Substation Equipment Manuals now on The Hub.

For most of Transpower’s major substation equipment items, manufacturer’s manuals (including drawings and test reports) were provided at the time of delivery and installation.  These manuals were and still are a valuable resource – particularly as some of the in-service equipment is more than 40 years old, and many of the original manufacturers are no longer in business.

Until the mid-2000’s, all manufacturer manuals were delivered in hard copy, typically in A4 binders that occupied a considerable amount of cabinet space.

By 2012, there were more than 2600 equipment manuals stored in Transpower Wellington office.

Although these manuals were highly valuable (especially during faults), they were not easy to access or manage and could easily be mislaid.

The digitisation project

Transpower partnered with Desktop Imaging, and together we began reviewing and converting all hardcopy manuals to digital format, aiming to reduce physical storage requirements, provide a secure backup for valuable information and make it easier for anyone to find, search for and use information from original equipment manuals.

These manuals can now be accessed by anyone with a Transpower domain account, from any location, enabling multiple users in different locations to have access to the same document at the same time. Transpower now have a controlled process of updating or enhancing manuals if required and have purged the existing library of manuals that are no longer required.

Stations Manuals Library on The Hub

Transpower have now digitised almost all existing paper manuals for substation primary equipment that is still in service.  PDF manuals for more recently delivered equipment have also been converted to the new format so that they are compatible with our latest specification requirements for manuals.

A specific SharePoint library “The Hub” has now been established and contains over 1,500 manuals (digital files). Transpower encourage staff and service providers to make use of this new facility.

Handy hints and tips

Transpower have created a set of handy hints and tips to help users to search the stations library, find the manuals that they are looking for, and work effectively with these documents.

Where to from here?

Transpower no longer need to store hard copy manuals for stations equipment in Wellington. Final copies of all new equipment manuals will be delivered to users in only digital format via the library on The Hub.  The long-term aim is to reconcile, withdraw and destroy paper manuals held by service providers or in off-site storage.  The final withdrawal of paper manuals from sites and service provider’s offices will be the subject of a future programme of work, dependent on the use of digital manuals becoming widely established and accepted.

Testimonial from Marshall Clark, Principal Engineer – Transpower

Desktop Imaging enabled a real breakthrough for us, by demonstrating to an initially sceptical engineering user group that a large volume of their treasured paper documents could be successfully converted into a high quality and readily accessible digital format.  The users were won over.

As a result of Desktop Imaging’s work in digitising our large inventory of equipment manuals we now have access to these vital engineering reference sources from anywhere with an internet connection.  The masters are backed up electronically and can never go missing.

In addition, the floor space previously occupied by dozens of cabinets has been released for other uses.