CEPSA GAS
Since January 24, 2001
Until October 1, 2007
How did I get to this job
While I was at MAFRE destined with Garben’s support, my name is CEPSA Gas, to make me an offer. It cost me a lot to make the decision. The salary improvement was not at that time an important milestone, although there was.
In the end, what convinced me were the words of the Information Technology Director, newly arrived at a relatively new subsidiary of CEPSA. That told me about shaping the Information Systems Department to our liking. With very innovative concepts at that time, such as the outsourcing of virtually the entire service. It was really a challenge rather than a job.
If I had to list the best decisions of my life, at work level, without any doubt, entering CEPSA Gas would top that list. It was a job that I remember with great affection and where the IT Manager that I have inside awakened.
Work description
My responsibilities were divided into:
- Ensure the proper functioning of the platform.
- Evolve the systems.
- Evolve the service.
- Projects management.
Ensure the proper functioning of the platform.
CEPSA Gas had more than 150 jobs distributed among 18 different locations: 12 production plants, 7 offices and the plant. All this connected.
In the case of plants they had three specific problems. Conditions (humidity, dust, temperature), legality (LOPD, AEAT, etc …) and availability (24 × 7)
During the years I was at CEPSA Gas we made many evolutions seeking to improve this guarantee.
Evolution of the systems.
From 2001 to 2007 there were many necessary evolutions:
- From modems and mobile connections to 9600 to ADSL and GPRS / 3G
- From NT to 2000 and from 2000 to XP
- From multidomain systems to a central domain
- From backups on tapes to hard drives, and later to remote systems
Evolution of service
When I entered CEPSA Gas, there were two ticketing systems: Post-it and telephone calls. Little by little this was evolved first to the mail and then to Siebel, this being the ticketing tool when I left.
In the end we served with only 2 people about 1000 users. Our effectiveness was included in the management dashboards who saw our evolution day by day.
Project management
The most significant projects were:
- ADSL deployment: It may seem like a trifle, but the gas plants are not exactly in the center of the cities. And we also redunda the service with GRPS or even 3G where it arrived. It seems basic today, but 7 or 8 years ago it was not so obvious. Cost not only the technical implementation but to explain to the management the advantages of this important investment.
To make this deployment not only enough with ADSL, but we rely on VSAT and Radio Links, being a milestone for future projects the evolution of the modem to a decent communications structure. - Telemetry: CEPSA had gas tanks distributed throughout Spain, to power businesses, houses, and even entire urbanizations. We installed a probe that sent an SMS in the case of lowering a certain percentage, or a sudden change in the percentage of filling (Robberies, leaks, etc …) Again this seems very basic but in 2001 it was not so.
This system evolved over the years, from being received by a PC, to an MQseries server and finally a Telefónica web server sent the XML to our Madrid server. - Developments in the plants: They also suffered several projects, but we went from having the data in each plant to having them all at the plant, synchronizing the information 4 times a day.
Backups also evolved. Due to the criticality of the data, three different backup copies were made. On disk inside the plants. In the central, with Backup booths, and in telephone. - Workstation virtualization: When RAM began to fall in price, already at the end of my time we decided to put 2048 Mb of ram and mount virtual machines within physics. With this we get the hardware failures, which were more common than we would like to be solved in minutes by lifting the machine on another PC. And I leave the door open so that in the future those jobs, critical and industrial, will be part of a server and not a job.
- Truck tracking: We set up a system, with a very tight budget, for truck tracking. Based on SMS, they notified when they left a plant, when they reached a customer, what customer, order, etc … We took this opportunity to remove the MQseries and move to a web messaging platform
- RFID viability: A system to control each bottle of GAS, when it entered a plant, how many times it entered, if it was expired, when it was up to the next revision, tare, etc. All this with the advantages of RFID, which allowed us Know how many bottles the truck brought when it passed through the arch.
- Distributor website: One of the most ambitious projects. Open a window to our system to distributors. It was an important advance, they could follow their trucks, see their orders, etc …
Cost an important effort in training them in the use of the application, and in supporting them later.
Why I left
CEPSA Gas had evolved a lot. So much that our management caught the attention of the plant. CEPSA was changing its support model and oriented to become certified in ITIL.
One of the changes was to assume from the central the work we were doing without the local Information Systems Department of CEPSA Gas.
I was offered to be responsible for the HelpDesk and evolve it into a ServiceDesk, which they complemented with an inexpensive financial offer.