CASE STUDIES: DELIVERING SOLUTIONS
ComEd Cable Replacement Program
In 2005, ComEd began planning for replacement of its aging URD primary cable. Company officials believed a turnkey approach would drive down the cost of emergency repairs and sporadic replacement. ComEd identified the scope of the cable replacement program and the criteria for prioritizing the work. When the project went to bid in 2007, INTREN was the successful bidder.
The key challenges were scheduling, customer satisfaction and cost reduction. Noteworthy solutions were elimination of handoffs through electronic assessment and updating of records, and coordination with other ComEd work schedules.
Working with ComEd to identify cost drivers, Intren has supported ComEd’s effort to continue to reduce the actual costs of replacement on both the contractor and ComEd sides. A highly successful cost reduction strategy implemented in 2008 was to link the program to ComEd’s cable injection process. In 2009, Intren along with UtilX, the contractor performing the injection, reached two milestones: 1,000,000 feet of cable injected and 1,000,000 feet of cable replaced.
As the program proceeds, Intren continues to identify cost drivers to further reduce program costs. The 2010 cost to ComEd for replacement/injection is significantly less than the 2007 cost.
ComEd Cable Fault Repair Program
In 2007, ComEd began working with its key contactors to develop a more cost-effective approach to repairing cable faults, including URD primary faults, street light and service faults. The company challenged its contractors to:
- Reduce the cost for each repair
- Reduce the turnaround time for each repair
- Increase customer communication and satisfaction
- Maintain safety and quality
- Rotate work between ComEd offices
Intren developed a programmatic approach to achieve these goals. The plan called for a complete electronic transfer of all data to eliminate handoffs, a schedule process that fostered clear customer communication and office rotation throughout the ComEd system. To increase efficiencies, Intren established work teams to find/fix/repair street light and service faults.
Since 2007, the Intren program has driven down the cost of fault repair by 20% per fault and has met the five key challenges presented by ComEd.
WE Energies Streetlight Bulb Change-Out
In late 2009, WE Energies made the decision to re-lamp more than 5,000 street lights in the City of Appleton, Wisconsin. The bid was awarded to Intren during Thanksgiving week, with work to be completed by year end.
Intren recognized that the traditional method of receiving work from the customer would not suffice in the tight time frame. So in just two days Intren developed and implemented an electronic solution. All street light records were received electronically and downloaded into GPS routing software. Equipped with computers, crews received their work assignments electronically. Each crew was routed daily via the software to street lights that needed re-lamping. Work records were uploaded nightly so that WE Energies had real-time data and status reports. The project was completed one week early without incident.
