ITOMS™ is a consortium of international transmission companies. ITOMS™ stands for ‘International Transmission Operations and Maintenance Study’ and consists of leading transmission organizations that are interested in comparing performance across a range of operations and maintenance areas, and in sharing leading practices and processes. This consortium (currently consisting of twenty-seven global transmission organizations) was established in 1994 and is continuously evolving to address the current consortium member’s emerging issues.
The ITOMS™ consortium was established by a group of interested transmission companies as a means of comparing performance and practices within the worldwide transmission industry. UMS Group facilitates the study, extends invitations to peer transmission companies, provides analytic expertise, explores and identifies leading industry practices, and leads workshops designed for members to exchange ideas. As a result of mutually beneficial exchanges, study participants have gained an increased understanding of leading practices and innovations in the transmission field. The consortium runs the study every two years, enabling one year of performance comparisons followed by a year of implementation of performance improvement initiatives. Consortium members have reported recurring cost savings on the order of 20%-30% of the annual budget. The peer group is currently assembling with the next ITOMS™ study scheduled to run from now through January of 2006.
In addition to participating in comparisons against uniquely rigorous industry transmission benchmarks, the consortium places a large value on sharing leading practices, exploring and learning from industry trends and networking in a friendly atmosphere. ITOMS™ participants indicated that the topics addressed in their bi-annual five-day results and best practices workshops are extremely valuable. In addition to in depth discussion of maintenance practices, recent exchanges have focused on:
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Asset Management capabilities and best practices |
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Regulatory evolution and strategies for negotiating reasonable standards |
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Risk Management – assessment capabilities of current and future operational, economic, and regulatory risk to the business |
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Managing knowledge to make effective asset and business decisions |
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Contestability of work in the transmission environment |
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Life cycle cost planning and assessment tools |
While the study has historically focused on the maintenance and operations activities of transmission organizations, the ITOMS™ Steering Group, consisting of representatives of National Grid (UK), Tennessee Valley Authority (USA), Landsvirkjun (Iceland), and SPI Powernet (Australia), expanded the scope of the most recent study. In response to the needs of the ITOMS™ constituency, four major additions were made:
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The ITOMS™ performance data was moved to a web enabled platform offering improved confidence in data quality, immediate indication of current performance levels, and the ability for scenario analysis supporting the budgeting process and evaluations of the impact of ongoing performance improvement initiatives. |
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To evaluate impact of maintenance policy on network performance, the program developed a comprehensive assessment of Transmission system performance, focusing on equipment outage rates, network reliability, and network availability. |
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Replacement, refurbishment and capacity upgrade activities were added to study scope to address total system cost and overcome differences in accounting policies. This allowed the consortium to identify and share current leading practices focusing on whole of asset life cost optimization. |
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Asset Management was added to program scope. Detailed exploration was undertaken in the areas of contracting, asset replacement decision making and investment prioritization during the most recent workshop. |
If you would like to discuss your company’s current performance assessment needs or explore the possibility of joining the consortium, we would like to schedule a phone call to tell you about ITOMS™
2005 in more detail. Please contact us at UMS Group (Jack Shearman at jshearman@umsgroup.com, or Steve Hall at shall@umsgroup.com or your regional Steering Group representative:
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