PA Consulting Group Recognizes North American Utilities for Excellence in Reliability and Customer Service at the 2010 ReliabilityOne™ and ServiceOne Awards

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Last night, PA Consulting Group (PA) announced the recipients of its annual ReliabilityOne™ and ServiceOne Awards – widely recognized as one the electric utility industry's most prestigious honors - at a reception in Washington DC, before an audience that included senior management at leading utilities, industry regulators, and energy industry experts.  PA's ReliabilityOne™ awards recognize electric utilities for providing their customers with the highest levels of reliability in the industry, while the ServiceOne awards recognize companies for providing exceptional service to their customers as determined by a set of 25 objective measures of excellence in customer care, identified by a panel of industry experts.

ReliabilityOne™ Awards

PA Consulting Group recognized five Regional ReliabilityOne™ winners from investor owned utilities across the US.  The selections were based on overall system wide performance in both outage duration and frequency.  PA awarded its annual National ReliabilityOne™ Excellence Award to one of its Regional winners that demonstrated sustained leadership, innovation and achievement in the area of electric reliability.  PA also selected from its group of regional winners one utility that had overall outstanding system wide reliability performance.  

This year, PA Consulting Group's National ReliabilityOne™ Excellence Award was given to San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E).  SDG&E, which also received the ReliabilityOne™ Award for the West Region, is a Sempra Energy utility serving 3.4 million consumers in San Diego and southern Orange counties.  The National ReliabilityOne™ Excellence Award is presented to the regional award recipient that has served as a consistent leader through demonstrated performance and a superior commitment to electric reliability.

Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. (Con Edison) received both the ReliabilityOne™ Award for the Northeast Region as well as the award for Outstanding System- Wide Reliability.  Con Edison excelled in providing superior outage frequency and duration performance on a system wide basis.  Con Edison serves 3.2 million electric customers in New York City and Westchester.

Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G), a regulated utility delivering electric service to 2.1 million customers throughout New Jersey, won the ReliabilityOne™ Award for the Mid-Atlantic Region. PSE&G has dominated the Mid-Atlantic region winning the award for the ninth year in a row.

Kansas City Power & Light, a subsidiary of Great Plains Energy, Inc. and a leading regulated provider of electricity and energy-related products and services to more than 800,000 customers in Missouri and Kansas was the recipient of the ReliabilityOne™ Award for the Plains Region.

FirstEnergy, a diversified energy company headquartered in Akron, Ohio which serves 4.5 million customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, was the recipient of the ReliabilityOne™ Award for the Midwest Region for their Ohio operations.

ReliabilityOne™ awards recognize electric utilities for providing their customers with the highest levels of reliability in the industry. Each recipient has demonstrated outstanding performance in reliability and restoration and each has created a strong organizational culture focused on reliability. PA examines each organization's results, processes and procedures based on industry norms and standards. Award recipients demonstrate the very best our industry has to offer in the critical area of system reliability.  All North America utilities are eligible for ReliabilityOne™. PA reviews publicly available data on reliability statistics in addition to data that we have gathered independently to assess recipients on a regional level. All data for provisional recipients is then validated through a certification process.

Polaris ServiceOne Awards

PA also recognized those utilities that excel in the area of customer service and care with the presentation of the ServiceOne Awards.  The recipients of the 2010 ServiceOne Awards were Florida Power & Light - a seven-time award winner - which serves 4.4 million customers throughout Florida and NorthWestern Energy, a Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based utility that serves approximately 650,000 customers in  South Dakota, Nebraska, and Montana that is based in Sioux Falls.

This year's ServiceOne Balanced Scorecard Achievement Award recipients are:

• Contact Center – Florida Power & Light
• Field Service – FirstEnergy
• Meter Reading – DTE Energy
• Billing – Florida Power & Light
• Payment – Florida Power & Light
• Credit & Collections – Florida Power & Light
• Revenue Assurance – Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G)

ServiceOne Awards recognize companies for providing exceptional service to their customers as determined by a set of 25 objective measures of excellence in customer care, identified by a panel of industry experts. Utilities that participate in PA Consulting Participating Polaris companies must achieve placement in the top quartile of the ServiceOne scorecard to be considered for the ServiceOne award. All data for provisional recipients is then validated through a certification process. While PA administers the program, an advisory committee consisting of members within the Polaris program provides advice regarding its content and criteria.

ServiceOne Balanced Scorecard Achievement Awards recognize companies that provide outstanding performance within selected areas of Customer Service. Polaris Customer Service participants are considered for a functional award. The recipients have demonstrated best practices and excellence in operations along the components of cost, service level and safety particular to an area of Customer Service. Companies are awarded points based on quartile position for each metric within the relevant scorecard, recognizing the recipient as the organization with the most accumulated points.

Polaris T&D Excellence Awards

Finally, for the first time, PA also distributed the Excellence Awards, which recognize participants in the PA Polaris Transmission & Distribution (T&D) Performance Benchmarking program who demonstrate excellent performance in their respective business units (transmission lines, distribution lines, substations, and T&D overall). Criteria for the award includes top quartile performance in capital and O&M spending, reliability and system availability, staffing and contracting, safety. This year's Excellence Award winners are:

• Excellence in Substations - CenterPoint Energy
• Excellence in Transmission Lines – Pepco
• Excellence in Distribution Lines - We Energies
• Excellence in T&D Overall – Commonwealth Edison

Additional information on PA's Polaris benchmarking program can be found at http://www.paconsulting.com/polaris/.

About PA Consulting Group

At PA Consulting Group, we transform the performance of organisations, providing clients with innovative solutions, a highly responsive approach, and delivery of hard results. We are an independent, employee-owned, global firm of 3,000 talented individuals, operating from offices across the world, in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia and Oceania. We have deep expertise across key industries and government, and a unique breadth of skills from strategy to IT to HR to applied technology.

About PA's Polaris program

PA's Polaris program is a comprehensive discovery process into a utility's business operations. The program, consisting of a general review of organization practices, in addition to a focus on Transmission and Distribution and/or Customer Service, focuses on this discovery process by taking an inventory of the strengths and opportunities of a utility.

Our benchmarking program includes a review of asset management strategy, business process mapping, and cost analysis. In addition, a focus exists on customer satisfaction, expenses review, health and safety review and analysis of the regulatory environment. The concepts of shareholder value and training are also included.  

Since 1989, PA has benchmarked operational trends across 250 utility-operating companies nation wide.

SOURCE PA Consulting Group