6.1d ERMUSR 2-11-2020UTILITIES COMMISSION MEETING
TO:FROM:
ERMU Commission Mike Tietz –Technical Services Superintendent
MEETING DATE: AGENDA ITEM NUMBER:
February 11, 2020 6.1d
SUBJECT:
Staff Update
ACTION REQUESTED:
None
DISCUSSION:
• In January, the locating department had a total of 92 locate tickets consisting of 4
emergency tickets, 2 cancellations, 72 normal tickets, and 14 updated tickets. This is a
2.1% decrease in volume of tickets from the previous month.The locators have been
collecting GPS data again as time allows.
• Electrical Technicians continue with updating the power bill, substation checks,
disconnects/reconnects, dealing with customer meter and off-peak issues.
• On January 30, staff ran Engines 1 & 3 without any issues. The vendor for the repair of
Engine #2 has guaranteed us that he will be on site the week of February 11.
• Weekly meter reads continue to go well. Staff continues to perform meter audits
around the system.
• Mapping department continues to update points and attributes for all of our systems
assets within the ESRI ArcView GIS system. Staff has also been working on development
of a Backflow Prevention Inspection application for the water department to use within
the GIS system.
• The West Substation Equipment Storage Garage was completed on January 31.
• NISC AppSuiteand SmartTrack training was conducted January 21-23 which included
most of the field staff and supervisors. We went live with the system on February 4 and
havebeen working through some minor issues and processes during the first few days.
Generally, everything is working as we expected.
• On January 30, we had 7 field services staff members attend the Advance Driving Skills
Course at the Minnesota Highway Safety & Research Center in St. Cloud. The training
consists of classroom instruction followed by skills-based development exercises.
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