Incident Response:
When Every
Second Counts
Exploring dispatch & communications
systems in energy and utilities markets
Throughout the winter of 2013/2014 the UK
experienced some of the most damaging
weather events in its recent history.
Driven by a series of deep low pressure
systems, at least 12 major storms ravaged
the country - with major flooding and high
winds leaving entire regions underwater
for months at a time, and hundreds of
thousands of homes and businesses
without power.
It was a season that broke records becoming the wettest since the UK’s Met
Office began reporting.
This story is repeated again and again though not always with such devastating
consequences nationally. Storm Angus in
December 2016 brought winds of 80mph,
heavy rain and flooding. Storm Doris
followed in February 2017 - bringing
further disruption, and this time snow.
With the pattern set for increasingly
frequent and serious storm events, severe
weather continues to be one of the single
biggest causes of power distribution across
the UK.
Energy and utility firms face a constant
battle to assess and evolve grid resilience,
flood prevention strategies, and master
disaster planning in attempts to limit
infrastructure and customer impacts to
the irreducible minimum. The question
then is how best to respond to those
inevitable events… and do so quickly and
cost effectively.
There’s little doubt an effective response
to interruption or supply issues can easily
save hundreds of thousands of pounds. In
competitive markets, where speed matters,
it helps to maintain good customer
relations and to reduce churn. The right
response protects remote and lone
workers, and supports cost containment
strategies to ensure firms stay within
their Ofgen RIIO allowance. It’s just good
business sense.
It begins in the command centre, at the
dispatch desk.
Dispatch at We Energies
While today’s dispatch environments are
a sophisticated mix of technologies and
services, their purpose is straightforward:
to activate and protect first responders,
facilitate the flow of information, and
connect multiple parties throughout the
course of the event to its resolution.
For example, We Energies, a gas and
electricity provider serving over two
million customers, deployed OpenScape
Xpert Dispatch from Unify to:
• Handle hundreds of lines concurrently,
ideally in a single application
• Bridge multiple protocols (radio, mobile,
IP, satellite)
• Initiate instant conference calls between
multiple stakeholders
• Integrate dispatch into existing
command and control centre solutions
• Prioritise calls, barge into conferences
and record for compliance
• Broadcast simultaneous announcements
on a variety of channels
Moreover, dispatch environments able
to integrate real-time social channels and
video into their environments will be able
to disseminate on-the-ground information
and images much faster than those without
this ability.
Real-time video from the field can be
particularly valuable. Today’s social
networks allow users to live-stream from
their mobile phones and tablets. There
is no reason the same cannot be done
in a command centre environment.
“One of our
requirements for
a new solution
was one that had
increased survivability
capabilities that
could improve our
chances of handling
the weather we
experience in Florida.
With this new solution
from Unify, we
have a much higher
confidence that we
can operate during
a natural disaster.”
Martin Rose,
CIO, Pinellas County
Enhancing the experience
at VattenFall Europe
The dispatcher’s own experience can
often be overlooked – which is dangerous
when so much of the coordination and
resolution rests on their shoulders.
A conventional dispatch position has
multiple devices and consoles for
communications. There’s a console for
talking on radios (or portable radios),
there’s a console for talking on telephone
lines (or regular desktop telephones),
and there are satellite communications,
intercoms and paging systems. There
are handsets, headsets and footswitches,
gooseneck microphones, various external
speakers, keyboards and mice all related
to voice communications. And there are
a large array of screens and keyboards
providing critical information related
to the incident. It’s not unusual to see
multiple screens facing a single operator.
Simplifying this environment is critical.
Vattenfall Europe, the continent’s fifth
largest energy supplier, has deployed
OpenScape Xpert to connect and secure
engineers across 72 sites in Germany.
Switching between devices, from a radio
console to a telephone console, or even
from one mouse to another can take
time, cause mistakes and can lead to
disaster. Bringing together the various
modes of conversation used by VattenFall
personnel onto a single screen makes
operational sense in stressful situations.
Pre-configured planning
One of the most critical elements of a
dispatch environment is its capacity for
personalisation and pre-configuration.
The former supports the agent
experience, allowing individuals to tailor
their experience to their own personal
preferences. Having buttons and soft keys
in the right place undoubtedly improves
the dispatcher’s productivity.
So too, to a much larger degree, do
pre-configured and rules-based buttons
– whether on a dedicated terminal or
as a software application on a laptop.
Each key is coded to a specific event, and
each will automatically notify the most
relevant individuals, initiate conferences
or specific site or community broadcasts.
Rather than saving seconds, this saves
minutes, and potentially lives.
Evolution imperative
The majority of today’s dispatch
environments simply weren’t built
for the digital world in which they
must now operate – precisely the issue
facing both We Energies and Vattenfall.
Unsurprisingly, the lack of scalability and
flexibility in these legacy infrastructures
hampered efforts to modernise and
improve response.
The multiple screens; the numerous
radios, telephones and disparate
messaging systems on desks; the
inflexibility of hardware terminals;
the reliance on traditional PSTN
infrastructures, all create time
barriers in the chain.
It’s entirely possible, and financially
desirable, to run a sophisticated dispatch
position from a single, standard laptop
– bridging all those communications
protocols and connecting field engineers
on radio to controllers in the office,
with colleagues on their mobile phones.
Adding unified communications
functionality seamlessly initiates
instant multi-party conferences to share
information with external agencies and
emergency services faster. Combined
with an integrated contact centre
solution, organisations can use social
and video channels to aid in incident
management and resolution. A large
utility in the US state of Florida has been
using heat mapping in the contact centre
to quickly identify the scope of an issue
for faster outage resolution, and hopes
for results that include improved SAIDI
scores.
None of this, of course, is of any use
without resilience and reliability.
Which is why today’s generation of
dispatch solution, such as Unify’s
OpenScape Xpert Dispatch, is designed
to assure faultless 24x7x365 operation,
being underpinned by Unify’s carriergrade switch to deliver 99.999% uptime
– equivalent to less than six minutes of
downtime during continual operation in
any one year.
For more on the dispatch evolution,
visit www.unify.com/uk
“Our customers are
our top priority, and
we need a solution
that offers flexibility
to meet changing
demands and to
ensure we could
deliver the highest
level of customer
satisfaction.”
Scott Johanning,
Telecom Supervisor/ We Energies
About Unify
Unify is one of the world’s leading communications software and services brands, providing integrated
communications and collaboration solutions worldwide. Our customers range in size from 5 employees to 500,000+
employees. Our solutions unify multiple voice, video and data networks, connected devices and applications into
one easy-to-use platform that allows teams to collaborate effectively and efficiently – anytime, anywhere. The result
is a transformation of how the enterprise communicates and collaborates that amplifies collective effort, energizes
the business, improves employee satisfaction and enhances business performance. Unify has a strong heritage of
product reliability, innovation, open standards and security. Our OpenScape and Circuit communications solutions
provide a seamless and efficient collaboration experience – on any device. Together, the group’s global team of UCC
experts and service professionals set the standard for a rich communications and collaboration experience that
empowers teams to deliver better results.
Unify is an Atos company.
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Reference No.: A31002-P3010-D101-2-7629
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