By C Scherman and A Senekal, Aurecon
SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
A
s part of developing and implementing an integrated infrastruc-
ture asset management business plan for eThekwini Municipal-
ity in eastern South Africa, eThekwini Electricity embarked on
an initiative to capture and model all of its electrical network assets.
This article explores the various components of this exercise
with emphasis on the solutions deployed to address project chal-
lenges from the municipality and service provider’s perspectives. It
also discusses the resultant benefits unlocked during and following
the project execution with improved detailed data availability and
how this project contributes to the Smart Grid (SG) initiatives of the
municipality.
Objectives
The primary objective was to comply with the South African Account-
ing Standards Board – Generally Recognised Accounting Practice –
Section 17 (Property Plant and Equipment) (known as GRAP17) [1] and
to enable themunicipality to effectivelymanage its assets by providing
a solid foundation of reliable and detailed asset information. Second-
ary objectives included establishing a connected network model and
enabling data integration between systems. EThekwini Electricity
engaged the services of the company that the authors represent to
assist with the data collection and modelling exercise. The project
team had to find innovative solutions to a number of issues inherent
to an exercise of this nature, including:
• Planning and executing a very comprehensive field exercise
spanning an area of over approximately 2 300 km
2
ensuring high
quality of data
• Developing a connected network model with more than 900 000
network equipment items recorded from the field
• Defining the asset structures for the purpose of an equipment -
and asset register
• Propagating information through all relevant systems with a view
to future system integration
Different approach to conventional field capture
Conventional field capture projects focus on capturing attribute data
while in the field. With the low cost of high definition cameras and
the low cost of storage, this changes the data capture landscape. The
project team took a different approach that proved to reduce costs
and enhance quality by moving most of the attributed capture work
to office teams supervised by technical specialists.
High resolution aerial photography also proved to be highly effec-
tive asmany asset points could be identified on the aerial photographs
assisting in verifying positional accuracy of field data recorded, as
well as identifying missed assets.
A network-enabled Geographical Information System (GIS)
environment was used to ensure data quality and to enable future
benefit to eThekwini Electricity.
Minimising time spent in the field
Field data capture exercises of a technical nature often contend with
the following major challenges:
• Detailed recording of asset data in the field is time consuming and
places strain on resources due to harsh environmental conditions
and at times hostile environments
• Electrical network asset data is of a technical nature and often
requires qualified field personnel to correctly identify the asset
and record the required asset data, which greatly increases the
cost of field exercises
• Field data capture errors frequently occur as a result of capturer
fatigue and incorrect field interpretation
• Where there are data queries there is no simple means of validat-
ing data apart from revisiting the specific site
• No additional information is available post capture, that equip-
ment exists or in the state as recorded
On this project, field work was limited to recording a GPS position,
capturing detailed photographs of the assets and recordingminimum
attribute data. This resulted in significant time and cost savings as
well as improved data quality.
Maximising utilisation of resources
The project team took a different approach whereby office modelling
relied on domain specialists, a well-structured data capture process
A different approach to conventional field data recording methods which provided benefits to eThekwini Electricity’s asset capture project.
Capturing assets:
Connected network modelling
enhances quality and reduces
cost for eThekwini Electricity
Electricity+Control
July ‘14
32
