FortisBC Inc. (FortisBC) Application for a Certificate of Public ...

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FortisBC Inc. (FortisBC or the Company)
Application for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity
for the Advanced Metering Infrastructure Project
Response to British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC or the Commission)
Information Request (IR) No. 1
60.0 Reference: Project Costs and Benefits
Response:
Exhibit B-1, Tab 5.0, Section 5.1.2, p. 74
New staffing – Business Analysts
Submission Date:
October 5, 2012
Page 146
For staffing, FortisBC has anticipated adding an additional 9.5 FTEs to support the AMI
system and new processes. The breakdown of these resources is as follows:
• Business Analyst – two additional resources to work the billing process, review
reports, work queues and dashboards on a daily basis and respond to any alerts and
alarms;
60.1 Please detail the number of people that currently work in the FortisBC billing
process, and specifically identify the number that deal with manual and off-cycle
meter reads.
FortisBC’s Billing Operations group has 7 FTEs that deal with billing issues, but they do not
generally enter manual off-cycle reads. In the Contact Center there is approximately 0.5 FTE
manually entering off-cycle meter reads.
Response:
60.2 Please explain the types of alerts and alarms that would be handled by these two
analysts, and provide copies of the vendor’s documentation detailing the
anticipated number of expected events and time to process/correct these events.
With the Itron system there are a variety of event types, including power loss/restore, tamper,
tilt, low battery alarms, and voltage alarms, that would be handled by the two additional
resources.
Itron does not have documentation detailing anticipated number of expected events and time to
process/correct these events. These numbers will be dependent on many factors, notably
FortisBC’s decisions regarding configuration of events and alarms, automation of various
processes, and the proficiency of the analysts. Configuration of the events and alarms and
automation of various processes will be determined during the design phase of the project.
Based on the experience of FortisBC’s industry consultant, it is expected that 2 business
analysts would be required to manage the events for a utility of FortisBC’s size.