Asset Management System

South Jersey Gas (SJG) is a 350,000-plus customer gas distribution utility located in New Jersey.  Hatch Mott MacDonald (HMM) provides a hosted asset management solution for SJG’s engineering and operations departments.  This solution combines GIS, hydraulic modeling, document management and work order management.  All of SJG’s five divisions in southern New Jersey use the solution for day to day activities concerning the maintenance and expansion of the SJG underground infrastructure.

The engagement started with the conversion of SJG’s facility mapping into a GIS database.  This database uses rectified orthographic photography provided by the State of New Jersey as a land base.  Parcel boundaries were gathered from the counties in SJG’s service area and used to locate customer meters to the parcel level.  Consumption data is analyzed annually and a consumption profile is generated for each meter based on heating degree days.  Each year a calibration day is chosen. System pressure and flows on this day are used to calibrate the hydraulic model of the system.  The GIS and document system is updated from as-built records entered by SJG using Fieldbook^TM remote scanning technology.  On a daily basis, over 350 SJG and SJG contractor field utility workers use Fieldbook^TM for leak management, locating underground infrastructure and entering field generated as-built documents.   HMM updates the GIS and indexes the as-built records using the as-built documentation in an automated work flow process.   Only selected SJG personnel have the authorization to edit document records using Fieldbook^TM.

HMM is the prime consultant on this project and provides data center services, data conversion, software coding, GIS updates and data entry services.  HMM provides project management, gas engineering, software architecture, software hosting management, engineering software design, web software, ESRI application software and quality assurance and control. 

HMM also operates a data center which is used by SJG and other HMM clients.  The data center provides a Citrix server farm, Oracle and SQL servers, application servers, file servers and ESRI ArcGIS and SDE servers in a secure environment.  The data center is connected to the Internet backbone through a managed firewall.  Security measures include the separation of data and application servers from Internet facing servers, offsite tape backup and role based security.

Project Highlights:

• Internet-based enterprise infrastructure management solution
• Automated as-built work process
• Hydraulic model integrated into GIS
• Individual meter consumption data updated on periodic basis
• Automated leak management process
• Automated map book generation
• Hosted solution
• Help Desk and security administration
• Role-based security model
• Integrated hydraulic model which encompasses transmission and distribution systems operated by SJG.  This model includes over 110,000 pipe segments and 1,180,800 feet
• Documents under management total more than one million