Hosted by the The Grand River Dam Authority (GRDA) April 30^th  – May 3^rd  in Tulsa the Spring Workshop attract 342 attendees from 60 different utility companies and 33 companies from the vendor community.  IBM supported the meeting with staff from technical sales, support, development and offering management.

GRDA was excited to share their success stories and lessons learned with other utilities who utilize Maximo for asset management. They spoke about their expansion of Maximo throughout their diversified generation portfolio by standardizing inventory processes for generation assets and transmission facilities and optimizing, coordinating, and scheduling our planned maintenance and outages, as well as streamlining the purchasing processes.

The conference Keynote speaker, GRDA’s Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Tim Brown shared his vision and strategic successes around the recent upgrade of Maximo 7.1 to 7.6. He spoke about how GRDA’s small but mighty Maximo team were committed and empowered to doing this right, emphasizing on knowledge transfer and training to ensure successful user adoption and managing change for continuous improvement. Under Tim’s leadership, this 9-month project was delivered on schedule, within scope, and on budget.

GRDA will also be presenting during the breakout sessions on topics such as: Utilizing Maximo Scheduler to empower Maintenance Crew Supervisors and Implementing out of the Box Maximo Integrations, as well as how we plan to expand future enhancements such as Mobility, Inspections and Condition Based Maintenance, Calibration and Testing, and Safety Reporting and Tracking.

The workshop stared on Monday, May 1st. with a charity Golf Tournament with proceeds benefiting the Oklahoma Food Bank, followed by the 1st. timers orientation and then by the welcome networking reception. Tuesday opened with the keynote presentation by GRDA’s COO – Tim Brown and general sessions, followed by track kick-off sessions and then breakout sessions for the various tracks.

Tuesday evening included our long standing tradition of “Vendor Night” featuring 33 vendors which provide Maximo products and services while enjoying attendees enjoyed  a full buffet and open bar. Wednesday starts off with the MUWG business meeting, followed by general sessions which include the MSCUG (Maximo Supply Chain Users Group) general session and breakouts during the rest of the day.

Thursday was filled with IBM led development partner meetings for Nuclear, Utilities, and Location Based Services (Linear, Spatial and Anywhere) and optional MUWG Training classes. The training classes offered at this workshop were; Maximo Asset Management Training for Managers, Engineers & Supervisors, Planner Scheduler Certification Level 1, Planner Scheduler Certification Level 3 and Maximo Supply Chain – Contracts/Strategic Sourcing.  Based on survey results a good time was had by all.