Fayetteville Public Utilities, a municipal utility that provides electric, water, natural gas and cable services to businesses and residents in Fayetteville, Tennessee, has selected Trimble's UtilityCenter software for infrastructure management and outage response. The solution will provide a cohesive system for utility infrastructure Geographic Information System mapping and outage management as well as increase communication and provide seamless workflows among departments.
Fayetteville Public Utilities was created in 2002 with the consolidation of the preexisting electric, natural gas and water/sewer utility departments that already served Fayetteville and Lincoln County, Tennessee.
"When the City of Fayetteville consolidated our three utility operations, the areas of accounting and customer service were combined and consolidated first," said Britt Dye, CEO and general manager of Fayetteville Public Utilities. "Since our early stages of consolidation, we have continued to fine-tune our utility operation so that more areas of service are combined to enhance and improve how we operate. Bringing three separate and very different utility operations together and streamlining each department's operation for handling routine service orders, outage reports and response procedures, and most of all, improving the way we schedule new utility construction have been our main focus for the past few years. This is why we chose Trimble. Not only will the new system provide better, more accurate information to our employees so that we make better decisions for planned construction and outage response, it will also improve service to our customers. Overall we can continue to fine-tune our entire operation with the new technology."
FPU will be implementing the UtilityCenter uaField mobile GIS, uaFM desktop GIS, and uaDispatch outage management modules as well as direct interfaces to its Customer Information System (CIS) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems.
UtilityCenter provides a modular map-based utility management platform for field personnel, engineers and management. The UtilityCenter uaField module allows the mobile workers to access the utility's GIS to automate field engineering and work management to improve efficiency and increase productivity.
The UtilityCenter uaFM module provides the core GIS and asset management functionality in the office. It extends ESRI's ArcGIS Desktop for a complete Asset Management and Facility Management (AM/FM) tool that provides a visual representation of land base, facility assets, the utility network, and customers. uaFM enables ArcGIS Desktop to understand, create, complete, and edit features specific to the utility environment and works in conjunction with the entire UtilityCenter suite of applications to provide a cohesive business solution. The new solution will allow FPU to distribute GIS data and interface with its CIS to support workflow for utility billing, accounting, engineering, and operations.
UtilityCenter uaDispatch is the key to outage restoration and improved customer service. The uaDispatch module offers an easy option for managing utility outage needs, resulting in faster response times, and, ultimately, enhanced system performance and customer service.
