Introduction who are we?

Utility Intelligence is an Australian specialist consulting firm providing strategic contract services to the Utility Sector.

Our experienced team of Operational Technology Consultants provide strategic contract services for projects and programs relating to Smart Metering, Communications for Infrastructure & associated OT and IT integration technologies.

We provide management and business analytics for your utilities OT projects including the accompanying technology driven organisational change.

Servicing the Essential Services Utilities sectors of Electricity, Water and Gas, we are committed to successfully delivering value to your projects for the complete project lifecycle from strategic initiation through to successful project close out and implementation and well into operations.

Utility Intelligence is focused on delivering exceptional service through our team of experienced, strategically driven and focused Consultants.

Michael Macfarlane; the principle consulting engineer is more than happy to discuss your project requirements and needs. For more information about Michael please see his profile on LinkedIn.

Operational Technology v Information Technology

Operational Technology (OT) interfaces the physical world with business processes and systems through enabling technologies that lie between a more readily identifiable Information Technology (IT) landscape. This is enabled by the myriad of sensors and control systems at the edge, usually as field ready hardened devices.

OT was born from industrial control systems and further evolved through progressive adoption of IT principles and practices to the point where the dividing line between the two domains has become forever vague.

Today a heterogeneous IT/OT environment supports business requirements and objectives more so than ever. The scale of OT ranges from mega complexity of triple redundant control systems spanning continents and scaling down to the micro miniaturised single element data acquisition sensors. This results in tens to millions of bits of data and information required to enable business processes to interact with the physical world; data that needs to be informed, managed, understood, supervised, coordinated and automated.

Previously, such OT domains were isolated by air-gaps for security reasons from their counterparts in IT with each domain overseen by disparate teams and skillsets remaining firmly planted in one camp or the other. Convergence of IT/OT now makes it impossible for one to ignore the other as each domain leverages the lessons and technology from the other in combination. For example, OT brings with it, resilience in an environmentally hardened package,  whilst IT begets interoperability and advanced processing resources. IT & OT, together, enable greater control and more complete management of infrastructure and a physical process. A given IT/OT ecosystem may contain many building blocks:

The above sounds a lot like the Internet of Things (IoT) also known as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).

SCADA and Real Time Systems

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) solutions are the eyes, ears, controllers and coordinators of infrastructure assets. Usually you will find a SCADA platform inside every control room. Distributed SCADA platforms, Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) or consoles may be embedded inside larger plant based assets or depots.

The speed and criticality of a given asset process will determine where on the real-time spectrum a given SCADA asset solution needs to be to accommodate the business requirements. For example, a fast-moving business process such as rotating machines demand real time systems with data sampled and controlled in milli-seconds yet communicated back to base in seconds, whereas a slow-moving process like hydraulic level measurements may need to be dampened and sampled over minutes or even hours and then collected in near real time. The concept of Real time is therefore relative to the industry sector and most SCADA systems operate in near real time (100ms to 5sec).

The SCADA solution will usually include a local plant process control system, one or more communications technologies to get back to base and or adjacent sites. Todays SCADA host(s) are applications and services running on protected networks. Business processes that leverage SCADA solutions support more efficient operational processes and capital efficiency. However, with the great power of an effective SCADA platform, comes great (role based) responsibility to ensure business continuity of the critical business processes.

Historically SCADA and RTS systems have required dedicated hardware and operating systems, however most of these dedicated solutions are outdated today and you might only find these at the network edge after standing the tests of time.

Today’s SCADA solution components behave more like IT systems as applications, services and platforms as IT and OT convergence has gradually changed the SCADA product landscape over the last 30 years.

Advanced Metering, Smart Metering, Digital Metering

Utility metering services for Electricity, Gas and Water have evolved from simple pulse counters and cash registers to advanced sensors and analytics devices for delivering customer service value. Whilst the metering label may be advanced, smart or digital, the essence is still the same. The Metering functions are regulated for measurement certainty with the sampling methods being mechanical sensing or electronic sensing. Network communications interfaces and their processing resources then provide higher level “Advanced” functions and perform secondary sensing and control functions.

The revolution of the Internet of Things and extraordinary battery technology, now means that the smarts that was once only available to mains powered meters are now a reality for domestic water and gas meters without external power or wires. Your digital metering business case is now economically viable with 12 to 15 year projected meter asset lives.

Digital metering is a large and vital piece of a utilities digital journey and may well be the catalyst for your digital business transformation, its much more than just metering.

Communications for Infrastructure

Communications and communications networks are enabling services for operational technology solutions.

We need secure, available, affordable and long-life communications solutions for remote management of asset processes. Choosing to buy, build or lease a communications services for infrastructure is challenging in today’s fast moving market place; this challenge is further compounded by the need for long digital asset lifecycles compared to the much shorter life cycles of communications networks.

Each application and business requirement needs to be assessed when selecting the infrastructure communications solution. This may be  a combination of technologies to allow for coverage, availability, redundancy, performance, topology, geography, total cost of ownership and value

The Internet of Things is a further paradigm shift with service and equipment supplies recognising that not every electronic device needs a low latency broadband connection. SCADA and metering devices are by design low bandwidth with highly predictable patterns of communications and large numbers of devices.

What We Do

Utility Intelligence provides specialty consultancy services often related to a operational technology project or programs envisaged or in flight. Our services can be provided to compliment an existing project or provide complete program management services overseeing a project or program’s phased delivery through their lifecycle.

Program Management:

Project Delivery:

Risk, Issues and Opportunity Management:
Let us facilitate your next risk assessment workshop, or manage your risk register / committee on an ongoing basis.

Contact Us

Utility Intelligence Pty Ltd
Email: admin@utilityintel.com.au
Michael Macfarlane
Phone: 0402 297 275
Postal Address: PO Box 8225, Ferntree Gully 3156, Victoria, Australia

Copyright 2017 Utility Intelligence Pty Ltd, all rights reserved.