Case study on san francisco public utilities commission

Question 1Business Goals of SFPUC

In the provision of public utilities, the SFPUC aims in providing affordable water and sufficient wastewater treatment to the customers living in the San Francisco Bay area and its surroundings. Further, it aims in utilizing available human, natural, and physical resources efficiently and effectively. These goals are aimed in four different areas of the functions of the SFPUC. These include the provision of local water, regional water, and provision of power and wastewater collection, treatment, and disposal.
These business goals that SFPUC aims in achieving require a lot of technical expertise, which cannot not only be acquired in a classroom setting but needs to be taught in the actual doing of the technical activities. Majority of the workers in the SFPUC are baby boomers who are retiring and have been conducting the technical aspects of the organization. This created a challenge in the capturing, managing and transferring of this technical knowledge. Thus, knowledge management was introduced as it deals with the capturing, managing and transferring of knowledge in an organization.

Question 2 Challenges faced by SFPUC

Because of the increasing number of retiring baby boomers, the SFPUC needed to ensure that the new workers had the necessary knowledge to run the technical aspects of the company. This became a challenge since the company had to develop a way of transferring this knowledge from the old workers to the new workers. Additionally, the SFPUC needed to make sure that their reliability and accountability in terms of service provision would not be affected because of the entry of new workers. A technological factor that contributed to this challenge was the lack of an information technology system that would permit the capturing of knowledge from the baby boomers. Further, the management had failed to be recruiting new workers, which created the problem of increasing retirees with no one available to step in and take on their responsibilities. The SFPUC employees did not have any system of communicating and sharing the business process information. There was no distinct way of conducting activities such as inspections, which made it difficult for the newer employees to adapt to the functioning of the organization.

Question 3 How EPC Improved Knowledge Management and Operational Effectiveness at SFPUC

Implementation of the EPC provided visual representations of the tasks performed by each department. This assisted in identifying unnecessary tasks, which contributed to inefficiencies when performed by multiple departments. Further, the EPC established proper documentation of frequent activities such as inspections through creating a work order flows. These provided the roles and responsibilities of all the employees in the organization. Further, it contained manuals that outlined the procedures of conducting the technical activities or operations in the organization. Moreover, the removal of unnecessary tasks allowed the organization to cut operational costs, which allowed the savings to be used in training and improving human resource capacity.

Question 4 Effectiveness of EPC as Solution to SFPUC

The EPC visual aids helped in increasing the confidence of the new workers in terms of performing different technical tasks. Knowledge from the baby boomers were easily shared across the organization. In addition, the operational budget for the organization was reduced compared to other governmental organizations. Further, the organization using the EPC technology was able to reduce the time required in the processing of employee reimbursement requests.

Bibliography

– San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Preserves Expertise with Better Knowledge Management. Case Study.