Turnpoint Solutions

Background

Gainesville Regional Utilities is a multi-service utility owned by the City of Gainesville and is the 5th largest municipal electric utility in Florida. GRU serves Gainesville and portions of Alachua County, Florida, with electric, water, wastewater, natural gas and telecommunications services. GRU employs over 800 employees who help provide one or more of these services to approximately 87,000 homes and business. The utility also provides wholesale power to the City of Alachua. GRU, through a designated formula, provides funding to the General Fund of the City of Gainesville. These funds help support City services such as police and fire protection, parks and recreation.

An ERP system was selected in 1998 to provide maintenance and construction management functionality for the Energy Delivery organization. However, as a result of Y2K, the initial project scope was changed to focus on the implementation of the Financials, Purchasing, Warehousing, and Materials as their existing system was not Y2K compliant. This was completed by the ERP vendor in 2000. The focus was then redirected back to implementing the maintenance and construction management modules.

GRU Business Requirements

Upon the initial analysis of the maintenance and construction management modules it was apparent that the required functionality for construction management did not exist. GRU partnered with the ERP vendor and built the additional requirements in the construction management module. However, this was not available until a later version of the product that was to be scheduled for implementation starting in October 2003. This was an upgrade of software, hardware, operating system and database. The approach was to move forward with the implementation of the maintenance management module and start construction once the upgrade was completed.

Although the ERP vendor completed the initial implementation of the product from both technical and functional services, GRU management desired a firm that was utility focused with systems integration and utility functional expertise to implement the maintenance and construction management modules. The ERP vendor would still be utilized for any technical aspects of the overall effort.

Turnpoint Solutions plays a pivotal role in helping the energy delivery group at GRU leverage our technology investment to improve operations with streamlined business processes… It is critical for a utility company to leverage technology to ensure system reliability while managing operating costs.

David Beaulieu
Assistant General
Manager Energy Delivery
Gainesville Regional Utilities

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Solution

Turnpoint Solutions (TPSCO) provided a senior consultant with heavy maintenance expertise to assist GRU in moving forward with the maintenance implementation using the ERP solution. A TPSCO Project manager and functional area consultants were brought on board to address the major upgrade to the new version of the ERP software that would support construction management. TPSCO provided GRU with the resources to roll out the maintenance module throughout the organization as well as skills necessary to manage the upgrade project and position the organization for a successful implementation of construction management.

TPSCO provided a senior maintenance consultant to map and implement the GRU maintenance activities with the ERP solution. TPSCO consultants then reviewed current system usage and offline processes that could provide benefits if they were migrated. The consultant interviewed key stakeholders and users at GRU to determine their expectations, objectives and performance indicators as related to maintenance activities. Each area and system was addressed independently with full user and management support. These areas included Water/Wastewater, Gas measurement, Substations and Relays with additional areas in progress.

A TPSCO project manager with extensive knowledge of IT and utility focused systems integration experience was assigned to lead the effort. The deployment strategy considered both moving to a new technical architecture as well as the impact of the new versions of application functionality. TPSCO subject matter experts were introduced for Finance, HR, Materials, and Purchasing. The TPSCO project team worked with the end users and GRU Business Analysts and a complete business process was developed. This created the foundation for test scripts, training, and acceptance testing. The TPSCO project manager also worked with GRU’s technology staff and management ensuring that all technical aspects of the upgrade were scheduled, tracked, and completed.