1. Southwest Gas Corporation Chris Sohus, Vice President/Operations
AGA Workshop Resource Management and Work Forecasting September 23-24, 2015
Southwest Gas Corporation
Chris Sohus, Vice President/Operations

2. Southwest Gas – Company Overview
Victorville
Carson City
Las Vegas
Phoenix
Tucson
Founded in 1931 in Barstow, CA
Headquartered in Las Vegas, NV
Largest distributor of natural gas in Arizona and Nevada
Also serve parts of California
1.9+ million customers
2,200 employees
5 operating divisions

3. Customer Distribution
Southern California
Northern Nevada
Southern Arizona
Southern Nevada
Central Arizona

4. Diverse Service Territory

5. Scheduling and Dispatching
Scheduling – The process of assigning resources to activities in order to execute a plan. In some cases we forecast the work to be performed a week, month or further in advance. Examples include compliance related inspections and surveys, non-hazardous leak repairs, or customer service field orders. Dispatching – The real-time allocation and movement of resources to perform unscheduled activities. Dispatching typically involves the response of personnel to emergency or high priority events such as gas line breaks, hazardous leak repairs, gas odor calls or gas outage restoration.

6. Field Operations Management System FOMS – Work Management

7. FOMS – Customer Service
Increase efficiency and automation of work scheduling and dispatching
Improve ability to coordinate and facilitate work
Provide dispatchers with the ability to manage by exception

8. FOMS – Customer Service
Action
Topic
State
Let’s see where ARM Optimizer fits within the Customer Service Solution
Customer Service work comes from CSS into the ARM Optimizer scheduling engines, where the work load is analyzed for the most efficient routing and crew assignment. Work requests are issued to crews; work is reported using the RT Mobile/Field Manager product.
Resource Manager sends crew skills and availability data to ARM Optimizer.
Central Configuration and Security Administration are used to set system parameters, user access, and crew associations and assignments.
Point Out
Work created in CSS immediately goes into ARM Optimizer, even if the work request has a specific appointment date/time
Crew associations and assignments include identifying the geographic location assignments for the crew

9. Optimizer Customer Service

10. Dispatching

11. Dispatching Five daytime dispatch centers
One centralized dispatch center for after-hours & weekends
Technology
Highly configurable dispatch consoles
Six monitors to display multiple applications simultaneously
Digital phone system
Analog radio system with VoIP

12. Dispatch Applications
FOMS – work management system
Telogis – automatic vehicle location
ARCOS – roster management/call-out system
OCV – Odor Complaint Viewer
FieldSmart Viewer – facility maps
CSS – Customer Service System

13. Dispatch Centralization
Centralizing after-hours dispatch activities allows Southwest Gas to accomplish these benefits company wide:
Enhance business efficiencies and continuity
Improve consistency
Enhance customer safety/emergency response
Optimize field resource management
Meet future customer demands

14. Centralized Dispatch Center

15. Dispatcher Training In Development Modular, structured training
Use technology to enhance and improve training experience
Scenario-based training in a realistic simulated environment

16. Thank you!