ESB Networks receives international award for network data capture into DFIS
ESB Networks has received the Intergraph 100% Club Award for achieving full conversion of all paper records into a digital geo-facility model. This model is maintained in ESB's application called Distributed Facility Information System (DFIS) and provides a full physical and logical (schematic) model of the ESB network at all voltage - 400kV, 220kV, 110kV, 38kV, 20kV, 10kV and LV. It is vitally important to many aspects of ESB Networks business.
At the heart of ESB Networks'
business
Firstly, DFIS supports the health
and safety of ESB staff and civil
engineering contractors by
maintaining a record of the
physical location of buried plant.
Every year, the ESB Networks
Central Site receives more than
9,000 phone calls, faxes, emails and
visits from civil engineering
contractors and local authorities
who need to know if there are any
buried cables where they are
planning to dig. DFIS records make
it possible to respond to these
requests efficiently and effectively.
DFIS is also fundamentally
important to network operations.
The logical network model
maintained by DFIS is used by
Operations Management System
(OMS) to manage the day to day
operation of the distribution
network.
Network maintenance and renewal plans drawn up and scheduled by the Asset Management teams are based on the plant records held in DFIS and in the Asset Register & Maintenance System (ARM). The ESB Network Services Bureau in Athlone last year used the information by viewing DFIS data through FRAMME WEB VIEW held in DFIS over 105,000 applications for new connections. About 400 ESB Networks staff use the existing plant information held in DFIS when preparing designs for network changes needed to facilitate new customer connections.
Completion of a long journey Achieving 100% conversion of paper records to digital records held within DFIS marks the completion of a long journey. It is a journey that, if measured by the total length of line and cable routes recorded in DFIS, would take you round the World more than three times. It is a journey along which the DFIS data capture teams, which include the old NMS group in Distribution Department, Regional Records Offices, Central Site, Contractors in India and latterly in Turkey, have recorded in painstaking detail the precise location and features of over two million points of interest, including: more than 239,000 substations, 142,000km of routes, 118,000 mini-pillars and 1,377,000 poles and masts, many of which are inconveniently located across muddy fields or on the tops of remote hills and mountains.
It is a journey that sometimes took ESB into unknown territory for which there was not always a ready solution. Early paper maps of the ESB network were based on a totally different coordinate system to the digital maps of today and at the time there were no commercial tools available to record or transform the ESB data. Failure to convert the data correctly would have the potential to show ESB cables on the wrong side of the street or, perhaps, not under a street at all. This did not deter the NMS team, who applied their natural engineering and mathematical minds to the problem and built their own digitising tables with inbuilt automated conversion from one coordinate system to another.
It is on this pioneering work that DFIS was built. It is a journey that started and finished with a team in Osprey House, Lower Grand Canal Street, Dublin - but that has also involved remote workers in India and Turkey, who were part of the final push to digitise the last of the paper records.
The Intergraph 100% Club
DFIS is based on advanced
geographical information systems
software that Intergraph Corporation
specifically designed for recording
complex network model
information. Utility facility networks
consist of individual elements that
range in number from hundreds of
thousands to millions and all must
be digitally captured. That explains
why companies can take years to
achieve 100 percent data conversion.
But once they achieve 100 percent,
the sky is the limit for benefits.
The Intergraph 100% Club Award was presented by IMGS, the Irish distributor for Intergraph, at a recent dinner to mark the occasion. "I am very pleased to welcome ESB Networks into the Intergraph 100% Club," said Bob Stuart, Managing Director of IMGS. "It is only through long-term commitment, dedication and teamwork that ESB Networks could achieve this goal. ESB Networks also joins the list of 100% Club Award winners engraved in granite at the Intergraph head office in Huntsville Alabama".
A true milestone on a great journey!
ESB NETWORKS
