ESB Networks tackling new connections in Sligo
Like most other locations countrywide, Sligo has experienced an unprecedented construction boom in the last couple of years and although the Celtic Tiger arrived later, development in the area has really taken off. If anything, the rate at which payments are received for new connections this year is actually increasing over last years high levels.
Sligo Area Network Services staff covers the Counties of Sligo and Leitrim and North Roscommon. Sligo Town has numerous cranes in the skyline at present as new shopping centres, hotels and apartment blocks are being constructed everywhere. Carrick-on-Shannon has a significant number of developments in progress and County Leitrim, which had been traditionally quiet, is now exceptionally busy. Every small town and village throughout these Counties has housing and commercial development programmes launching
As Local Authorities roll out their infrastructural plans, there is significant work for Network Services in delivering the network extensions and alterations involved. Examples of these are the new inner relief road through Sligo Town, upgrading of all rural water supplies requiring three phase power in very remote locations and an unprecedented volume of network undergrounding in towns and villages.
Networks Projects provide welcome backup
It is not surprising, therefore, that with all this development and the implementation of SAP MOIP last year, that the Network Services staff were creaking under the strain and customer pressure was mounting, as Anne Maguire, Area Clerical Support will testify. At times Anne could scarcely be seen behind the large pile of RECI Wiring Completion Certs arriving on her desk. Brid Kilfeather from Production Support gives invaluable assistance in doing relief for Anne and dealing with customer referrals from the Contact Centre and customer complaints. Deirdre O'Donoghue handles all the new application and payment paperwork which comes into North West Division via the Network Services Bureau in Athlone and distributes it to the appropriate design office. Karen O'Hara has recently joined the Production Support team from Retail and provides relief for the other clerical people and is working on rolling out a number of national customer service improvement initiatives across North West Division.
Ronnie Brennan, Construction Supervisor, and his team were coping admirably with the busy schedule by utilising an appropriate mix of his own staff doing normal and after hours scheme work and contracting for cable pulling and larger overhead line jobs. It was apparent, however, in the second half of 2005 that the Engineering Officer team, despite its best efforts, was not adequately resourced to get the increased volume of designs through to construction stage fast enough to allow them to connect in time. Fortunately, Network Projects released Martin Healy early in 2005 and Donnie Herron in late 2005 to join the Network Services team. They have made an invaluable contribution by covering a huge rural area, and allowed Tony Mullen and John McGloin to concentrate on the more complex jobs in larger towns and high profile Local Authority related projects
As the workflow from the design team increased, Seamus Gilligan and Benny Holmes, Network Projects Supervisors, took on board some work schedules from Ronnie to help avoid a backlog building up. Geoff Prendergast, Contracting Partners Supervisor, fast tracked the construction of a number of major line jobs for water scheme upgrades for the Local Authorities. The Local Authorities were very concerned last year that such important European-driven projects might be delayed by lack of power on site and placed particular emphasis on this at stakeholder meetings held with Gerry Mooney, Customer Services Manager and Pat Kelly, Area Manager. These are nearly all delivered at this stage and the reputation of ESB Networks is now very good with Local Authorities and elected representatives.
A measure of how all the additional resource input is making a difference is that the Sligo Network Services team connected about 2,300 customers in 2005 and in the first quarter of 2006 alone there have been 1057 customers connected. The team is under no illusion, but that unless this rate and more is kept up, it will be difficult to eradicate the backlog and get all connections delivered within Charter guarantees by the second half of this year in line with the target set by the Head of Network Services.
All this activity is great but unfortunately network planned outages are required and together with all the requests for planned outages from other work programmes, John Garrett, Customer Services Supervisor and his team have an ongoing challenge to co-ordinate these outages. John had to set a ground rule that all requests are submitted to his office at least two weeks in advance to allow him to co-ordinate and minimise the outages, notify customers and be satisfied that NT's involved in switching were assigned and had switching plans prepared.
The Cranmore ESB Networks premises was refurbished and extended in 2005 to allow Networks staff from the Castle Street ESB Customer Supply premises to be accommodated and fulfil CER requirement for full Business Separation. Whereas this project caused some disruption to staff while in progress, there have been significant gains since they settled into the upgraded premises in October, as it lends itself to better teamwork as all the people involved in related activities are together. A very good example of this is where the Construction Supervisor and Customer Services Supervisor are now in the same open plan area as the Area Clerical Support. The Engineering Officers are now working close by in the same building, having relocated from Castle Street. This all lends itself to improved communication and faster responses to customer enquiries.
It is a great credit to the entire team involved in customer service in Sligo that they are making such inroads on the backlogs over recent months and have had no accidents at work in the process. EM
