Petrochem/Utilities Industry Trends

Working Together to Keep the Lights On

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The Importance of Being Prepared Doing Business as Usual During Unusual Circumstances Working Together to Keep the Lights On

After Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita roared through the South, millions of homes were left without power. Utilities from around the country responded by lending additional crews to the local power companies. And when the call went out for extra transformers, poles, and cables, they were also able to provide support, thanks to the Mutual Emergency Materials Support (MEMS) network.

Founded in 1989, MEMS has grown into a network of approximately 50 utilities located throughout North America dedicated to helping one another obtain urgently needed materials during emergencies, natural disasters, and other crises that cause unexpected utility service interruptions. At the heart of MEMS is an online database, administered by IHS’s Intermat Solutions group, that lists more than 65,000 parts and materials that the member utilities have set aside for emergencies. The database gives member organizations immediate insight into this stock, allowing them to quickly locate materials they need to respond to an emergency situation.

While MEMS makes it easy for members to find the parts they need, it also saves them time by providing them with the unique stock numbers used by the utilities who have the parts they are searching for. “That means that if I’m asking you if you have an item, I can ask you with your stock number,” explains MEMS Database Administrator Gary Reese. “It saves a lot of time because the responder can just click on his stock number and see if his company has excess stock, rather than trying to find parts based on descriptions.”

Besides searching the database, MEMS members can also rely on Intermat to help them. “During an emergency, utilities may be having problems with their systems, or become swamped and unable to search the database. They rely on us as the database administrator to broadcast out their requests for parts. I follow up and also review the MEMS database for hits and distribute the list of hits for each item,” says Reese. During Hurricane Katrina alone, Reese sent out more than 30 emails to the MEMS member utilities throughout North America.

MEMS also complements mutual assistance activities such as those promoted by the Edison Electric Institute and the Western Energy Institute by allowing a utility loaning its crews to another company to easily determine what common parts they both use. This helps crews from another utility determine how they need to stock their trucks to respond to the situation and ensures they have the right parts on hand to help.

Disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita demonstrate the effectiveness of MEMS, says Reese. “Our members have really developed good relationships with each other. They know what it’s like to be through these situations and they want to help each other out as much as possible.”

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