Loss of supply incidents can affect hundreds or thousands of properties and the current software tools used to support the process of managing the incident response are not integrated or fit for purpose.  More significantly, a major loss of supply incident (affecting 100,000 properties) will currently present significant challenges to a GDN in managing the incident.

Incidents that place a high demand on resources to investigate and manage are not limited to ‘actual’ loss of supply. In January 2013 the ‘French Gas Cloud’ resulted in a period of high call volumes to the national emergency number and onward to the GDN operational control centers.  Subsequent investigation work was also carried out by regional depot staff. Approximately 50% of the cost of the incident was spent on admin staff having to capture and process data to ensure every customer had a visit or had some form of contact from a GDN. This also had an ongoing fiscal impact of other depot staff having to back-fill and additional assistance to maintain on-going depot activities during the incident.

A major incident (of any kind) will require the GDN to provide significant resources, and come at a considerable cost.  Operations require a comprehensive solution to manage information and resources during a large-scale incident and to enable a quicker decision-making process on resource requirements. The information captured by the solution will also help to provide accurate cost information after the incident’s resolution and onward recharge where appropriate to ensure the GB Gas customer is not paying for other companies’ errors when working or operating near gas mains and assets.

Following the successful conclusion of Stage 1 (http://www.smarternetworks.org/project/nia_sgn0091), we’re continuing to assess the possibility of introducing a more advanced innovative incident management platform solution to improve the operational processes, specifically around customer interaction, people and resource management and incident recharge (where appropriate) using the fire service incident response methodology as a starting point. This was identified as the best in practice fit following an earlier prequalification exercise.

Benefits

It is difficult to accurately quantify the actual financial benefit at this stage; as indicated by the low start TRL shows the Method is at an early stage of development and cost estimates will be refined as it is further developed. However, it is envisaged that deployment of this technology may lead to financial benefits in the following areas:

• More efficient use of resources during an incident
• Better customer visibility during an incident
• Full value recharge where a third party is responsible 
• Reduction of administration post incident