RFP Field Asset Inspection System

⁠⁠⁠Summary of Project

Essential Energy (EE) must replace its legacy field asset inspection system known as Distributed Asset Inspection System (DAIS).

DAIS has reached its end of life, and is using technology that is no longer supported.

Business Drivers for Replacing DAIS

Out of Date Technology Stack
AIS was developed in 1998 using Visual Basic 6 (VB6). Microsoft has abandoned support for VB6 and has moved towards web application and cloud technologies. This out of date technology poses a risk to the operations of Essential Energy should it become untenable. It also prevents EE taking advantage of the efficiencies that can be gained from having an updated technology stack (software and hardware) to optimise EE's field operational activities.

Out of Support
Though EE now retains the source code, DAIS was not built in-house. Ongoing maintenance and development of DAIS by EE is a challenge due to skill availability and the age of the software components.

Over-Investment
By developing new features in DAIS, EE will be over-investing in a product that is at its end of life. There are currently 96 change requests in the backlog for DAIS. 44% of change requests are for new features. Another 42% of change requests are related to problems with DAIS that cause data errors and risk the quality of data in backend systems.

Limited Business Agility
DAIS is not responsive to changing business needs because of the outdated technology stack, and the lack of available development support. New features have been requested by the business so industry best practice can be applied to changes in pole reinforcement calculations, safety factor calculations, earthing calculations, and low span risk assessments. In addition, DAIS only caters for the inspection of poles while other assets are still inspected manually on paper.

Data Quality
Data quality is at risk with the current DAIS application which can have a significant impact on the business' ability to optimally manage assets, costs, and risk. For example;
Not all network asset information data that is required by the business is being captured (e.g. crossarms, switchgear) in DAIS
The quality of some data elements that are being captured is poor due to system limitations within DAIS.

Project Benefits
A replacement system for DAIS will enable the following benefits:
Improved Maintenance Capability and Decision Making. The astute collection of asset inspection information will allow more cost-effective maintenance including the capability to move to a reliability centred maintenance strategy
Reduced Manual Effort Operational efficiencies if the selected solution is leveraged to capture other inspection programmes electronically that are currently paper-based;
Improved Data Quality Improved data quality resulting in reduced monitoring and reconciliation
Improved Field Service Delivery Improved capabilities in the field by leveraging current and future mobile computing technologies.