Challenge

Kinder Morgan, one of the largest midstream and energy companies in North America, needed to address a lack of visibility into two of their pipelines—the Platt and the Express. The product in these pipelines is kept moving across Canada and the US by a number of electricity utilities managing lift stations along the route, but with only a time-consuming, unreliable manual verification process to quantify electricity consumption, Kinder Morgan was challenged to verify the accuracy of the invoices each utility submitted.

Approach

Working with Kinder Morgan staff and consultants, Make IT led the development of a software solution that integrated with a SCADA system, which provided electricity usage data for the pump stations, and enabled the company to compare the actual consumption with the invoiced amounts. Since each utility operated under different terms, the solution was designed to flexibly accommodate a multitude of contract options.

Result

Make IT’s team delivered an invoice verification system that gave Kinder Morgan critical visibility into their pipelines. Not only did the system save them time by automating a tedious, manual invoice verification process, it also provided them with the decision support they needed to monitor and analyze the costs associated with each lift station. Using data provided by the system, they are now able to optimize electricity usage and overall efficiency and profitability.