Bristol Virginia Utilities is one of over 2,000 not-for-profit public utilities across the nation owned by the community it serves. In a community-owned system, finding ways to keep costs down while keeping the lights on and the water flowing is very important, says Robert "Buddy" Snodgrass, BVU Vice President of Operations.

Recently his department decided to realize greater management efficiency, resolve problems faster, and improve service by integrating GIS and CAD software. Anderson & Associates employees are getting precise GIS location information on every BVU electric pole, meter, manhole, and intersection water valve, and other structures. The information will be used to create a highly detailed utility map.

"This will be especially effective as an outage management system," Snodgrass said. "Instead of sending out crews to examine miles of power lines for a break, we can use the system to track telephone customer reports of power loss and dispatch crews to a specific location. This can speed up outage repairs by hours."

The new mapping system will also show the other tenants of each electric pole. "Sprint, Charter, OptiNet (the city-owned telecom provider) – all joint-users will be built into the map," said Keith Pritts, the BVU engineering technician working with A&A on the project. "This information can give maintenance and construction crews exact information about where to work."

Bristol, Virginia serves almost 8,000 water customers and approximately 16,000 electric customers. Water users will also benefit when crews can quickly pinpoint the valve to turn off after a waterline break, says John Bowling, Supervisor of Water and Wastewater Engineering.

"We’re also going to map every fire hydrant, showing the fire flow from each one, so that the fire department knows how many gallons per minute they have available at each intersection. With this information, the fire

department can more aggressively fight fires," Bowling said.

Bristol, Virginia, has recently undergone several changes in its electric service. These changes necessitated building a new substation, which went online in January. BVU also had to modify their existing delivery station.

Snodgrass, a Hokie electrical engineer, has been with BVU since 1983. Before that, he was area supervisor for AEP in Southwest Virginia. He joined AEP in 1970, after working for the power company as a Virginia Tech student.