Abstract

The inspectors of Network Commercial Operations (NCO) who work on-field to detect intentional frauds of power or technical malfunctioning of the power metering, as well as the technicians who execute suspensions of the power service to bad-payers, have to face on a daily basis delicate situations. Indeed the inspection of the meter and the connection to the grid is as a matter of fact an audit in the customers’ premises aimed to check the integrity of the installation as well as the integrity of the commercial and ethical relation between the customer and the distribution company; similarly, the suspension of the power supply for a bad-payer customer is a final measure to try to recover the pending credit and limit the financial impact for the company.

INFO: expiration date extended until 15th May 2020.

Description

BACKGROUND

The inspector or the technician who executes the suspension of the power service is an Enel technician or a third party technician and he is exposed to several responsibilities and risks, among which:

• the customer could be aggressive (or behave unfairly to affect/compromise the work order execution)
• the technician might have a weak or poorly recognized role in front of the customer (mainly external technicians of a third party company, contracted by the Enel distribution company) 

in case of inspections

• it could be difficult to record all the needed evidences of a fraud or irregularity at the moment of the inspection
• the inspector might make technical mistakes during the control
• the inspector might make procedural errors or imprecisions during the inspection filing that could at a later stage turn into a claim of the customer with consequent impossibility to invoice the energy sub-registered
• So far the main leverages to ensure quality of on-field operations in NCO used to be recurrent training plans for inspectors (subject to many limitations in case of third party resources) and recurrent audits on some selected inspection work orders.

THE CHALLENGE

The scope of the challenge is to identify innovative tools and way of working that could facilitate and support the NCO technicians during their work on-field such as:

• remote safety/security assistance
• remote technical/procedural support (e.g. in case of doubts during the execution of the on field work, like visual and meteorological check on a specific component/equipment)
• tools and systems to record and witness digitally the evidences of the anomalies present at the time of the inspection
• remote legal advisory during inspection execution
• other features…

In the scope of this contest, the proposals should focus with priority on business and large customers.

The innovative solutions are supposed to be detailed in terms of:

• enabling technology (must have)
• organization of remote support service (nice to have)
• operative procedures (must have at least an end to end use case simulation describing the new work experience of the inspector, of the remote assistance service and of the customer)

Particular attention should be paid to legal constraints about the privacy of technicians and customers.

PROJECT DELIVERABLES

• reduction of safety/security risk exposure of on-field NCO technicians
• improvement of technical quality of inspections
• improvement of overall effectiveness of inspections (success rate and energy productivity)
• reduction of customers legal claims upfront an invoice of reconstructed consumption

This challenge provides contribution to the following sustainable development goals (SDGs) to transform our world:

• SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being
• SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure