SCOTTISH AND SOUTHERN ELECTRICITY NETWORKS (SSEN) CASE STUDY - Implementing a New Regional Operating Model

Background

Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) is part of SSE, a FTSE-50 energy company.

SSEN’s electricity distribution and transmission networks carry power to more than four million homes and businesses across the north of Scotland and central southern England.

The business has more than 4,000 employees, working from 85 depots to manage 130,000km of overhead lines and underground cables, 106,000 substations and 100-plus subsea cables.

The history of parent company SSE stretches back 80 years to the first hydro-electric schemes in Scotland, with SSEN growing out of the 1998 merger between Scottish Hydroelectric and Southern Electric.

CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES 

SSEN had recently reorganised its business into regions, each comprised of a small number of depots. However, the business was struggling to encourage collaboration between the depots or make progress in terms of improving productivity. There was also a challenge of managing conflicting priorities such as supply restoration and performance levels, addressing skills shortages, completing inspections and maintenance work efficiently, and keeping budgets under control.

VISION Consulting (VISION) was asked to design and pilot new ways of working and then document a blueprint of the recommended approach. This included the organisational design for each region, the roles and responsibilities, and the implementation of coordination centres to manage how work was planned and scheduled. This blueprint was to be used to transform Thames Valley from being SSEN’s worst performing region to its best, before being rolled out across the other regions.

VISION’S APPROACH

VISION is a company that drives increased productivity and financial benefits through cultural transformation. The promise to SSEN was to design and test a new approach that would:

SERVICE DELIVERY

VISION began by working with the inspections and maintenance teams to develop and commit to annual plans of work that were then broken down by month and by week. This is referred to as dynamic planning as it requires staying in conversation with the strategy teams during the year on both work completed and changing priorities. This approach succeeded in addressing the maintenance work that had not been completed in prior years because it had been deemed too difficult.

The team also enabled SSEN to take simple but highly effective steps towards transforming productivity. For instance, by using the VISION methodology Commitment-based Management to prompt pole inspectors to commit to the number of poles they would complete each day, this was making those commitments transparent across the teams.

The next phase expanded to include supply restoration, street lighting and general enquiries work.  The team set up a coordination centre that again used a dynamic planning approach to build monthly, weekly and daily planning and scheduling of work. They also testing a planning and scheduling tool, Skedulo, which SSEN has subsequently rolled out across the business.

ACCOUNT AND CONTRACT MANAGEMENT

Stakeholder engagement

•Project team huddles

VISION had a large combined project team of circa 20 people and started each day with a 30-minute huddle so that everyone was clear on what they were doing for the day, while enabling project managers to report the status of their commitments. Participants in the huddle asked for help and flagged issues.

•Frontline staff

With the teams on the ground, the VISION team engaged through one-to-one meetings plus a workshop each week. The workshops were kept to fewer than 20 people to enable active contributions. The team kept a large wall board of the developing ideas, and were rigorous about following up each workshop with actions and status reports so that people knew how the programme was progressing.

•Steering meetings

By introducing and carrying out a formal steering meeting every two weeks . These meetings were focused on issue resolution (which required stakeholder engagement) rather than slide presentations on status.

•Companywide

Each month, VISION put together an article on the project, including interviews with leaders and frontline staff, which was published as a company-wide communication. They also created a promotional video to demonstrate the company-wide benefits that the initiative was delivering.

•Chief Executive visits

VISION invited the Chief Executive to visit the site and hear first-hand about the new design and results. He attended on two occasions and spoke highly of the work, which proved a great motivator for the teams. 

OUTCOMES

VISION completed this project on time, within six months, and came in under budget by £84,000. 

The blueprint that was produced detailed new roles, responsibilities and processes. They also left SSEN with a new planning and scheduling toolset and had coached key members of their team into their new roles and meeting practices.

Crucially, in just six months the team  delivered outstanding productivity gains:

Furthermore, Thames Valley finished its year on budget and became SSEN’s best-performing region. 

Due to the success of the design and the results, SSEN went on to roll out the new design across both its English and Scottish networks.

CONTRACT PERFORMANCE 

OUTCOMES

In just six months, VISION achieved the following:

•Productivity in supply restoration increased by 34%.

•Productivity in new connections increased by 29%.

•Maintenance and inspections productivity increased by 21%.

•Staff utilisation was measured at above 90% for seven straight weeks.