VidaGIS

New Mexico Gas Company provides natural gas service to more than 500,000 customers in New Mexico and maintains more than 10,000 miles of gas distribution and 1,600 miles of transmission pipelines. The utility purchases most of its natural gas from the state’s own rich reserves. New Mexico Gas Company was formed when New Mexico’s combined gas and electric utility, PNM, sold its gas utility assets. New Mexico Gas Company is a subsidiary of Continential Energy Systems, LLC.

The utility selected the current technology as the platform for its infrastructure development. New Mexico Gas Company decision makers recognized the value GIS would carry through to the operations, maintenance, and engineering functions of the utility. The first step was migrating existing transmission applications. The second step was to focus on the data stored in its homegrown record-keeping database for gas distribution.

Information such as construction orders, asset data, leak reports, and repairs was pul ed into the GIS by linking each piece to relevant points, lines, and polygons.

“We looked at what we had, and we knew we could tie in the AMIGO data with attributes in GIS to clean up the database,” said Curtis Winner, New Mexico Gas Company manager of land services.

To enhance the geodatabase and the information it provided, New Mexico Gas Company  brought in aerial photography, county street data, parcel data, and available environmental data. The utility built specific task assistant procedures for both distribution mapping and design. New Mexico Gas Company was able to streamline training and set many of the specific editing tasks in the background. This helped flatten the learning curve for first-time users and ensured consistency in the database.

New Mexico Gas Company rapidly deployed GIS application throughout the organization so utility data and GIS tools could be used by staff for operations and engineering on day one.

The Results

Within three months, the utility reached its goals of consolidating disparate data into one place and deploying GIS tools for operations and engineering. As the company had hoped, the GIS deployment was speedy, budget constraints were met, and staff members were trained in time to use the new technology.     

With GIS-based utility maps, the operations staff is able to view county assessor and parcel data, along with topography, aerial images, and customer information, and can see their relationship to the company’s transmission lines.

Field crews can use Global Positioning System (GPS) data to track facilities and  update asset information. Because al the data is geospatial y enabled, the utility is able to quickly create work orders for new construction and maintenance.

Using GIS-based spatial analysis, New Mexico Gas Company performs least-cost analysis to site potential pipeline corridors. In addition, these routes can be imported into the utility’s hydraulic modeling software, ensuring accurate and timely model runs. “Potential routes can be identified quickly, and we know the exact length for generating accurate cost estimates,” Winner said. “We have taken a lot of the what-ifs out of the equation and can quantify our recommendations.”

New Mexico Gas Company also uses GIS for environmental planning and permitting. Staff members are able to view assets in relationship to groundwater discharge zones and other environmental y sensitive areas such as cultural sites and threatened and endangered species habitats.

“With GIS-based maps, we can see our entire state at once,” Winner said. “I turn on the aerial imagery, and al of a sudden I’m in Carlsbad, a five-hour drive. It real y helps staff evaluate projects and saves on travel. Using GIS tools such as bookmarks, we can jump al over the state without leaving the office.”