Did you know that the utilities industry employs over half a million people? The utility industry is critical to our everyday lives. Think about turning the lights on, lighting the stove, and flushing the toilets – without water, natural gas, and electricity, we wouldn’t be able to do these things.
In the United States, we have a vast infrastructure network that connects us to the commodities we rely on. Utility management is critical in ensuring that utility companies can get their services where they need to go. In order to manage these networks, a management system or management service needs to be put in place. Managing these important assets is crucial to maintaining these networks.
Managing the day-to-day operations of utilities requires constant monitoring, repairs, and updates to make sure services can be delivered from the power plant to your home for example. You need a powerful project management system to manage your assets. Most software also comes equipped with information systems that help you organize and track your data. These systems help keep utilities running.
Advantages of Project Management (PM) for Utilities
Adapting and switching to digital project management procedures has been a slow going process in the utility world. Typical utility projects are slow and intensive, requiring careful planning to keep the project on time and within budget. In addition, these projects cost a lot of money, money that needs to be tracked, managed, and stretched.
As time goes on, it has become even more apparent that project management software offers a variety of advantages in the utility sector.
Advantage #1: Connecting your Data
One of the biggest advantages to using PM in the utilities space is organizing your data. Utility projects generate so much data that needs to be collected, organized, and shared across the organization. Paper records are not as reliable as digital records and can be lost, damaged, or easily changed.
In addition, the visibility of this data and transparency between the field and the office can be difficult. This can create information gaps that may affect the success of a project. By implement a digital project management system, all data can be shared and accessed in one place, in real time. This then enables the data to be easily shared between teams and allows for easy communication across your organization.
Advantage #2: Risk Management
Another major advantage of PM software is that it improves risk management. Risks may include outages, leaks, property damage, and more. Properly managing these risks requires having a lot of different information at your fingertips.
In order to manage risks and respond to issues quickly, you need to know as much information about the asset as possible. Commonly you will need to know the follow about the asset:
- Age
- Maintenance history
- Location
- Underlying issues
Using project management software allows all of this information to be stored in one database. You can then connect that information to all parties involved to respond to problems faster. With project management software, you can more easily gather, store, and share information about your assets. This makes managing utility risk faster, easier, and more effective.
Advantage #3: Integration
As you probably already know, there is not one single tool that is built for every task or challenge you face. However, with project management software, you can integrate all of these tools together into one interface.
With many project management softwares, all of your tools can be integrated into one ecosystem. This gives everyone in your organization one place to go to for everything and anything they may need.
Wrap-Up
As the utility sector continues to grow and change, staying on the pulse of emerging technology and software is crucial. Streamline your operations and increase visibility across your organization with project management software for utilities.
OpSource’s suite of software is built to solve your project management needs on the field and in the office. If you want to learn more, please contact us today.
