PG&E Uses Form Automation Solutions As Mobile-First Front End To SAP-Based Enterprise Asset Management Solution

This is a transcript of a recent “fireside chat” between Mark Scott (VP of Marketing, ProntoForms) and Darby Brennan (Chief IT Program Manager, PG&E).

Darby: My role at PG&E is to manage the planning portfolio for all the gas technology initiatives we have from an IT perspective. I run the partnership between our IT organization and our gas operations organization.

I came to know ProntoForms through a program I ran over the last few years called Mariner, a very large IT program with a budget of over $150 million. Mariner was the result of the gas pipeline safety incident that occurred in 2010. We had a 30-inch gas transmission line rupture in the suburb outside San Francisco, which resulted in 12 lives lost and 38 homes destroyed. An investigation by The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Department of Transportation (DoT) showed that we could have improved the chances of preventing the incident with better record keeping. The Mariner program was a technology program designed to directly and very aggressively address that. In order to improve our records we needed better visibility into our asset information; where are the assets, what do they consist of, when were they put in the ground, what is the planned maintenance associated with it, what is the preventative maintenance associated with that particular asset, and how do we maintain compliance.