MID-ATLANTIC UTILITIES UNDERGROUNDING PROGRAM CASE STUDY 58 6. REPORTING PROGRAM PROGRESS After establishing a potential resiliency program objective, how a resiliency program can support the pursuit of the objective, how to create a resiliency program, developing the resiliency program plan, obtaining approval, and implementation, the next step in the Utility Infrastructure Resiliency Playbook (Playbook) is reporting program progress. The case study represents a combination of three Mid-Atlantic utility experiences and is used to introduce this concept and describe how they undertook routine reporting of program progress. CHALLENGE The successful reporting of routine resiliency program progress on a week-to-week, month-to-month, and year-to-year basis requires both process and technology. Given the additional scrutiny on the resiliency program, the program management team identified the need for a different approach to demonstrate the program is on target and the success and prudence of the program are demonstrable. Demonstrating societal balance and benefit among high- and low-income customers. SOLUTION Outsourcing of easement pursuit and construction services to a single service provider to align incentives and support easement, construction, and productivity reporting. Easement access was defined as a primary contributor to timely construction execution and a bottleneck point for the resiliency program implementation. Tying the easement procurement to actual construction was an appropriate incentive for the contractor. Outsourcing of the program management function using a medium scope was selected in order to support designing a process and selecting a technology to support reporting program progress. Designing a reporting process to capture performance post-storm to assess areas where underground conversion has taken place versus both historical performance and areas not yet converted. Geography specific SAIDI, SAIFI, and TLR measures are effective ways to compare performance improvement achieved in outage duration between geographies. RESULT Achieved a 99% improvement in both SAIDI (duration) and SAIFI (frequency) indices when they are calculated for the geographies targeted as part of the SUP. The selection of line segments constructed is data-driven and also achieved a balanced result in societal benefits. Selected neighborhoods, towns, and line segments originating from customer regions were driven by data and risk resulting in work taking place in areas with a mix of income levels. The approach achieved improved service reliability, societal benefits of increased property values, reduced vegetation management, avoided costs from vehicle accidents, reduced fire sparking risk, and improved emergency ingress/egress routes among others.
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