BC Gas Selects Utility Partners' MobileUP Solution For Workforce Automation.

Business Editors

TAMPA, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 19, 2000

BC Gas Inc. of Vancouver, British Columbia has selected to implement Utility Partners' MobileUP(TM) Field Workforce automation solution as part of their Integrated Resource Management (IRM) project, according to Bob Letzeisen, Vice President of Sales for the Florida-based Utility Partners, Inc.

"BC Gas is in the midst of implementing `best of breed' technologies to further enhance their customer service and organizational efficiencies" said Letzeisen.

BC Gas is the second Canadian utility to select Utility Partners' MobileUP in 2000. Bob Letzeisen chose to personally work with the BC Gas team, due to their vision, direction, presence, and strategic value to Utility Partners' existing customer base which includes Reliant Energy-HL&P, Dominion Resources, Montana-Dakota Utilities, CLECO, Southwest Gas and Philadelphia Gas Works.

Utility Partners' MobileUP system is a feature-rich tool for creating, scheduling, routing, dispatching and completing system-generated or regulatory-required service, outage, maintenance/inspection and construction orders to field service technicians in a manner that is both efficient and cost effective. MobileUP's versatile scheduling and dispatching modules allow dispatchers to respond immediately to field situations by enabling the fast reallocation of available resources qualified to work the order. MobileUP makes this possible by querying the current assignment status of all service technicians within a certain geographical area, and comparing the skill sets of technicians from a table-driven database to determine the technician(s) best qualified to perform the work.

The MobileUP system is divided into several functions, including Scheduling, Dispatching, Communications and Field Processing. In addition to the standard 5.4 MobileUP product, scheduled for roll-out in October of this year, BC Gas also intends to upgrade to Release 6 in the first quarter of 2001 to accommodate the scheduling of more complex inspection, maintenance and construction orders.

"We believe that the system solution from Utility Partners will allow us to change our operational focus from one of managing work to one of managing resources. The ability to effectively assign customer service, inspection, maintenance, and construction orders from a centralized dispatch organization to a fully integrated field workforce will allow us to realize our corporate objectives" said Brent MacPherson, Manager of the Integrated Resource Management (IRM) Department for BC Gas.

Jim Taylor, IRM Project Manager added, "Apart from the fact that the MobileUP product is a good fit for BC Gas, other key factors in our selection decision were the future product direction of MobileUP which is consistent with our own IRM vision. We liked Utility Partner's focus, which is solely on the utilities industry and we were impressed with the quality of the personnel we had dealt with at Utility Partners during our evaluation process."

MobileUP will receive customer and service order information from Peace Software's Energy system, implemented at BC Gas in tandem with the MobileUP project. Peace Software is an experienced provider of Energy Customer Management (ECM) solutions to the deregulating energy industry. Peace's innovative Energy software was developed in the deregulated markets of New Zealand and Australia and has been successfully implemented in Canada and the US. Energy offers unprecedented value through native Web support and a Browser User Interface (BUI), integrated eCommerce functions like electronic bill presentment (EBP) and customer self care. Energy addresses all major retail functions including acquisition, enrollment, customer information, billing, C&I, forecasting, settlement and credit/collections, and can be rapidly deployed in component fashion. BC Gas is using Energy for customer care, customer billing and call center workflow management for 250,000 consumers throughout British Columbia.

BC Gas is a leading provider of energy and utility services in British Columbia through its two principal operating subsidiaries, BC Gas Utility Ltd. and Trans Mountain Pipe Line Company Ltd., and through a number of non-regulated businesses. BC Gas Utility is the largest distributor of natural gas in British Columbia serving 757,000 customers in more than 100 communities. BC Gas common shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Utility Partners provides software solutions exclusively for the gas, electric and water utility industries, including mobile computing, work management and gas management. The company's customer list includes utilities throughout the United States, Europe and Canada. For further information, please call Moon Mills at 1-800-280-8828, or email [e-mail]. You can also visit Utility Partners' website at www.utilpart.com.