APTransco

Service in Power Sector

Transmission Corporation of Andhra Pradesh Limited (APTransco)(1st Feb 1999 - 1st June 2014)

In the process of Options to choose the entity for final absorption out of APGenco, APTransco, APCPDCL, APEPDCL, APSPDCL or APNPDCL (the successor companies of APSEB) in the order of preference, I went on to exercise my option in the order of preference i.e. 1st preference: APTransco, 2nd preference: APCPDCL.

The High level committee considered my options and was pleased to inform that I had been allotted to APTRANSCO on my 1st preference.

Revision Of Pay Scales

TO.O.(GM(IR)-Per) Ms No. 159 Dated: 10-08-2002.

For the first time, after unbundling of APSEB into APGenco, APTransco and 4 Discom entities viz. APEPDCL, APCPDCL, APSPDCL & APNPDCL, the Scales of Pay other than workmen were revised in August 2002 to be with effect from 1.4.2002. The date of option for the revised pay scales would be 1.4.2002 or the date of increment in the existing scale on or before 31.3.2003. The revised Pay Scale (for ADE Category) was: 12265-500-13765-575-16640-645-18575 and the Master Pay Scale : 4790-215-5865-250-7315-360-9115-430-11265-500-13765-575-16640-645-19865-715-23440-790-27390-660-31690. Service weightages increment given in the revised scales as follows:

Below and up to 7 years service : 1 increment

Above 7 years and up to 17 years : 2 increments

Above 17 years and up to 27 years : 3 increments

27 years of service and above : 4 increments

Accordingly, after the calculation, my basic fixed at Rs.24,230 + 230 (PGI)

EL For 3 months /US Trip

I applied for E.L. for a period of 3 months from 21-7-2003 to 18-10-2003 pending sanction and went to US for 3-months. It was great experience to be part of totally a new world. Toured SFO, California and many other interesting places in US. I stayed with K Maheshwar Rao in Saratoga area /CA during my entire visit in USA. E.L. was sanctioned vide memo GM(P)/DS(P)/AS(P) /PO.IV /JPO.2/456/2003 dtd .30-7-2003 for this leave period. After return from US I was reposted back to work in the same place without any hassle.

Promotion to Divisional Engineer

T.O.O (ED-HRD&Trg) Rt.No.105 dtd 29-7-2005

With reference to the above I was promoted from ADE(Ele.) to DE (Ele.) and posted to Commercial wing as DE/Bulk Loads at Vidyut Soudha. Besides this I was given full additional charge of the post of DE/Commercial. Obeying the Orders, I assumed charge as DE/BL/VS on 8-8-2005 with FAC of DE/Comml. (With this change I was deemed to have been deputed to CPDCL as the then IPC and Commercial wings were to work for Discoms and therefore to be paid by them only)

The Bulk loads division deals mainly with the following subjects:

i) Attending to Single window Clearance Committee (SWCC) Meetings being conducted by Commissioner of Industries, Hyderabad once in 15 days at the Conferance hall of Commissioner of Industries, Hyderabad with the information of power feasibility issued in respect of new Industries by DISCOMs as referred by the SWCC.

ii) Furnishing the note on SIPC meetings and SIPB meetings convenned by Industries Department to Director (RA&C) to attend the meeting with Chief Secretary to Government and Hon'ble Chief Minister, respectively.

iii) Captive Power Generation Plants : Information about Energy generated by CPP during the year to be obtained from DISCOMs and Statistics to be made up to date.

iv) Correspondence on Electricity Duty, Grid Support Charges etc.

The Commercial division deals mainly on Terms & Conditions of Supply and Retail Tariff matters with concessions, subsidies and rebates to different categories of Consumers.

-Correspondence on pending Board for Industrial and Financial Restructuring (BIFR) cases and SICK Industries ;

-Rebate to Industries, IT Units, Hotels located in the Tourism area and related correspondence with Govt. and Discoms;

- Audit Replies to AG, Internal Audit

- Correspondence and Clarifications on collection of ACD and final adjustment of FCA

- Correspondence on all long pending Court cases pertaining to Commercial wing viz. Collection of ACD, FCA, Voltage Surcharge, Category Changes, Developement Charges, Railway Tariff and other Tariff matters.

Fixation of Pay on Promotion

Scale of Pay : Rs 13765-575-16640-645-19865-715-20580 & Master Scale 4760.....31690

From : 9-8-2005

Pay : Rs.29110 + 230 (PGI)

Note: Relieved from the FAC of DE/Commercial on 23-09-2005 FN as the same was handed over to Mr M R Krishna Rao ADE additionally who was looking after BPP-II on Administrative grounds.

Transfer to the post of DE/Energy Audit/IT

Memo No. CGM(HRD&Trg)/DS(P)/AS(Per)/PO.Adm-3/804-A1/05 Date: 25-10-2005

It came to me as a pleasant surprise when I had been transferred to IT wing to once again prove my IT capabilities. Thanks to the recommendations by the then CE/Telecom & IT and the Director/Transmission and the kind acceptance of the then JMD/HRD that paved the way for me to get this opportunity. I had assumed charge as DE/Energy Audit & IT on 27-10-2005 FN. Works involved supervising the works viz. handling of all the contracts including AMC, Security Adminstration, Network Administration, Special Procurement of Systems, Peripherals & Network Components, Website maintenance; inchage of Shift duties, Correspondence related to Internet Leased Lines, Computer Peripherals, Procurement of all consumables and stationery and all the works related to e-Procurement; System administration of all the Servers, work stations in Vidyut Soudha.

Revision of Pay Scales - 2006

T.O.O. (Joint Secy.-Per) Ms. No.72 dtd. 7-6-2006

Fixation of Pay in Revised Pay Scales 2006

My Pay was fixed @ 41185 + 230 (PGI) w.e.f 1-4-2006 consequent to the fixation of pay in terms of T.O.O. (Joint Secy.-Per) Ms. No.72 dtd. 7-6-2006 in the revised Pay Scales.

New Scale : Rs 18405-770-22255-860-26555-955-27510 (Master Scale : 6380-290-7830-390-9780-480-12180-575-15055-670-18405-770-22255-860-26555-955-31330-1055-36605-1145-42330

ERP Implementation in APTransco

It was great privilege to me to be in IT wing when APTransco's management intended to go for ERP Implementation in the Organization.

There was a requirement of efficient operations in the Power Sector entities in the State including APTransco due to evolution of radically different Industry structure followed by the legislative changes.APTransco needed to be more responsive to the market requirements. Critical information and more so in terms of financial information & MIS would be required to help the management in its decision making process and frame an appropriate response to the market. Needed for efficient information systems to be able to manage the change and also to ensure sustainable progress. It was essential for APTransco to upgrade their business processes and management information systems in order to meet with the aforesaid objectives. The new systems will assist the management and executives in taking an informed decision based on organized and reliable data. This had necessiated APTransco to consider Procurement of ERP to support all the major activities which were critical for their efficient operations. ERP would provide an accurate, timely and reliable information for decision making. ERP could aid in the control of many business activities like Maintenance Management, Finance & Controlling, Inventory Management, Quality Management, Human Resources Management etc.

All the Discoms had already gone for implementation of SAP ERP for FI-CO & MM Packages and were under pilot implementation of HR Package by July 2005.

It was therefore envisaged for implementation of ERP in APTransco. A Note was circulated to the Board for arriving a decision on 23rd July 2005.

Earlier, M/s Deloitte had made a presentation of ERP Solution for APTransco taking SAP as an example in March 2005 and submitted a letter of feasibility of ERP Solution for APTransco where they had put forth that SAP would meet with APTransco's requirement to a large extent. Therefore any standard ERP would do the same.

Two Options fro Deployment were suggested by Deloitte. (i) ERP to be deployed up to Substation level - licenses required : 710 (ii) ERP to be deployed up to Division office level- licenses required : 410 while recommending Option-2.

After re-working, the actual requirement of User licenses for the four packages viz. FI-CO,MM,PM,Maintenance Management arrived at 295 and with 10 licenses for Senior Management made a total requirement to 305. The rough total estimate was made for implementation of ERP including Hardware & Network.

Dedicated & experienced end users were involved for preparation of Specification along with the Consultants, evaluation of Tenders for selection of ERP Vendor and implementation parter and Project Management during implementation.

In August 2005, note was approved by APTransco (i) to appoint Deloitte for preparation of Specification, evaluation of Tenders for selection of ERP Vendor & Implemenation Partner & Project management during implementation (ii) to call for Open Tenders to choose for an ERP License Vendor and Implementation partner to procure 305 licenses of ERP Software and implement the four modules. (i) Project Management (ii)Material Management (iii) Finance Module (iv) Maintenance Management based on the Specification furnished by M/s Deloitte.

Final RFQ was prepared by Deloitte and was approved in November 2005. NIT was published in the same month. About 9 firms had submitted bids for pre-qualification. Four companies were short-listed as recommended by M/s Deloitte. Final RFP prepared and submitted by Deloitte on 9-1-2006 and the same were handed over to the four pre-qualified bidders.

After the pre-bid conference and queries furnished /replied- the 3 companies out 4 pre-qualified furnished their RFP and Price Proposals within the scheduled date i.e. by 6th Feb 2006.

Technical Evaluation Committee was constituted with two external Evaluators from KPMG & APTS apart from Deloitte and APTransco Teams. On behalf of APTransco, it was great privilege to me to be part of Evaluation Committee.

The Evaluation was done by the Committee in three meetings followed by Demos, made accurate assessment finally and finalized the technical part of the Scoring.

The Price bids of 3 qualified bidders were opened on 21st March 2006. The Price bid evaluation along Comparative Statements were sent to Financial Adviser & Controller of Accounts for accuracy. A Report on recommendations of the Evaluation Committee on Technical cum Financial Evaluation for selection of ERP Software vendor was submitted on 31st March 2006. Based on the recommendations, M/s IFS (Industrial & Financial Solutions), a Sweden based company (with IFS Software) was the successful bidder for implementation of ERP in APTransco. Note was approved on 21st June 2006 and LOI Issued on 22nd June 2006 after Negotiations were held with IFS.

ERP Project was successfully implemented in four modules (i) PM (ii) MM (iii) Fi (iv) Mait Management.

The implementation of Project covered the Head Quarters, all TL&SS/TLC Wings (up to division level) and all the Stores with total 305 licenses initially and later 523 licenses all over the State. The third party Auditors had carried out a comprehensive Systems audit on ERP in the month of January 2008. Disaster Recovery System for ERP was set up at Erragadda. Later HR package was implemented with additional licenses.

Training : All the users categorized into four groups namely Core users, Champion Users, Senior Management Users & End User were given training in a phased manner. All the users (other than that of Vidyut Soudha) were able to access /operate the ERP System through Citrix Servers from remote and relevant transactions being done. The users of Vidyut Soudha were able to access the ERP directly through Application Server.

Support: A support Centre was set up at VS for guiding and addressing the complaints of the end users of the four modules. Also besides AMC by IFS, a web portal support system LCS (Life Cycle Support) was provided by IFS to post any queries with regard to Application/Database errors. Certain users (esp. Core users) would receive complaints, if any from the end users and post the same by logging-in to LCS platform. Each complaint would be registered as case with an ID attached which would be dispatched to IFS (if unresolved locally).

Benefits:

One could be able to get all the information regarding Materials, Project Status, Financial position of the Organization at a single location. Transparency and Accountability had been improved a lot. Able to complete the work faster. All the information viz. stock position of the material, total inventory cost of all Stores with a single click of mouse. Uniformity in Transactions was made. Consolidation of Accounts done easier and faster. One could be able to know the Cash balance of each Accounting Unit at any point of time. Tracking of all the activities could be done. Useful for the Top management for taking quick decisions. Data availability at any point of time.

Winner of Best IT Team Leader (2006-07)

Those were the proud moments when I had been awarded with best IT Team Leader for the year 2006-07 for my sincere efforts with dedication, determination & discipline to implement ERP in APTransco. Unless had there been a tremondous encouragement from the top management the Project would not have moved forward. I was grateful to top management for the support extended in ERP implementation.

Conference At Mumbai on Knowledge Management

Power Line Conference at New Delhi on 11-09-2007 & 12-09-2007

I had a big opportunity to attend Power Line sixth annual Conference held at Obroi Hotel New Delhi for two days on 11-09-2007 & 12-09-2007. The conference was held on the topic " IT in Power Enabling Processes, Transforming Utilities". Major IT companies like IBM, Oracle, Click Software, SAP, IFS, TCS along with ABB, NHPC, KLG SYSTEL, GPCL, NHPC, APDiscoms etc participated in the conference. On behalf of APTransco, I, among the 11 speakers, made a PPT Presentation about IT in APTRANSCO which were the proud moments in my life.

Inter-Circle Bridge & Tennis Tournament (2008-09)

Deputation to Noida, New Delhi

I, along with Sri G Bhaskar Rao ADE/IT and Sri V Ramesh AE/ERP Maintenance Module, was deputed for the 5-day IT Training on IFS ERP Package from 25th to 29th May 2009 at Noida (IFS HQs).

In the Training programme : The main Topics covered were (i) IFS Base Server architecture & development (ii) Programming with Centura (iii) RMB - Custom Menus (iv) Server Administration and (v) Usage of Admin Tool. Apart from the above the configuration /usage of FNDMIG tool, Work flow functionality, understanding of Source Code, Creation & migration of new Inventory /Tower parts, Creation of Menus/sub-menus, Profiles, Changing of Labels, Certain LCS cases in MM Module .

Revision of Pay Scales -2010

Transfer to Commercial Wing

I was transferred to Commercial Wing as affected by the Transfer Policy vide Memo No. CGM(HRD&Trg)/DS(P)/AS(P)/PO-Eng-Ser-II/534-A1/11, Dt. 18-6-2011 as I already served more than 6 years in the cadre of DE/IT. I submitted an appeal to the new top management for retention in the same position till my promotion as expected within 6 months. But the top management was silent on about my request. Inevitably I assumed charge as DE/Commercial/IPP in the Commercial wing on 2-7-2011. Again the subjects I had to deal were totally different : Works related to M/s Lanco Kondapalli Power Limited (IPP), M/s Reliance Infrastructure Limited (IPP), M/s LVS Power Private Limited (MPP) and M/s Srivathsa Power Projects Limited (MPP).

Proceeded on E.L. For 55 days - Daughter's Marriage

title="Promotion to Superintending Engineer"

T.O.O (CGM-HRD&Trg) Rt.No.327 Dtd. 02-11-2011

In the same month of my daughter's marriage, I had been promoted to Superintending Engineer (Elec.) vide T.O.O. No.327 dtd. 2-11-2011. Thus November 2011 proved a lucky month for me. On Promotion I had been posted as SE/TL&SS/Mahabubnagar. I extended my E.L. ( which was sanctioned vide Memo.No. CGM(HRD&Trg)/DS(P)/AS(P)/PO.Engg.Ser-II/1047-A2/2011, Dt, 1-10-2011 up to 4-12-2011) further up to 31-12-2011 pending sanction on personal grounds.

Appointment to SGP

Assumed charge as SE/TL&SS/Mahabubnagar

After availing EL up to 31-12-2011 ( and 1st Jan 2012 being Public Holiday) I assumed charge as SE/TL&SS/Mahabubnagar on 2nd January 2012 F.N. at Mahabubnagar (the circle HQs). It is to mention that I had proceeded on EL duly extending leave for further period up to 31st Dec.2011 and as the new incumbant, posted already in place of DE/Comml/IPP joined on 12-12-2011, I was, therefore, deemed to have been relieved of DE's post w.e.f 12-12-2011 itself. Consequent on promotion and joining as SE/TL&SS/Mahabubnagar with effect from 2-1-2012 FN my basic pay had been fixed @ Rs.91,225/- + 230 (PGI) with effect from 2-1-2012 in the above SGP Scale.

With this it looked a new era had begun for me. It was a field post and totally different from the office posts held so far. However, it was great feeling to return to my Electrical Engineering Field consisting of Switch-gear i.e. Transformers, CTs, PTs, Circuit Breakers & Towers, Transmission lines etc. There were three divisions working under the control of SE/TL&SS/Mahabubnagar (i) DE/TL&SS/Mahabubnagar (ii) DE/O&M/400 KV/Veltoor and (iii) DE/MRT/Mahabubnagar. Each division again divided into Sub-divisions and then Sections. All the 132 KV & above voltage level Substations and Lines and their maintenance would come under the control of SE/TL&SS. There were around 26 Nos 132 KV & 220 KV Substations including one 400 KV SS initially when I took over charge.

Reorganization of Field Structure

SE/TL&SS/Mahabubnagar re-designated as SE/OMC/Mahabubnagar

After the re-organization of the existing Field structure, each district's tranmission wing along with Construction works pertaining to that district had come under the control of existing SE/TL&SS , re-designated as SE/OMC (O-Operation, M-Maintenance, C-Construction). The 400 KV maintenance and Constructin works were diverted to the control of SE/400 KV/OMC, a new circle formed in the re-organization process exclusively for 400 KV Projects.

Thus SE/TL&SS/Mahabubnagar circle was re-designated as SE/OMC/Mahabubnagar taking over the charge of TLC (Construction) works in addition to the O&M works. The DE/TL&SS/Mahabubnagar was re-designated as DE/O&M/Mahabubnagar and one new DE/O&M/Wanaparthy was created to take over the works looked after earlier by DE/O&M/400KV/Veltoor as the DE/O&M/400KV/Veltoor had gone under the control of SE/400KV/OMC/Rural/Hyderabad. The DE/MRT/Mahabubnagar remained under the control of SE/OMC and EE/Construction division & corresponding Sub-divisions were added to the circle which were earlier under the control SE/TLC/Rural/Hyderabad.

Regularization of Services and Commencement of Probation

Sanction of One Increment

T.O.O Addl.Secy-Per)Ms.No.48, dtd. 18-05-2013

Sanction of one increment ordered for the employees in Engineering Service, Accounts, P&G & O&M Services who have undergone training on Stiphend during the period from 1986 to 2001 with monetary benefit wef 1-9-2013. Thus I was glad to receive one increment as per T.O.O Addl.Seccy-Per)Ms.No.48, dtd.18-05-2013. After sanctioning my future pay was @ Rs.95025/-.

Bifurcation of APTranco- Formation of TSTransco

Transmission Corporation of Telangana Limited

With Bi-furcation of AP State and the formation of new State- Telangana on 2-6-2014, the APTransco was bifurcated into TSTransco & APTransco with effect from 2-6-2014. The staff at the HQs were divided accordingly to look after their respective departments. The field staff were continued in the same positions until further Orders.