Learning Consortia

International Transmission Operations & Maintenance Study (ITOMS)

The premier global innovation and best practice learning + sharing forum for TSOs

This program consists of measuring performance in terms of service level and cost/productivity within transmission operations and maintenance. The methodology is also used for capital spending, asset management, operational processes, and key performance indications. ITOMS offers the possibility to gain insights and to identify and share the “best practices” that drive top performance via interviews with best practices. The members have the opportunity to meet every other year at a targeted conference to share results from the analyses and insights regarding each participants’ business environment. Explore change management issues and challenges within your organization with peer members that have already implemented similar processes, policies, or practices.

Member Benefits

FINDING INNOVATIVE IMPLEMENTATION SUCCESSES

Leverage peer members’ experience with pilots and implementations

VALIDATION OF IMPROVEMENT INITIATIVES

Quantify the impact of specific performance improvement strategies

WORK DELIVERY - PRODUCTIVITY AND PERFORMANCE

Compare internal groups to global Benchmarks to identify and grow your own centers-of-excellence

ASSET LIFE CYCLE PLANS

Facilitate maintenance enhancements, moving from historical time-based activities to diagnostic condition-based or risk-based maintenance programs

REGULATORY SUPPORT

Supplement regulatory submissions with validated & globally accepted benchmarks to reduce excessive mandatory compliance activities and costs

Industry Leadership

Created in 1994 by 9 global transmission organizations, the ITOMS membership roll currently consists of over 30 industry leading organizations.

Program Leadership is by a 5-member Utility Steering Committee providing governance of study scope and schedule. Since the program inception, UMS Group has provided program management, analysis, facilitation and operational expertise in support of the program.

Utility Steering Committee

Global Focus Areas

ITOMS provides a world-wide forum for top performers to learn from leading organizations that have experienced, addressed, and successfully mastered specific operational challenges. Examples of regional concerns and achievements that can benefit everyone globally include:

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Program Takeaways

INNOVATIONS:

During each program cycle, members share key issues, insights and strategies, innovative designs, new assets, tools, enhanced maintenance practices, and approaches for cost reduction and productivity improvement.

INNOVATIONS:

For example, assessments of catastrophic asset failures and other significant events such as:

MVT explosive events
Protection failure caused system outages
Conductor splice failures
Renewables influenced stability issues
Typhoon/hurricane response provided insights to root cause analysis and disaster response/relief strategies.

In addition, members routinely initiate informal ‘peer-to-peer’ surveys to gain valuable insights into specific topical issues or new technologies.

RESULTS:

In addition to comprehensive reports on performance, reliability, risk, and best practices, members have access to a powerful analytic platform for self-guided analyses and insight development.

RESULTS:

An interactive simulation model allows users to run scenario analyses on performance results by adjusting costs, outages, staffing levels, or asset counts.

The Reliability Dashboard provides drill-down capabilities to gain insights into performance and risk; users can filter results by asset type, outage cause, time, and can modify peer group for regional or similar company comparisons (i.e. size, voltage levels, ownership type, regulatory model, etc.).

GLOBAL NETWORK:

Gain a network of 30+ global peers whom you can collaborate with, ask questions or advice, send out surveys, visit to see solutions in action, and more.

GLOBAL NETWORK:

Not only do you have the chance to network at the bi-annual results conference, you have the opportunity to utilize the global ITOMS network any time between conferences as well. Members frequently send out surveys to get insights from the group.

Some recent survey topics have included:

Investment Planning Software Experience
Wildfire Inspection Planning & Vegetation Management Practices
Maintenance Efficiency & Effectiveness KPIs and Reporting Structure

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS:

The ITOMS member webinar program has been expanded due to the travel limitations of COVID and has been so successful that we expect to continue it even once normal travel is restored.

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS:

ITOMS members are invited to participate in monthly webinars spanning a multitude of current topics, and can also request specific topics be covered. A few recent examples include:

Transmission Utility of the Future
OH Line Online Pollution Monitoring
Utilizing the IoT to Collect Data and Predict Asset Performance

Truly an industry-led program, presentations are typically given by subject matter experts within each member organization.

Peer Exchange Highlight: Program Conference

A key tenet of ITOMS is idea and experience sharing among the consortium members. While sharing opportunities abound through the full cycle, the pinnacle is the Bi-annual Best Practices Conference at the end of each study cycle. The member-to-member sharing event, which ONLY member organizations attend, thus creates a ‘Safe Space’ for open dialogue.

ITOMS CONFERENCE – KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA

79 Attendees
31 Global Organizations
70+ Presentations
Breakout Sessions
Technical Tour – TNB Research Center
2 Social Events – Welcome Reception and Awards Banquet
Peer Group Business Session, Charting Future Program Direction

Previous Conference Locations

2002 Reykjavik, Iceland • 2004 San Diego, US • 2006 Lisbon, Portugal • 2008 Vancouver, Canada • 2010 Christchurch, New Zealand • 2012 Chattanooga, US • 2014 Prague, Czech Republic • 2016 Richmond, US

Next: Brussels (Moved to Feb 2023 due to COVID)

Participant Feedback

“We leveraged the ITOMS exchange of knowledge and peer contacts to develop new ideas and proofs of concepts in areas such as Patrol & Inspect innovations, substation digitalization and IoT, and risk-based vegetation management.”

“We used practices presented by ITOMS top performers to convince the regulator to accept a change in our protection testing frequency.”

“Collecting data for ITOMS provided us with the unexpected benefit of a gap analysis of our data systems. Clearly, we didn’t know what we didn’t know.”

“ITOMS is our channel to address Shareholder Regulator performance expectations on reducing Energy – Not-Served & improving efficiencies.”