United Utilities Chooses Autodesk to Provide GIS Utility Application to Electricity Business

December 7, 2001 - Autodesk, the world's leading design and digital content creation resource, has signed a contract with United Utilities for the provision of a GIS utility application for its electricity distribution network division, formerly known as Norweb Distribution. The $3.8M fixed price contract, plus an additional contract for support of packaged software over the next three years makes this Autodesk's largest sale of a GIS solution for so far this year.

United Utilities incorporates businesses involved in licensed multi-utility operations, asset management services, customer management outsourcing and telecommunications. United Utilities Service Delivery provides a 58,000KM electricity network for 2.1 Million customers in the north west of England (population of 4.7 million). Within its licensed multi-utility operations, United Utilities also provides water and wastewater services to almost 3 million customers. The water business was formerly known as North West Water, an existing, long-term Autodesk customer using an Autodesk GIS solution to manage its water network assets. Implementing GIS across all areas of the business is part of a five-year strategy to build on the synergies of the multi-utility and to deliver L450m in cost savings over five-years.

United Utilities selected the Autodesk solution in March 2001 and delivery will have been completed by April 2002.

The customer business solution is based on the provision of an Autodesk GIS Design Server, Autodesk Map and Autodesk MapGuide applications. The solution will allow United Utilities to update and maintain its electricity utility asset records, whilst also providing access to this information to business and technical users via a web browser. Functionality includes electricity network tracing, gazetteering, rules and workflow-based data update, along with integration with United Utilities Water Utility asset information.

The solution is being implemented by Autodesk's Worldwide Consulting Services Group and the additional three year support contract will be delivered by Autodesk's Worldwide Support Services organisation. As part of the overall solution, Autodesk is also partnering with one of its resellers, Cad Capture, for work associated with the Data Conversion aspect of the project.

Paul Wadsworth, GIS project manager at United Utilities says: "The Autodesk solution will allow us to set tighter standards within the business. This new technology will not only enable United Utilities to deal with problems faster, it will give us the capability to manage the business more efficiently through access to better data. In turn we will pass on benefits to our customers such as a speedier service and cost reductions."

Wadsworth concludes, "We spoke to other utility companies that were using bespoke Autodesk solutions. They were all very impressed by the services and support received from Autodesk. Our first impression is that the functionality is very rich and that we have purchased a flexible toolset - we are now in the process of raising the IT skills of our staff to move forward with the new solution."

www.autodesk.co.uk

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