Innovative App for PG&E Field Crews Earns InformationWeek IT Excellence Award
May 22 2017 - 12:00PM
Business Wire
InformationWeek announced Pacific Gas and Electric Company
(PG&E) as the winner of the 2017 IT Excellence Award in the
Data and Analytics category. The annual award program recognizes
leaders and companies that demonstrate outstanding innovation in
information technology (IT). PG&E was recognized for its Mobile
Asset Inspection app that provides PG&E gas and electric power
inspectors in the field with real-time information including maps,
customer information, safety and access information.
“Winning the InformationWeek 2017 IT Excellence Award in Data
and Analytics is a great honor and I’m thrilled for our employees.
At PG&E we are constantly on the lookout for innovative
technology solutions that can help deliver safe, reliable,
affordable and clean energy to our customers. In 2016 we stood up
an enterprise mobility unit called Digital Catalyst to focus on
building internal apps from the ground up and rolling mobile
capabilities out to our workforce. The Mobile Asset Inspection app
was one of the first apps to be developed by this team,” said Karen
Austin, PG&E Senior Vice President and Chief Information
Officer.
The PG&E Mobile Asset Inspection app provides PG&E gas
and electric power inspectors digital map and customer data, and
the location of assets that may require repairs. It has also
improved employee safety by allowing inspectors to view the safest
way to access the asset and reduced driver time.
As an example of the app in action, when PG&E crews went out
on storm patrol in January, they used the app to identify electric
distribution poles in need of repair. Using the satellite map view,
layered with PG&E asset information, they determined the
safest, most efficient route to the affected sites. In addition to
using the app on the ground, it helped inspectors patrolling by
helicopter identify and locate poles that might need repair.
“Our strategy is about building homegrown apps internally for
our people, by our people to help deliver safe and reliable service
to our customers,” said Austin. “The framework that the Mobile
Asset Inspection app was built on will be reused to create future
apps to improve safety and efficiency across the company.”
PG&E’s Digital Catalyst team built the app using a “design
thinking” development concept working closely with electric and gas
field workers and spending 400 hours on field research discovery,
shadowing field workers to learn about their day-to-day work.
Satellite maps were layered with the location of PG&E’s two
million electric poles along with decades’ worth of data on each
individual pole. The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was built in
three months and was rolled out to a pilot group of field workers
to get feedback and input.
The InformationWeek 2017 IT Excellence Award winners were
announced at InformationWeek's IT Leadership Summit on May 16 at
Interop ITX in Las Vegas.
About InformationWeek IT Excellence Awards
Entries were evaluated by the InformationWeek editorial team on
innovative use of technology and degree of business impact and
value achieved. The selected IT Excellence Award winners stand out
as true innovators and leaders among their peers. Those chosen as
winners illustrate how organizations can take advantage of
technology to redefine how their businesses operate and
succeed.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E
Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas
and electric energy companies in the United States. Based in San
Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers
some of the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in
Northern and Central California. For more information, visit
www.pge.com/ and pge.com/news.
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Pacific Gas and Electric CompanyLaura Brackley, 415-973-5930
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