to improve service restoration performance. These projects drove the key service components BGE uses today for what it calls “hassle-free customer service.”

A service focus was created and structured around business process drivers required for future processes, new technology and increased information feedback for customers through a fully coordinated effort between BGE's business areas. Keeping accurate and timely information flowing to customers is just as important as restoring their service. Customer surveys and interviews were used to evaluate key customer-outage information. Our customers want to know:

• What is the status of requested work?

• When will BGE arrive for scheduled work?

• How long will it be before the power is restored?

• What actions did BGE take?

• How long will it be before they arrive at an unsafe condition?

• Can BGE confirm that a work crew has been dispatched?

• What is the cause of the outage?

• Why is a BGE vehicle parked near their home?

Increased customer service required a system enhancement and an educational approach. Efforts to capture accurate real-time outage information are valuable only if the information is accurate. Having a call center representative provide information provides no value if that information is not timely and accurate. Therefore, BGE communicated to users the importance of collecting accurate information and outlined how that information is used for reporting status updates to customers and various business units that track and resolve reliability issues.

Dedicated Project Teams

Project teams were comprised of both functional and technical employees as well as staff augmentation contractors. BGE instituted a co-management approach with a project manager from the functional side of the business and a project manager from the technical side.

Each project team included a steering committee to help set the strategic direction. Dedicated full-time positions were created for team leaders and those who took on key team roles so that members did not have to balance time between their team role and their daily business responsibilities. A permanent work area was provided for increased communications and teamwork.

The Outage Management System (OMS) Project Team was commissioned in January 2000 and the system went live in June 2003. The Mobile Dispatch System (MDS) Project Team was established in January of 2002. The phased approach allowed the teams to overlap, better ensuring that the systems worked together to support the business processes.

The OMS system is provided by SPL (San Francisco, California, U.S.) and the MDS system is provided by CGI (Montreal, Quebec, Canada). These systems were successfully integrated and put into production in March 2004.

Table 2. OMS Training

Course Name	Description
OMS Overview	The first phase of training provided a basic understanding of OMS features and benefits for BGE service restoration. The objective of this phase was to engage core users with the new technology and to train support personnel. Post-class practice environments were provided.
OMS Fundamentals	The objective of phase two was to provide a course close to placing the OMS in production to review the previous session and to train on BGE-specific functionality. Exercise manuals and post-class practice environments were provided.
Supervisor Overview	Supervisors were encouraged to attend user sessions for OMS fundamentals and summary information was reviewed. Training coordinators reviewed summary information individually with supervisors.
Refresher Training	Refresher and review training was offered to trainees who desired additional sessions or required more practice in a training session to increase skill requirements or confidence.
OMS Storm Operations	The impact of OMS on storm response operations and storm support positions was reviewed with all storm organization positions. Position duties were reviewed and an overview of OMS system functionality was demonstrated. More in-depth training was provided for storm positions with significant process changes.
Storm Management	Designed for storm leadership to provide an overview of storm positions, resource management and storm processes.
Storm Drill	A storm was simulated on the OMS environment and storm positions were activated. A post-drill review session was also conducted to evaluate work processes.

Once the projects were completed the teams did not disband. Both project teams set up specialized support for the post “go live” period. Twenty-four-hour support was provided for both functional and technical employees. For the OMS rollout, round-the-clock support was provided for two weeks to users at the control center. For the MDS rollout, users at every service center as well as the control center had 24/7 on-site support for two weeks. This also included the ability to meet with a crew at a specific work location. The major benefit of this support was prompt resolution to questions and problems, which greatly enhanced the user acceptance. It was a strain on the project team resources to sustain this level of support, but well worth the effort. Functional and technical team resources continue to provide dedicated support for the two systems today.

Change Management Approach

From the start, BGE realized that “change management” was critical for its success. A dedicated change management leader was named to each project and was charged with developing a change management plan tailored to address overall culture and functionality needs. Change agents were established in each affected organization to increase creditability, support communications, provide feedback and assist with training. Although OMS and MDS were implemented independently, the vision of achieving operational excellence for service restoration was communicated in newsletters, staff meetings, training sessions and refresher training.

Processes were centralized, available to all users, and easy to update and maintain. BGE's “manage by process” methodology governed all stages of each project.

To maximize the use of new technology, shared process information was increased and monitored for ongoing improvements. The GEMWorX FlowModeler was used as the process tool to capture workflow steps, roles, organizations, technology, business rules, work documents, job aids and other corporate knowledge related to processes. Using business process information, workflow diagrams were constructed to document activities down to the task level. Process information was readily available to all users.

Preparing the Workforce

Business processes, business rules, work procedures and supporting technologies led directly to identification of the necessary knowledge and skills required for training. A phased training structure was developed for each system implementation.

Table 3. MDS Training

Course Name	Description
MDT Overview	An overview of the names and functions of parts of the mobile dispatch terminal unit was provided. Troubleshooting information was also reviewed. “Mobile Maps” training was also incorporated into this stage of the training to explain how to view, manipulate and print feeder book, primary and secondary maps.
MDT Crew Training	This course was designed for field crews' operational processes for accepting jobs, responding to jobs, viewing job information, providing job status information and completing jobs. BGE-specific exercises were used for practice.
MDT Field Supervisor Training	This course was designed to introduce field supervisors to MDT functionality. The focus was on basic system features, user configurations, managing workload, and viewing crew locations and assignments. Supervisors also were encouraged to sit in on crew training sessions.
MDS Fundamentals for Crew Management and Workflow Processes	This course was designed for dispatchers and schedulers to learn basic system features, user configurations, and how to dispatch jobs, schedule crews and manage crew assignments. The modular approach provided additional scheduling detail for scheduling positions and flow of information between OMS and MDS for dispatching responsibilities. BGE-specific exercises were used for practice and the OMS and MDS systems were used in the training environment.
Storm Management	A design for storm leadership was created to provide an overview of storm positions, resource management and storm processes.
OMS and MDS Storm Refresher Training	Classes were provided to explain the OMS and MDS interface, additional functionality, changes in storm processes and the importance of data integrity, and to review storm role assignments.
Storm Drill	A storm was simulated on the OMS and MDS environments, and storm positions were activated. A post-drill review session also was conducted to evaluate work processes.

The OMS training design took into account the changing analysis and dispatch processes, along with the numerous storm restoration support processes (Table 2). This was also the first significant step in improving processes for BGE to increase its focus on customer service. About 450 employees received training in four months.

The MDS training addressed not only new technology skills required for field personnel, but changes in OMS processes as well. The objective of the training approach was to provide a training structure that would produce the desired process interaction between OMS and MDS technologies (Table 3).

Advance training on the use of Mobile Data Terminals (MDT) functionality and use of map features increased user buy-in for the OMS and MDS interface. MDTs provided the ability to view system-wide feeder book, primary and secondary maps electronically through a high-value, low-complexity application called Mobile Maps. About 1000 employees received training during a five-month period.

Technology Achievements for Customer Service

BGE's goal when implementing the OMS and MDS systems was to leverage the functional strengths of each system and to create a seamless flow of information between the systems and the interface commissioned by BGE. The OMS and MDS systems are products from different vendors (Table 4), and the integration design was guided by analyzing the work processes and the applications capabilities to determine the allocation of functionality between the systems. At a high level, the OMS automatically takes data from incoming customer calls regarding power outages and non-outage work from the customer information system (CIS) and ties it to location data from BGE's distribution management information system (DMIS) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, creating an integrated computer network model that provides real-time decision-making information. With the OMS, BGE is able to pinpoint problems on the network, which in turn helps to more effectively prioritize and optimally dispatch work. The MDS system is used to manage crew deployment, assign the work to crews, and collect the data from the field crews. Crews are now able to update the status of jobs directly from their trucks, which allows information to flow back through the OMS to CIS. The result is that customers have the most up-to-date status and closeout information available. Dispatchers actively work in both the OMS and MDS and use the various system functions.

Table 4. Technical Components

OMS Components	MDS Components
SPL System	CGI — M3i PragmaCAD System
• OpsCentricity	• Dispatcher
• StormMan	• Moblite
• Executive Dashboard	• Mobile Supervisor
• MyCentricity	• Skyview
• CrewCentricity	• GPS
• Web Callbacks
• Performance DataMart

In normal conditions, the control room personnel manage the electric trouble work allocation and dispatch the appropriate crews to the jobs. In storm situations, the OMS use is expanded with more staff to perform additional analysis and manage the flow of work routed through the MDS. All electric operations and maintenance overhead and underground lines crew members have an MDS terminal (MDT) in their trucks. Additionally, outdoor lighting, metering and gas service personnel assist with storm restoration and use MDS to receive storm work. Storm mobilization can expand to more than 100 OMS users and 500 MDS users.

Customer Service Improvements

The implementation of OMS and MDS has increased our opportunities to provide more accurate and timely information to our customers, emergency management centers, regulatory agencies and media. Our overall processing time for customers has been greatly reduced.

An IVR/call overflow message is available when outages affect a certain area of the service territory or when driving conditions hamper our restoration effort with the customer messages tailored to the outage type and estimated restoration time. Status updates are provided electronically as work progresses from crew dispatch to on-site estimated restoration times. As partial restoration occurs, the outage status (if updated) and the number of customers out is updated. Electronic job completion data is passed back from field crews via MDS to OMS to customer care representatives. During storms, the OMS StormManager software calculates estimated restoration times (preliminary and dispatch) based on weather conditions that will take into account high winds, ice accumulation and major storms including hurricanes.

Service Restoration Improvements

The OMS and MDS tools have enabled us to rapidly diagnose and relay jobs to field personnel. Our president, Ken DeFontes, has been very supportive of our efforts. “We are now able to more quickly provide our customers with information on the status of their outage and estimated time of power restoration,” DeFontes said.

Although it is too early to definitively determine the direct impact of OMS and MDS on service restoration, preliminary information indicates an improvement from an office and field perspective. Coupled with other IVR capacity improvements, BGE has improved its call volume capabilities to capture more call information and avoid busy signals. Enhanced job analysis enables BGE to better determine the work type and location. With improved storm mobilization processes, BGE has the ability to manage larger numbers of crews and jobs.

With both the OMS and MDS technologies in place, BGE has reduced radio traffic resulting in faster communications with field personnel, including inspectors reporting wire-down locations. We are also better able to call upon departments, including outdoor lighting, metering, collections and gas service, to assist in storm restoration in the areas of public safety, damage assessment and loop restoration efforts. The OMS and MDS systems have improved hassle-free customer service and are helping BGE keep its commitment to proactively providing accurate and timely information to its customers.

Ron Carstens is currently the project manager of the Downtown Plan Project with the Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. He was the functional co-project manager for the Outage Management System Project and the project director for the Mobile Dispatch System Project. Carstens holds a BSEE degree from the University of Maryland and an MBA degree from the University of Baltimore. He is a professional engineer in Maryland and a member of IEEE Power Engineering Society. ronald.n.carstens@bge.com

Patty Bruffy is vice president of Business Change Management for Global Enterprise Managers (GEM). She has more than 25 years of experience in the energy industry. She was the GEM project manager for the change management and training for the BGE Outage Management System Project and Field Resource Management Project that implemented the mobile dispatch system. She holds a BS degree in business administration from James Madison University. pbruffy@global-enterprise-mgrs.com