Case Study: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP)

Answering the Call of the Media and Millions of Residents

When local power outages led to numerous inquiries from the media and concerned citizens, LADWP knew they needed help feeding the insatiable thirst for information. Relying on outdated communication tools wasn’t going to cut it.

Overview

Customer Profile
LADWP is the nation’s largest municipal utility, with 1.4 million electric customers and 640,000 water customers.

Business Situation
Los Angeles was hit by a severe heat wave in the summer of 2006 leaving many without power and resulting in a large number of complaints from LA residents and businesses. Without adequate communication tools, LADWP was unable to meet the requests for information by local residents, the media and others.

Solution
LADWP signed with PIER in April of 2007. By September, LADWP’s Public Affairs department had an online News Room that could be accessed directly from the existing LADWP website.

Key Benefits

• Centralized platform
• IT involvement not required to post updates
• Site guests can sign up to receive instant notifications of all LADWP announcements via e-mail or fax
• Shared notes for consistency
• Accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from anywhere via internet access
• Media monitoring tools

PIER Customer Profile

Los Angeles is the most populated city in California, and has the second highest population of any city in the entire U.S. (approximately 4.02 million people). With so many residents, the city has a significant demand for water and power services. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the nation’s largest municipal utility, with 1.4 million electric customers and 640,000 water customers.

LADWP was established more than 100 years ago; their goal is to deliver safe, reliable water and electricity to millions of businesses and residents. However, situations can and do arise that affect the department’s ability to meet this goal.

Business Situation

For two straight years during the summer months, Los Angeles faced unprecedented heat waves. Such extreme weather resulted in an increased demand for electricity, which then led to power outages.

Los Angeles, along with many other parts of the US and Canada, was hit by a severe heat wave in the summer of 2006. The heat wave hit California hardest during the month of July, taking the lives of 164 Californians from July 23 to July 29, and reaching record-breaking levels (119 degrees).

The weather left many without power, resulting in a large number of complaints from LA residents and businesses. They wanted power and they wanted to know when they would have it back.

Without adequate communication tools, LADWP was unable to meet the requests for information by local residents, the media and others. People were unable to find information about the power outage on the internet and the Public Affairs staff was flooded with media requests for updated outage information throughout the “heat storm”. LADWP worked very hard to get power back on for customers, but they simply did not have adequate tools to handle the communication demands that they faced. The outages, and the inability to communicate more effectively with customers began to hurt the Department’s image.

LADWP knew they needed to do a better job of managing communications. The Public Affairs team soon began looking for a solution that would allow them to keep the Mayor, City Council Members, key City and Department staff updated on outage conditions, manage inquiries and allow stakeholders a central location to find updates on power outages and the steps LADWP was taking to restore electricity.

The Communications System

Joe Ramallo came on with LADWP as the Director of Public Affairs in November of 2006. Knowing that the department had experienced communication challenges in the past, and that he would need to be able to meet the demand for information in the future, Joe began talks with PIER Systems, Inc. in November of 2006.

The PIER (Public Information Emergency Response) system intrigued Ramallo as a possible solution for their communication needs. PIER appeared to offer an answer to many of their requirements in a single, online platform.

LADWP signed with PIER in April of 2007. By September, LADWP’s Public Affairs department had an online News Room that could be accessed directly from the existing LADWP website.

After receiving training on the PIER system, the Public Affairs team was given complete control over the many communication tools PIER offers. These tools include the ability to push information out to the media, government officials and concerned citizens through news releases, text, images and videos, and web-posting. They can also pull interested stakeholders to their website (www.ladwpnews.com) to obtain more information about breaking news. People caught on quickly: the Public Affairs News Room site received 40,000 hits within the first month of going live.

Since PIER is an online platform, the public affairs team no longer needs to be in the office to handle communications. PIER allows LADWP to send a press release or situation update to management and internal stakeholders anytime the need arises, including during the early morning hours. Giving employees the ability to manage communications from their own homes, thereby eliminating the need to make a trip into the office for contact lists or other documents, has significantly improved the department’s communications performance. PIER allows the Public Affairs team to communicate more information to more people much more quickly than ever before – in real time.

Managing inquiries is now much easier for LADWP since the addition of PIER. While this was previously possible by other means, using PIER allows the team to share information with each other on not only the specific inquiry, but also the person or organization making the inquiry. Users can include notes on all contacts saved in their database, as specific or as general as they like. Having instant access to information on past conversations with any contact allows the team to ensure consistency in all outgoing information. Since users have access to all of the contact lists in their system, employees no longer have to waste time tracking down someone else’s notes for a specific member of the media or local resident.

The system also tracks when inquiries were made, who the inquiry was made by, how the individual would like to be responded to (phone, e-mail, etc.) and the status of the inquiry. All of the department’s inquiries are now maintained online, allowing the entire Public Affairs team to access the same information (pending access approval), and greatly reducing the likelihood of an inquiry going unattended.

In addition, LADWP’s Public Affairs officers now have complete control over their News Room website, without relying on assistance from their IT department. This allows the Public Affairs team to make announcements on breaking news directly from their website, whether they are in the office, or waiting for a flight in an airport on the opposite side of the country. This was previously only possible from their office and often meant relying on non-public affairs staff to post to the web.

LADWPNews.com’s homepage features a direct news feed from Google News. The feature, titled, “LADWP In The News,” runs any news items involving LADWP that are picked up by Google, both positive and negative in nature. This is a very forward-thinking approach on the part of the Public Affairs department. “People are going to read the good and bad news whether we post it or not,” said Ramallo. “At least now when they read a critical story or blog post, readers will have the ability to immediately find correct information directly from the Department or send us an inquiry about an article or concern.”

Site visitors also have the opportunity to sign up to receive e-mail or fax updates from LADWP as soon as the information is distributed and posted online. This assures the media and others that they won’t miss any breaking news.

Another benefit that PIER offers, which LADWP is looking forward to taking advantage of in the near future, is the media monitoring capabilities provided through PIER Media Tools.

“Being able to monitor and respond to what’s being said about us by the media and bloggers, without having to rely on a separate tool, adds value to an already useful solution,” said Ramallo.

Key Benefits

• Communication tools are located on a central platform, accessible by all appropriate employees
• Complete control of posting updates to their website is placed in the hands of the communicator, not the IT team
• Site visitors are able to sign up to receive instant notifications via e-mail or fax of all LADWP announcements
• Users share access to notes on media and community contacts, ensuring consistent messaging
• Communications platform accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from anywhere in the world with internet access
• Media monitoring tools will allow LADWP to track media coverage of their operations and revise messaging, even in the same news cycle

Additional Information

For more information on Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and how their Public Affairs team is working to manage the department’s communications, visit www.LADWPNews.com.