Customer Success Story

Summary

Boardwalk Pipelines, LP (Boardwalk) provides transportation and storage of natural gas and liquids for their customers. They operate 14,335 miles of pipelines and underground storage caverns with an aggregate working gas capacity of approximately 205 billion cubic feet and liquids capacity of approximately 24.5 million barrels. Working with such large volumes, they are committed to operating in a safe, reliable, and compliant manner. Boardwalk was searching for an employee scheduling solution that would scale with their business and drastically reduce the time spent on scheduling. They also wanted to ensure they were meeting the PHMSA Control Room Management (CRM) Hours of Service rules effectively.

Challenge

Boardwalk previously relied on spreadsheets along with pen and paper to manage schedules for gas controllers. Unavailability requests were submitted by email or sometimes even printed and submitted by hand. This made it extremely time-consuming for managers to coordinate schedules, track employee hours and absences, and assign tasks. Managers would constantly update a spreadsheet, and then print a hard copy to place in a binder — sometimes repeating the process multiple times to reflect changes. Boardwalk is committed to following the Hours of Service rules, but with these manual methods of scheduling, the risk of errors was significant. As the number of operators and gas controllers continued to increase, Boardwalk identified the need for a scheduling system that could scale with their business.

Solution

Boardwalk chose Shiftboard’s employee scheduling software as their preferred solution to automate their scheduling complexity, reducing scheduling hours and scheduling costs. Shiftboard was also chosen because of its tailor-fit automation, easily facilitating schedule compliance with PHMSA CRM Hours of Service rules. Through a collaborative effort with Boardwalk’s gas control and IT departments alongside the Shiftboard team, the solution was successfully implemented in just three months.

“We are really happy to have moved on from pen and paper to a fully electronic system in the cloud,” said Mitch Whitehead, manager of gas control at Boardwalk. “With Shiftboard, we have cut the time and effort we spent scheduling in half.”

Working with the Shiftboard team was very positive. They guided us at every step of the way, making sure we were not overwhelmed. They were always willing to help, and they actually went above and beyond to ensure a successful implementation.

Eugene Lam
Solutions Architect, Boardwalk Pipelines

Results

Shiftboard’s software significantly improves Boardwalk’s ability to schedule employees effectively. Not only does it eliminate the overlap and delay the old system was causing, but it also offers robust features such as autoscheduling that optimize day-of management and increase operational agility. In addition, the system is able to manage complex rules when populating the schedule, ensuring that PHMSA CRM Hours of Service rules are always met.