DATE: Friday, October 31, 1997              TAG: 9710310657

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY AKWELI PARKER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   56 lines

VA. POWER, LOGICA SIGN $18 MILLION CONTRACT NEW MAP SYSTEM MAY LEAD TO BETTER CUSTOMER SERVICE.

High voltage, say hello to high tech.

Virginia Power and Logica Energy & Utilities of Houston will announce Monday an $18 million contract for Logica to install a labor-saving computer system for the Richmond-based company.

What's in it for customers? Faster service - say Virginia Power officials - whether it's dispatching workers for routine maintenance or restoring service after a storm.

The 18-month, systemwide project will replace Virginia Power's hundreds of thousands of paper maps with electronic versions. It's expected to streamline the jobs of linemen, electrical system designers and operations center workers.

During outages, for example, linemen will have up-to-date, computerized map information in their trucks - greatly reducing the chance that a worker will drive to a customer's house only to find it doesn't exist on the company's ancient map.

``Right now, with having all your maps on paper - keeping them updated is a chore,'' said Dan Genest, a spokesman for Virginia Power. The utility makes an attempt to update its maps every six months, but Genest admitted there's ``a tremendous backlog.''

In the company's regional nerve centers, operators will have visual, up-to-date information on power outages and will be able to give flustered customers realistic restoration times.

The system combines Geographic Information System, work management and scheduling software in a Windows computer interface. Many laborious paper-shuffling tasks - like processing work orders - will be reduced to simple pointing and clicking.

As electric utilities everywhere scramble to streamline their operations in the face of coming competition, Logica's workload has gone up ``almost exponentially,'' said Wayne Pettit, executive vice president.

If lumbering utilities like Virginia Power expect to compete in price with nimbler power marketing companies in a few years, ``they need to leverage technology to provide better support and lower costs,'' Pettit said.

For Virginia Power, part of that cost-lowering has meant a painful re-organization that's seen about 3,000 layoffs, buy-outs or early retirements.

The deal with Logica comes as part of a $100 million customer service improvement plan Virginia Power announced last year.

Logica Energy & Utilities is an operating unit of Logica Inc., based in Lexington, Mass. Logica Inc. is the U.S. arm of London-based computer software and service company Logica plc. Virginia Power is a subsidiary of Dominion Resources, a Richmond-based holding company that markets utilities, financial services and other products. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

IAN MARTIN/The Virginian-Pilot

Electronic maps...

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