CITY OF PARIS: All ahead

The utilities and travel management of the city of Paris, maintenance subdivision, manages the utilities electromechanical hardware, i.e. the rain water pumping stations and subterranean passages ventilation plants.

The measurement stations are linked to the Ivry workshops through the telephone network. Following a first experience in which the supervision software used did not fulfil the functions claimed, mainly in terms of source time-stamped data processing, the city chose TOPKAPI, which best fitted the requirements:

	complete control of the system for the agents of the department, over the design, operation and upgrades
	no specific parameter setting for the Minitel screens
	cost of the final application

The originality of the realisation is supported by the combination of the undertaking both in terms of resources and results, taken by AREAL upon contract signing:

	training five people of the utilities department by AREAL during five days
	a one-week interruption to avoid trainee "saturation", help assimilation and enable them to process pending work
	realisation of the application by the trainees over a five-day period
	implementation in three days after which the application was used operationally immediately

These times may seem short, but they are genuine and are the perfect illustration of the easy implementation of TOPKAPI. However, AREAL must admit that, without the excellent level of the city of Paris trainees and their dedication to the project, we should have managed part of the parameter setting in order to achieve the objectives set initially.

Later on, the agents enhanced the system (3D views, practical changes) and after six months of operation were absolutely positive about their needs. They will now start a second phase consisting in connecting around forty additional stations, and using the supervisor to perform a more efficient preventive maintenance; thanks to the preparation work and identical station configurations, adding a station to the supervisor will take no more than ten minutes (proven by tests), and the final checks will be significantly reduced.