Fort Wayne City Utilities Advanced Metering Infrastructure

Fort Wayne City Utilities (FWCU) installed a drive-by AMR solution in 2003 and 2004 for meters ranging in size from 5/8” to 10” in diameter.

Like many early adopters of AMR technology, the system is beginning to reach the end of its expected life with respect to endpoint batteries.  Over the years FWCU has also grown through acquisition of approximately 13,000 additional meters accounts of a nearby utility operating with a different meter reading solution.

Common with utilities in colder climates, FWCU has most meters located indoors, in customer basements.  Up until 2014 the endpoints were commonly located in basements along with the meter due AMR technology not requiring outdoor mounted endpoints, but since 2014 FWCU has changed their processes to install only outdoor mounted endpoints moving forward to ease future O&M.

In 2018, Jacobs was selected through a competitive consultant procurement process to lead the AMI project including vendor procurement, vendor negotiations, and implementation management and oversight. After award, the vendor procurement process began in 2018 and a vender was selected in early 2019 to begin negotiations with.

The procurement process followed closely Jacobs’ recommended methodology where a technical proposal was received and scored along with an initial fee submittal used to develop the shortlist of vendors.  After the shortlist was decided, these firms were invited in for interviews and best and final pricing was requested and received.  The best and final pricing score replaced the initial fee score.  Combining the technical proposal score, the best and final score, and the interview score a top recommended vendor was identified and recommended to begin negotiations with.  Eight (8) vendor proposals were received with three (3) of them moving on to the shortlist interviews.

FWCU is well underway with negotiations and targeting to have a contract in place in 2019.  Jacobs will continue to lead this project including the quality assurance and control piece once field installation begin in early 2020.  During that phase of the project independent installation inspectors will be brought in monitor the vendor’s installation quality,report deficiencies to the project management team and participate in project review meetings as the utility steps into the future of smart metering.