Towngas Deploys e-Patrol Solution to Maintain One of the World’s Safest and Most Reliable Gas Supplies

Background

The Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited (Towngas) is the sole provider of town gas in Hong Kong. Serving the territory for over a century, Towngas has a customer base of about 1.9 million accounts, covering the residential, commercial and industrial sectors. Over 98% of town gas is supplied from the company’s Tai Po Plant located in Tai Po Industrial Estate.

The Challenge

The Tai Po Plant has a total area of 11.71 hectares to accommodate plant facilities, production equipment and gas resources. A dedicated team of technicians and engineers work inside the plant—one of their major tasks is to oversee all amenities to ensure they operate normally. With over 900 checkpoints to be examined daily by the team, it is essential to seamlessly integrate the duties of patrol, inspection and work order management.

The Solution

Towngas has successfully deployed a solution with mobile-ready features designed by EBSL and e-Patrol. The e-Patrol is a mobile app that uses NFC (Near Field Communication) technology providing immediate, accurate and direct identifying patrolling locations. NFC tags are installed at checkpoints. Technicians can check the site against the pre-defined checklist, record data and report digitally with a customized handheld device during patrolling. All data entries would be sent to the server platform immediately. This would minimize delays due to turnaround time.

In addition to providing great assistance to front-line teams in their daily tasks, the solution also gives the management team full visibility on task progress, staff performance, productivity and team safety through real-time monitoring.

The Result

The path to go digital has revolutionized the inspection and maintenance works for Towngas.  Paperless operation, electronic data transmission, mobile connection and real-time synchronization have streamlined operations, facilitated work status monitoring, reduced human error and simplified team communications while providing better risk control and making the Tai Po Plant safer.

EBSL is honored to be the solution provider for Towngas—we are very proud to be able to continually support Towngas in its efforts to provide a “quality living” environment through providing one of the safest and most reliable supplies of gas in the world.