How ComEd Automatically Manages Blue-sky and Dark-sky Utility Crews

摘要

Organized chaos is the way some people describe managing crews when facing adverse weather. The process works. Utilities always restore power. But the process for many utilities, including ComEd, always has required a lot more steps than anyone would like. With more than 90,000 miles of power lines in an 11,400-square-mile territory stretching from Northern Illinois across Chicago and east to the Indiana border, ComEd has 3.8 million customers to keep connected. As early as 2011, ComEd had been discussing the possibility of streamlining its crew management process. After any major event, ComEd would hear its people grumble about the time-consuming 11 -step process for building and deploying crews before, during and after adverse weather. When ComEd received a forecast of adverse weather, the weather alert triggered managers to enhance staffing levels, assign extended shifts and submit rosters, or "bump sheets," for crews. The first step in the 11-step process was launching a callout via the Arcos System, a Web-based callout and scheduling platform, while current crew schedules were locked in. The callout to hundreds of employees would take only minutes, and ComEd could establish who was available for storm work.