Gainesville Regional Utilities on track after billing backlog
Story and photos by Suzette Cook
By 6:30 a.m. on a recent Friday morning, at least seven of 26 meter readers scheduled for routes had called out sick before their shift at Gainesville Regional Utilities.
GRU Meter Reader Supervisor Patricia Baham took the calls but continued to download route information into hand-held meter reading devices that sat charging and lined up on a shelf inside her office.
Despite the change in staffing, the three on-duty crew leaders in charge of supervising the completion of 225,000 meter reads per month quickly rearranged which readers would be going to which routes to cover the gaps. This is a routine the department is all too familiar with.
“The workforce has changed,” said Baham, who has worked at GRU for 27 years. When the Gainesville City Commission approved the long-overdue installation of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) a couple of years ago – and GRU changed meter reading jobs to temporary positions – it became more difficult to retain employees in an area that already had high turnover.
GRU Chief Customer Officer Kinn’zon Hutchinson called it the first contributing factor to the “perfect storm” that has ultimately led to estimated meter reads and billing delays for numerous customers. “This is not acceptable,” said interim General Manager Tony Cunningham, “and we are laser-focused on addressing it and fixing the system.”
Hutchinson said that “perfect storm” started because the shortage of meter readers and turnover rates as high as 145% meant estimating thousands more meters than is typical. He said GRU made a company decision to mass-estimate rather than lengthen billing cycles, since longer cycles can lead to higher monthly bills.
There’s a national shortage with labor force, and it’s not only meter readers; it’s throughout the organization.”
“Because we did mass-estimations, some of the reads were off for many reasons,” Hutchinson said. This triggered a customer safeguard in the billing system that prevents a bill from going out if the system detects an anomaly. An employee must manually “unlock” each of these accounts to send a bill.
“It blocked the bills from going out to protect customers from receiving higher bills,” Hutchinson said.
Meanwhile, the summer of 2022 was one the hottest summers in years, Hutchinson continued. “Skyrocketing fuel costs caused us to raise the fuel adjustment rate while the ability to hire and retain meter readers declined. There’s a national shortage with labor force, and it’s not only meter readers; it’s throughout the organization.”
FUEL RATES SOAR
According to GRU Fuels Manager Patrice Kafle, fuel prices steadily increased starting in January 2022 and peaked in August 2022. In January the price per MMBTU for fuel was $5.04, and by June it had nearly doubled to $9.74. “We peaked in August of 2022 when the average gas cost was $11.29 per MMBTU,” she reported.
Those MMBTU rates translated to a total fuel cost of $8 million in January 2022, then an increase to $16.9 million in June 2022 and an August 2022 peak of $22.6 million in total fuel costs.
NATIONAL ISSUE
A meter reader shortage causing billing challenges is not solely a GRU issue. The director of the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board reported a similar emergency situation in July 2020. Director Ghassan Korban told 4WWL CBS news that, “out of about 45 meter readers on staff, only about 10 to 12 are in the field on any given day due to illness, vacation days and other attrition issues.” The result, according to the news report, was 45-day billing cycles.
In August 2021, Xcel Energy in Amarillo, Texas, told News Channel 10 that “With the lack of workers to go on each route checking every month, Xcel had to estimate energy usage but the estimated prices were lower than what households really consumed.” The result, according to the report, was “customers having bill statements double or triple the amount they normally pay.”
In December 2021, the City of Tulsa, Oklahoma, also initiated mass-estimations due to staffing shortages. Public Radio Tulsa reported that “the city started issuing estimated bills to some utility customers because there aren’t enough water meter readers to check every single one. In some cases, the estimated bills have been significantly higher. Other times, inexperienced workers get the meter reading wrong.” The city’s solution was to boost pay to attract more meter readers.
GRU’s REMEDY
Hutchinson oversees the billing and customer services solutions specialists who have been assigned to manually address and adjust those locked bills.
“We have five billing folks who look and do adjustments,” he said. “We were not housed to handle the amount of estimations, so it’s been challenging to keep up with that.”
Even with GRU customer service staff working 50 to 60 hours a week and the addition of two fulltime positions to that department, the backlog is still being tackled.
“The challenging part is to get additional help outside of the skilled adjusters,” Hutchinson said. “We’ve had to train others who have some of those skill sets that have worked with software, but we have to pull skilled staff away from tasks to train them.”
Both the meter reader and customer service departments contracted with outside companies to help bring up their staffing levels as part of series of measures put in place to try to end the billing challenges.
GRU notified customers via email on Jan. 13 that they have been “working day and night to address these issues and have already employed a number of successful solutions.”
That list of measures includes no longer mass-estimating meter reads as of Dec. 5, working with contractors to keep staffing levels maintained, transitioning temporary employees to permanent positions and evaluating the meter reader pay rate to increase retention.
As for billing delays, GRU has dedicated all resources toward resolving this issue. Steps to make that happen include shifting staff from complementary departments to assist in processing delayed bills and working weekends and holidays to resolve existing issues along with the increase in billing staff by those two fulltime positions.
“First and foremost, if you are a GRU customer who has experienced a delayed or estimated bill, I want to apologize for any inconvenience or stress this may have caused,” Cunningham said. “We are fixing the issue and taking every step to make sure it doesn’t happen in the future.”
The definitive step toward avoiding any chance of a repeat is GRU’s move to AMI, which is expected to come to fruition in the next couple of years.
AMI STATUS
AMI Project Manager Chad Parker said digital meters are the solution.
“I’ve lived and breathed this for the past five years,” Parker said, as he looked over the 120 meters set up in a meter farm at GRU’s Eastside Operations Center.
“AMI is a solution that empowers customers to have more information about their usage, but it is also going to eliminate the billing estimate issues.”
There are pallets lining the stockroom at EOC filled with Itron AMI meters ready to be installed.
As of last week, Parker said, GRU has completed a “solution validation area” that includes 4,000 AMI meters in sections of Gainesville. “The system is up, talking, and everything is 100 percent read rates,” Parker said. “The system is performing better than I expected.”
Six additional contractors installing AMI meters have raised that number to 5,500 meters currently talking to the system and reporting reads to it, he added.
Parker said that when field service technicians make calls they attach the necessary wiring to meters so when the AMI crews come around, more than 16,000 chords have been installed. This will speed up the installation process.
Parker, who started out reading meters himself, said as the new technology comes into play, the need for on-the-ground meter readers will dwindle.
GRU plans to make sure that meter readers continue employment when the time comes to shift to AMI across the board.
Parker and other salaried managers who started out as meter readers have joined in taking shifts on weekends to help with the reader shortage.
“We all did this,” Parker said about meter reading early in his career. “And I know what it’s like to go to a home and turn off utilities. We are trying to do everything in our power to help customers avoid issues with their bills.”
While GRU will retain some meter reading positions for various reasons, to help those that will eventually be displaced by AMI, Parker said, “If qualified, they will get preference for job openings. They will land on their feet somewhere in this organization. I’ve had conversations with crew leaders about it. It’s a tough job, and they know technology is replacing their job.”
But until AMI is fully up and running, those meter readers say they mostly love their job. Meter readers average 10,000 to 12,000 meter reads per month and walk an average of 10 miles a day. Most said they enjoy getting the exercise and being out in the open, fresh air.
“Meter readers work really hard,” Parker said. “… Hour-for-hour, minute-for-minute, they’re the ones who deserve recognition.”
If you have a question about your GRU bill, please call 352-334-3434.