Avineon Completes Delivery of Digital Maps to SEMCO ENERGY GAS COMPANY for Enterprise Geographic Information System

Conversion of maps to digital format will integrate key business processes and improve customer service and reduce costs

Alexandria, Va. – Aug. 8, 2006 – Avineon, Inc., a successful provider of IT, geospatial, engineering and program management services, announced today that it has completed an enterprise geographic information system (GIS) conversion project with SEMCO ENERGY GAS COMPANY (SEMCO), a provider of natural gas and division of SEMCO ENERGY, Inc. (NYSE: SEN). Avineon converted SEMCO’s gas distribution system information covering 7,416 square miles of service territory from manual maps into a new ESRI ArcGIS geodatabase. The data conversion allows SEMCO to integrate key business processes such as Customer Information System, Field Order System and Document Management System with its GIS. This implementation is one of many proactive steps SEMCO is taking to expand its markets, cut operating costs, reduce product prices and better serve its more than 286,000 customers in Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas.

To convert existing data, Avineon “geo-referenced” scanned images of manual maps to a new digital landbase and constructed the gas distribution system to retain its relative position to the new underlying landbase. Detailed maps and rules definitions were used to ensure critical data, even if it was absent from the 13,200 source maps provided, was appropriately collected. Working with SEMCO, Avineon achieved an efficient system for issuing and answering data-related questions to guarantee key data for associated systems was available in the GIS. SEMCO customer data was linked to service location in the GIS and 4,900 miles of distribution mains were populated with a street name, allowing SEMCO to easily retrieve scanned service and gas main related records stored in an existing document management system.

Scott Torello, GIS project lead for SEMCO, commented, “Our overall experience with Avineon was very positive. Having performed a pilot project and in-house conversion, we leveraged our knowledge and expectations with Avineon’s conversion experience to meet SEMCO’s project goals. Avineon delivered quality, timely data meeting all the agreed upon project goals and proved they deliver on their project commitments.”

To perform the conversion, Avineon used internally developed custom tools which overlay ESRI core technology and have been developed over several years to balance the requirements of flexibility and speed, while maintaining high data quality. Data conversion was completed at Avineon’s Hyderabad, India, office with client support, communications and quality control provided by experienced personnel at the company’s Clearwater, Fla., location.

Gary Wilkison, vice president of geospatial and engineering services for Avineon, commented, “SEMCO has experienced rapid expansion, growing more than twice as fast as the industry average. Implementing an enterprise GIS will allow SEMCO to streamline its processes and continue to deliver exceptional services to its customers.”

About SEMCO ENERGY, Inc.
SEMCO ENERGY, Inc. distributes natural gas to over 400,000 customers combined in Michigan, as SEMCO ENERGY GAS COMPANY, and in Alaska, as ENSTAR Natural Gas Company. It also owns and operates businesses involved in propane distribution, intrastate pipelines and natural gas storage in various regions of the United States.

About Avineon
Avineon, a CMMI Maturity Level 3 and ISO 9001:2000 registered company, is a diversified high technology company that provides Information Technology (IT), geospatial, engineering, and program management services. With headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, and offices in Alabama and Florida, Avineon employs more than 140 staff in the United States, and with subsidiaries in Europe and India employs a total staff of 400. In IT, Avineon specializes in web-based architecture, systems engineering, application development, and on-going network and security support. For additional information and photos of the new facility please visit www.avineon.com.

Company Contact :
Charles Erdrich / 703-671-1900 / cerdrich@avineon.com

Press Contact :
Kara Schiltz DPR Group / 919-678-9200, ext. 101 / kschiltz@dprgroup.com

< Back to 2006 Press Releases