PG&E Recognized by CIO Magazine as a CIO 100 Award Winner

06/02/2015

Award Acknowledges Innovation in Technologies Supporting PG&E Emergency Base Camps

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) has been recognized by CIO magazine as one of the CIO 100 Award winners for its work in emergency response. The 28th annual award program recognizes organizations around the world that exemplify the highest level of operational and strategic excellence in information technology (IT). PG&E was recognized for its innovative use of technologies that support the company’s emergency response base camps. The company is the only combined gas and electric utility on this year’s list and is one of several Bay Area organizations recognized.

“Safety is not just a top priority at PG&E it’s at the foundation of everything we do. The combination of technologies used in the PG&E emergency base camps enables us to quickly respond to outages during a natural disaster, which helps keep the public and our customers safe. We’re very pleased to have been honored with this recognition,” said Karen Austin, PG&E Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer.

As part of its emergency-response procedures, PG&E builds temporary base camps that support thousands of workers who aid efforts in restoring power following natural disasters such as a winter storms or earthquakes. These base camps require a unique combination of IT technologies that enable the company’s employees and first responders to safely and quickly restore gas and electric service to customers within a short period of time and often in harsh environments.

These technologies include:

Deploying mobile 85-foot communication towers to increase bandwidth at remote locations;
Installing on-site mapping kiosk and plotting capacities;
Establishing high-speed UDN connectivity and large-scale satellite bandwidth; and
Connecting gas and electric dispatch functionality using mobile radios and console radios.

By leveraging these disparate technologies together, PG&E is able to build emergency communications packages that can scale to a very large size, allowing on-site teams to extend the PG&E network, dispatch work crews, create job packages, execute emergency services and communicate to all employees—all from a remote location.

"For 28 years now, the CIO 100 awards have honored the innovative use of technology to deliver genuine business value," said Maryfran Johnson, Editor in Chief of CIO magazine & Events. "Our 2015 winners are an outstanding example of the transformative power of IT to drive everything from revenue growth to competitive advantage."

Every year, CIO magazine identifies and honors 100 organizations that have distinguished themselves by creating business value through the effective and innovative use of IT. A team of 34 judges reviewed the applications and debated their merits, then voted on the final 100 honorees.

Executives from the winning companies will be recognized at The CIO 100 Symposium & Awards Ceremony, to be held Tuesday evening, August 11, at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

About CIO

CIO is the premier content and community resource for information technology executives and leaders thriving and prospering in this fast-paced era of IT transformation in the enterprise. The award-winning CIO portfolio—CIO.com, CIO magazine (launched in 1987), CIO executive programs, CIO strategic marketing solutions, CIO Forum on LinkedIn, CIO Executive Council and CIO primary research—provides business technology leaders with analysis and insight on information technology trends and a keen understanding of IT’s role in achieving business goals. Additionally, CIO provides opportunities for IT solution providers to reach this executive IT audience. The CIO Executive Council is a professional organization of CIOs created to serve as an unbiased and trusted peer advisory group. CIO is published by IDG Enterprise, a subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world’s leading media, events, and research company. Company information is available at www.idgenterprise.com.

About PG&E

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric utilities in the United States. Based in San Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit www.pge.com/ and www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/index.page.

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