Canada gas major puts asset management on the map
29 May 2007
EGD generates annual sales of $3 billion from the distribution of around 420 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year to 1.8 million residential, commercial and industrial customers in Ontario. The Toronto-based utility has 33,000 km of distribution mains, so proper maintenance and monitoring of these assets is essential.
According to TWPL, the Canadian company is currently focused on preparing for the introduction of a new regulatory regime in 2008 and sees a fully implemented asset management plan as the way forward.
“The TWPL team successfully identified our asset management strengths and gaps by completing a series of Interactive Assessment interviews and focus groups,” said Cindy Graham, Integrity Management manager at EGD. “They then ran a number of road-mapping workshops to develop a realistic, coordinated way forward. The resulting plan will now be fully executed.”
TWPL consultants first talked to 50 EGD staff on a confidential one-to-one basis, before carrying out a series of focus group seminars to assess the company’s performance against the British Standards’ PAS 55 requirements.
According to TWPL, identifies areas of the business that needed attention as well as those that matched best practice. Meanwhile, software analysis of some of EGD’s critical assets using asset performance tools provided a cost/risk/performance data on critical assets and helped in the planning of optimum maintenance, spares or replacement strategies.
The Canadian operator was already applying the principles of asset management throughout the company. The next stage, said TWPL, was for the different departments to combine their skills and to develop a high level strategic picture to optimise the short- and long-term programmes of asset management and integrate them into the structure of the organisation as a whole. That meant co-ordination and alignment of all the asset management procedures under one roof.
TWPL and EGD together drew up a roadmap allowing for adoption of a fully integrated asset management strategy over three to five years. This took account of all investment, operations and maintenance of critical physical assets and the organisation development, education and management attitudes/culture change needed to integrate them more tightly.
The roadmap comprises three stages starting with preparation tasks and generic enablers, followed by asset management strategy developments, and concluding with effective and self-sustaining processes for asset management delivery actions -- both capital projects and daily operations and maintenance/renewals.
The roadmap starts with the proviso that it is essential to have general acceptance of the corporate goals and core principles, and a commitment from management and staff to carry them out. This commitment has been secured.
Next comes the need to make staff aware of what is possible, and their role in the overall picture; this is being achieved by a series of steps to introduce the concepts to staff, followed by a road show to demonstrate how they will benefit the company. The groundwork continues to be laid with the appointment of a facilitating team, choosing appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs), one-to-one coaching and mentoring for senior management and a development programme for background asset management skills and competencies.
Once the ground is ready, the main work of developing an optimised asset management strategy for the network will begin, according to TWPL. This, it said, begins with setting an overall policy and network strategy, followed by a review of how equipment is performing; what risks and deterioration are present, with what significance for the future, and what are the optimal inspection and maintenance intervals and expected life cycles.
The asset criticality analysis will allow EGD to focus its investment and maintenance efforts on the areas of greatest importance. Such health and criticality information enables the next two stages to take place: the capital investment planning process and maintenance strategy review and optimisation, said TWPL.