PA Consulting Group Recognizes North America's Utilities for Outstanding Customer...

PA Consulting Group Recognizes North America's Utilities for Outstanding
Customer Service and Reliability at the 2008 ReliabilityOne(TM) and ServiceOne
Awards
PSE&G named the recipient of the National Reliability Excellence Award

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Last night, PA Consulting Group, the
management, systems and technology consultancy, announced the recipients of
its annual ReliabilityOne(TM) and ServiceOne Awards at a reception in
Washington DC before an audience of government dignitaries and industry
executives. The ReliabilityOne(TM) awards are given annually to utilities
that have excelled in delivering reliable electric service to their customers,
while the ServiceOne awards are based on a set of criteria that covers nearly
all the functional areas within customer service operations typical for a
North American utility.
This year, the National Reliability Excellence Award went to Public
Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G). PSE&G is a regulated utility delivering
electric service to 2.1 million customers and gas service to 1.7 million
customers throughout New Jersey. The utility also received the
ReliabilityOne(TM) award for the Mid-Atlantic Region. The National
Reliability Excellence Award is presented to the regional award recipient that
has served as a consistent leader through demonstrated performance and a
superior commitment to electric reliability.
Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. (Con Edison) received not
only the ReliabilityOne(TM) Award for the Northeast Region, but also received
the award for Outstanding System Wide Reliability. Con Edison excelled in
providing superior outage frequency and duration performance on a system wide
basis. Con Edison serves 3.2 million electric customers in New York City and
Westchester.
San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) received two PA awards: the
ReliabilityOne(TM) Award for the Western Region and the award for Outstanding
Response to a Major Outage Event for its extraordinary efforts supporting the
community and restoring service to customer following the 2007 Southern
California Wildfires. SDG&E is a Sempra Energy utility serving 3.4 million
consumers in San Diego and southern Orange counties.
Kansas City Power & Light, a subsidiary of Great Plains Energy, Inc. and a
leading regulated provider of electricity and energy-related products and
services to more than 505,000 customers in Missouri and Kansas was the
recipient of the ReliabilityOne(TM) Award for the Plains Region.
Indianapolis Power & Light, an AES Corporation utility which provides
retail electric service to more than 465,000 customers in Indianapolis and
other central Indiana communities, was the recipient of the ReliabilityOne(TM)
Award for the Midwest Region.
Roseville Electric, based in Roseville, CA, a suburb of Sacramento, was
the recipient of the Community Utility ReliabilityOne(TM) Award. This award
is given to a public utility that provides outstanding service to its
community customers.
The ReliabilityOne(TM) award is given annually to utilities that have
excelled in delivering reliable electric service to their customers. All
utilities operating electric delivery networks in North America are eligible
for consideration for the ReliabilityOne(TM) award. Selection of provisional
recipients is based primarily on system reliability statistics that measure
the frequency and duration of customer outages. After provisional recipients
are selected, each company undergoes an on-site certification process, which
provides an independent review of the policies, processes and systems used to
collect, analyze and report a company's reliability results.
"We have a very strong group of award recipients from across the US. Each
utility has distinguished itself through its commitment to delivering
outstanding reliability to customers and the overall 2007 performance is the
most impressive I've seen since the program's inception," said Jeff Lewis,
PA's ReliabilityOne Program Director. "These utilities have answered call of
maintaining superior levels of reliability and service amid the ever-
increasing and diverse energy demands of their customers. We congratulate
each award recipient for demonstrating the best performance in the industry."
PA also recognized those utilities that excel in the area of customer
service and care with the presentation of the ServiceOne awards. The 2008
ServiceOne award recipients were:
-- Florida Power & Light, which serves 4.4 million customers throughout
Florida
-- NorthWestern Energy, an electricity and natural gas utility that serves
customers in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska
Florida Power & Light and NorthWestern are both five time ServiceOne award
winners.
In addition to the overall ServiceOne award recipients, this year marked
the first where awards were given to utilities that excelled in functional
areas within customer service for a typical North American utility. The
inaugural Balanced Scorecard Achievement Award recipients are: -- Entergy -
Field Service
-- Dominion -- Billing
-- PPL -- Meter Reading
-- Florida Power & Light - Contact Center
-- First Energy - Payment
-- NorthWestern Energy - Credit & Collections
-- PSE&G - Revenue Protection

"In an environment in which companies serve a customer base with ever-
increasing and diverse energy demands, this year's ServiceOne award recipients
have demonstrated the ability to provide superior service that has set the
standard for the industry," said Mike Hormell, PA's ServiceOne Program
Director.
ServiceOne awards recognize companies for providing exceptional service to
their customers as determined by a set of 25 objective measures of excellence
in customer care, identified by a panel of industry experts. Participating
Polaris companies must achieve top quartile on the ServiceOne scorecard to be
considered for the ServiceOne award.
For full coverage of the awards ceremony as well as PA's Polaris
Benchmarking program, please visit
http://www.paconsulting.com/polaris/awards/ .
About PA Consulting Group
At PA Consulting Group, we transform the performance of organisations,
providing clients with innovative solutions, a highly responsive approach, and
delivery of hard results. We are an independent, employee-owned, global firm
of 3,000 talented individuals, operating from offices across the world, in
Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia and Oceania. We have deep expertise
across key industries and government, and a unique breadth of skills from
strategy to IT to HR to applied technology.
About PA's Polaris program
PA's Polaris program is a comprehensive discovery process into a utility's
business operations. The program, consisting of a general review of
organization practices, in addition to a focus on Transmission and
Distribution and/or Customer Service, focuses on this discovery process by
taking an inventory of the strengths and opportunities of a utility.
Our benchmarking program includes a review of asset management strategy,
business process mapping, and cost analysis. In addition, a focus exists on
customer satisfaction, expenses review, health and safety review and analysis
of the regulatory environment. The concepts of shareholder value and training
are also included.
Since 1989, PA has benchmarked operational trends across 250 utility-
operating companies nation wide.
SOURCE PA Consulting Group

Devon Jaffier of PA Consulting Group, +1-212-973-5939,
devon.jaffier@paconsulting.com