Projects

Louisville Water Company Advanced Metering, Automated Reading

Getting Louisville off to the races on its smart meter system

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Louisville Water Company

In 2017, Louisville Water Company (LWC) requested Jacobs to assist with competitively procuring an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system.

Since then, we’ve been involved every step of the way, alongside LWC through procurement, proposals & selection, presentations to the board, cost benefit analysis, project controls and implementation and more.

  • $ 2 M

    in identified discounts and client savings

  • 12.5 K

    meters implemented per month

  • 285 K

    customers served with AMI

  • 22

    month implementation phase

“Jacobs has been working with us since 2014 to perform a comprehensive Business Case, resulting in a full system evaluation on the budgeted capital and ongoing costs compared to the savings over the equipment lifecycle for nearly 300,000 meters. As a result, we decided to implement a hybrid solution, where a majority of meters would be heard with AMI and a small minority would remain AMR. Jacobs supported LWC with a procurement approach that received excellent industry participation. We’re nearly complete with negotiating with the AMI vendor, which Jacobs has helped with every step of the way. Jacobs has done an excellent job supporting LWC and we recommend them for this type of work.”

David A. Vogel

Executive Vice President, Louisville Water Company

Delivering a smart metering system for Derby City

In 2017, LWC requested Jacobs to assist with competitively procuring an AMI system. Using the Jacobs AMI RFP template that was customized and updated to meet LWC needs, six proposals were received from major metering and AMI manufacturers.

The procurement process began with soliciting technical proposals for qualified firms that met LWC’s minimum requirements. Next, Jacobs assisted in developing a short list of proposals with selection committee members which were invited to present their solution and provide a demonstration of their software packages to LWC.

Jacobs led the question and answer session with each vendor including discussion on system integration with LWC’s CIS, customer portal features and capabilities, and hardware-specific technical questions unique to each proposal. After the interviews, the short-listed firms were provided with fee tables to complete, and cost evaluations were added to the overall scoring. The program team presented to the Board for approval in November 2018. They received approval to move forward with executing a contract after negotiations are complete.

Jacobs performed a cost benefit analysis for automated meter reading (AMR) and AMI for 240,000 endpoints in Jefferson County. We’ve worked with LWC since 2014 to review prior pilot programs and develop business goals and functional requirements to evaluate the range of potential benefit of various technical solutions. By comparing the related costs of each system to the expected benefits, expected financial impacts and rewards were calculated to define the business case. A narrative of the operational impacts was developed to summarize the recommended path forward.  Based on this study, we developed a roadmap and path forward for LWC to successfully implement an AMI system for their specific operational environment.

Following the proposal scoring, Jacobs support the negotiations process with the number one ranked vendor and perform startup services and ongoing reporting for the implementation phase of the program.

Negotiations are actively underway and nearing completion. As a result of the negotiations process, we’ve identified over $2 million in possible discounts and savings to LWC. This additional savings is on top of the program coming in under budget compared to the Business Case study. The implementation phase of the project is expected to occur over 22 months at an average rate of 12,500 per month.

During the start of this phase, we’ll be developing the project controls manuals with LWC, and the selected vendor, to detail the procedures that will be used during the project on a day to day basis. It will also include defining the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) associated with reporting successes and issues requiring attention. Jacobs will be assisting the vendor with reviewing joint use lease agreements (JUAs) throughout the service territory that will ultimately become the responsibility of LWC.