Centlec – Manguang Municipality

INDUSTRY

1. Electricity Distribution

REGION

1. Free State Province, South Africa

GOALS

1. Improve Field Service Management

2. Reduce Operating Costs

3. Improve Productivity

SPECIFIC CHALLENGE

1. Enable mobile field teams with real-time mobile operations management

2. Carry out highly reliable installations within tight timeframes

3. Implement system within short time scale

4. Integrate with existing systems

BENEFITS

1. Automated Processes

2. Improved Customer Asset Data

3. Off-the-shelf Low Cost Solution

4. Implemented On Time and Below Budget

5. Positive Return on Investment

Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality is a metropolitan municipality which governs Bloemfontein and surrounding towns in the Free State province of South Africa, covering a population of approximately 1,000,000. CENTLEC, the electricity operator of the Mangaung Metro, serves 150,000 customers in the Mangaung and Southern Free State areas.

CENTLEC, with the support of Forcelink partner Giscoe, is conducting a field based electrical network asset audit, with the objective of identifying medium and low network assets and their connectivity. This will in turn improve network operations on the maintenance and management side, producing improved regulated performance standards (SAIDI, SAIFI etc.) as well as improving customer service and ultimately improving electricity revenue collection rates for the Municipality.

Since the start of the project in Autumn 2012 audits have been completed for Approximately 90,000 assets, including load centres, sub-stations, service distribution boxes,street lights and poles. The audits also included the taking of photographs – 137,500+ photos taken. The field audit solution had to be capable of scheduling and viewing work graphically, provide a complete audit trail of activity, and be deployed in the field on inexpensive devices.

The scope requirement has been met successfully with predefined processes using the Forcelink solution. The net result is a dramatic improvement in efficiencies and a demonstrable impact on operational costs.

FEATURES & BENEFITS

Workforce/Resource Management: Improved efficiency of field resources, 20%+ productivity improvement on jobs completed

Scan equipment: Asset capture, time and location, for full maintenance history

Meet Regulatory Standards: Reporting to Municipal standards for regulatory reporting requirements

Rapid Implementation: Lower Costs, quicker installation – SaaS subscriber model meant no capital costs

Integrates with legacy and future systems: Protection of past and future IT investments, export of data from Forcelink via standard formats

Scalability of Solution: Allow CENTLEC to expand usage as required, no practical limit on field resource numbers

Administration savings: Reduce administration costs by more than 50% by comparison with previous process.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vcex_image_flexslider control_nav=”false” control_thumbs=”false” img_size=”full” caption=”true” caption_type=”title” caption_position=”bottomLeft” caption_width=”450px” thumbnail_link=”lightbox” lightbox_skin=”smooth” lightbox_title=”title” image_ids=”398,399,400,401,402,403,404″][/vc_column][/vc_row]