Digital acquisition of electric cable inventory plans, BKW FMB Energie AG, Switzerland
In order to guarantee more efficient administration of its service area, BKW decided to introduce the Smallworld GIS network information system with the application module from NIS AG. Fichtner IT Consulting was commissioned by Crow Ten Information Engineering AG (Crow Ten) in a pilot project to carry out the initial digital acquisition of BKW's inventory plans for its regional office in Gstaad. This project made it possible to demonstrate that the acquisition of data by external partners using the CAD tool MicroStation is feasible and that the process developed by Crow Ten for data migration from MicroStation to Smallworld GIS can be successfully employed. After this pilot project, our consultants were able, in collaboration with Crow Ten, to offer and implement data acquisition projects in other municipalities using the successful process for data migration. In the course of the project, data acquisition and the data migration process were constantly adapted to BKW's requirements, thereby demonstrating the flexibility of the successful process.

Automated generation of schematic drawings, Swiss Federal Railways, Switzerland

Client-specific needs call for innovative, tailor-made solutions. In cooperation with ITV Geomatik AG, Fichtner IT Consulting was commissioned by Swiss Federal Railways to develop a module for the automated generation of schematic drawings of rail assets from geographically accurate inventory plans. Through the use of the Schematic Drawings module, drawings can now be generated at the push of a button and no longer need to be produced by painstaking, time-consuming and error-prone manual work.

Light rail track switch maintenance, Dresdner Verkehrsbetriebe AG, Germany
The client provides public transport in the City of Dresden. Its light rail system has a total track length of 270 km, making it one of the biggest such networks in Germany, with over 700 switches. Ensuring a service that caters for around 400,000 passengers per day is based on innovative maintenance management. For this purpose, Fichtner IT Consulting implements a rule-based system for automated planning of maintenance tasks for servicing, cleaning and inspecting track switches. The database-backed system has now been in operation for several years and has decisively streamlined procedures for planning, carrying out and documenting maintenance. There are plans to link this system with SAP business management software for booking jobs and with mobile terminals for maintenance fitters.

Asset Information Portal for DB Netz AG, Germany

To carry out their regular business proceedings, Asset Managers of the German Rail infrastructure manager DB Netz AG have to deal with a wide variety of IT systems and interfaces. These include systems for technical and commercial data, cost center accounting, business planning, geographical information and billing. With this project, a web-based information portal was designed and implemented by Fichtner IT Consulting. The solution allows for the selection of specific infrastructure elements and direct access to function and control elements of underlying IT systems. Where permitted by the target systems, direct access is given to asset information on the basis of a single sign-on concept. In this way, manual entries and searches are eliminated, and access to information is made more efficient and reliable.

Integration of SAP and Oracle in maintenance management at DB Netz AG, Germany

Asset and maintenance data are kept and maintained in SAP at DB Netz AG. These data typically have no geographic reference. Developed by Fichtner IT Consulting, GeoXtension technology geocodes selected SAP rail data online and displays them in a matter of seconds on a map. Information from SAP and Oracle are thus made available instantaneously to the user in an integrated form. Specific maintenance information is presented on a scalable map using different symbols, e.g. depending on job type or notification priority. Large amounts of information can now be evaluated more selectively, because its geographic location is apparent. Consequently, DB Netz AG is able, for example, to identify local accumulations of faults, to analyze accident hotspots and to implement targeted precautionary measures. This Web service is presently available to around 3,500 users.

Integrated process support for incident management, SWU Energie GmbH, Ulm, Germany
By means of integrated process support, incident management is optimized for joint operation of the electricity, natural gas and drinking water networks at the multi-utility enterprise SWU Energie GmbH, Ulm. For this purpose, Fichtner IT Consulting implemented an intranet solution for geo-based incident documentation that makes available all damage-relevant information online. This solution uses GeoXtension Web Technology with an ORACLE database developed by our IT experts. Incidents in all networks without media breaks can be rapidly and intuitively registered, administered and analyzed through a map. This means that not only is operative incident management optimized, but also the basis is created for lasting improvement of the network structure.

GIS-supported maintenance scheduling, Technische Werke Friedrichshafen GmbH (TWF), Germany

In order to guarantee efficient maintenance scheduling, TWF decided to introduce GIS-supported maintenance scheduling for the assets in its gas and water supply networks. For this purpose, Fichtner IT Consulting made add-ons to a geo-information system for TWF. The additionally developed functions support the creation and updating of a maintenance schedule as well as the display of the corresponding objects. By using the software, TWF is able to ensure that its operatives are provided with all the required maintenance-related information in a clearly understandable form which requires considerably less time and effort than before.

Implementation of a pilot environment for lighting installation maintenance using SAP PM and GeoXtension, SWU Energie GmbH, Ulm, Germany
For collecting information in graphical form on its gas, water and electricity network as well as for geo-based support of network-relevant business processes, the utility SWU Energie GmbH applies Fichtner IT Consulting's GeoXtension software. To support maintenance in the lighting sector, a Web-based pilot environment has been set up on the foundation of the already installed SAP PM system and GeoXtension. Integration and coordination of the two systems is through Web services on the basis of the Oracle “BPEL Process Manager”, and implementation of the “Business Process Execution Language” (BPEL), standardized by OASIS.

Geo-data warehouse, SWU Energie GmbH, Germany
SWU Energie GmbH uses InterNETZ network information software supplied by Intergraph for recording and updating its network data for the utilities gas, water and electricity. For this project, mechanisms were created for transferring at set intervals the network data saved in DGN data format in the InterNETZ software to an Oracle geo-data warehouse. In this, the geo-data are saved in the “Simple Feature Specification” format specified by the Open GIS Foundation (OGC), so making them readily accessible for any third-party programs. This means that the powerful functions provided by Oracle for analyzing geographical and alphanumeric data may be used. The data downloaded into the warehouse additionally run through a validation process during which any data errors and incompatibilities already present in the source system are detected and documented with the “Simple Feature Specification”.

DB-GIS, Deutsche Bahn AG, Germany

DB Netz AG, which operates the rail infrastructure of Deutsche Bahn AG, is responsible for the maintenance and operation of the over 35,000 km long rail network. Performance of this task requires the latest information systems for administration of the infrastructure. Fichtner IT Consulting was commissioned by Deutsche Bahn AG to develop the DB-GIS geographic information system. On account of the tremendous volume of data at DB Netz AG and an architecture distributed over eight servers with far in excess of 500 active users, this GIS is one of the largest of its kind in Europe. Numerous application modules and interfaces ensure that the diverse special functions required by DB AG can be optimally supported. Our IT experts have been continuously further developing this system since its introduction and provide support to DB Netz AG in relation to operation management.

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