Electricity network company Orion New Zealand’s 23 service operators travel throughout central Canterbury, some installing power to premises (livening) and others investigating and repairing faults, such as out-of-order connections or cut power lines.

On average the “livening” team make about 300 new connections a month, anywhere between Christchurch, Springston, Rolleston, Banks Peninsula and Arthur’s Pass. Meanwhile the repair team each receive about five calls a day, rising up to 15 a day during periods of high winds or stormy weather.

“Over the last five years Orion has been the best performing major electricity network company in New Zealand,” says Orion’s Vivienne Raines. “We have left the lights on 99.99% of the time and on average our customers have less than one outage per annum.

“The Triton 880’s will help us maintain our excellent performance as each contractor has a PDA so we can dispatch accurate details of the jobs to them.”

The PDAs operate over Telecom’s nationwide mobile data network. Vivienne, the developer of the two software applications Orion uses on the Tritons, says contractors view details of each new job on the screen, including the location and type of fault. They also use them to send updates when a job is complete, or let their base know if more time or equipment is needed.

“Before we started using this technology, it could take up to three days to turn around the paperwork for something as simple as switching on the power at a house. Now that process is almost immediate,” says Vivienne.

But, extra convenience presented a new problem. “The guys are driving from job to job, getting in and out of their vans, climbing up and down power poles and around buildings in all kinds of weather conditions. The handsets can easily get dropped or knocked about,” explains Vivienne.

To survive that type of treatment, Orion needed a robust device and they found it with the Triton 880. The durable PDA has a touch screen to navigate the pop-up menus and make selections by tapping items with a stylus or a finger, like using a mouse on a regular computer.

Also the Pocket PC 2003 operating system was easily adapted for Orion’s specialist applications.

“As well as greatly improving the speed of return of data to the office, the Triton 880s are tough. The rubber casing makes them strong enough to handle just about whatever punishment is dealt to them out in the field,” says Vivienne.

“With the Tritons, the operators can now get on with the job knowing they have a sturdy device that will be able to transfer the information back to our system quickly and easily.”

August 2007