document: A building block approach to automated engineering Shenandoah Valley Electric Cooperative -LRB- SVEC , Mt. Crawford , Virginia , US -RRB- recognized the need to automate engineering functions and create an interactive model of its distribution system in the early 1990s . It had used Milsoft 's DA software for more than 10 years to make engineering studies , and had a Landis and Gyr SCADA system and a hybrid load management system for controlling water heater switches . With the development of GIS and facilities management -LRB- FM -RRB- applications , SVEC decided this should be the basis for an information system that would model its physical plant and interface with its accounting and billing systems . It could add applications such as outage management , staking , line design and metering to use this information and interface with these databases . However , based on SVEC 's size it was not feasible to implement a sophisticated and expensive GIS/FM system . Over the past nine years , SVEC has had success with a building block approach , and its customers and employees are realizing the benefits of the automated applications . This building block approach is discussed in this article including the GIS , outage management system , MapViewer and a staking package . The lessons learned and future expansion are discussed
doc_bio_tags: O B I I O O O B I I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O B I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I O O O O O O O B I O B O B I O B O O O O O O O O B O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B I I O O O O O O O B O B I O O B O O B O O O O O O O O O O
extractive_keyphrases: shenandoah valley electric cooperative interactive model distribution system building block approach billing systems outage management staking line design metering databases mapviewer gis
abstractive_keyphrases: engineering functions automation