CGI announced a contract with Latvian state-owned energy company Latvenergo, responsible for 70% of energy supply in the Latvian market. The scope of the project is an overhaul of Latvenergo’s technological asset maintenance and management system.
The EUR 1.3 million project was awarded to CGI Lithuania via a public tender. Their proposal scored the highest points in cost-effectiveness, team competencies and implementation strategy, supported by CGI’s prior experience in the Lithuanian energy sector.
CGI Lithuania had previously implemented similar technological asset management solutions for Lithuanian electricity transmission system operators – Litgrid in 2018, and Amber Grid in 2019. The team responsible for these projects will be handling the Latvian contract as well. Specialists from CGI in Latvia will also take part in the installation process, especially during stages requiring proficiency in Latvian.
“By winning a tender focused on enterprise asset management system reimplementation, CGI Lithuania is also accepting a new challenge. We became acquainted with the professionalism and the high skills that the CGI team has demonstrated so far. Now we are eager to see how CGI will apply them in delivering one of Latvenergo’s core systems,” says Jānis Avens, IT Director of AS Latvenergo. “In the current era of digitalization, Latvenergo is placing high stakes on the project outcome. The success of the project is a precondition for being able to unify and optimize the current processes in all power plants.”
According to Karolis Baltrušaitis, General Manager of CGI Lithuania, the energy sector across Europe is on the brink of transformation. Following exciting developments in the field of green energy, and the increasing need to connect small-scale energy producers (who are also energy consumers) to a common system, national energy companies are experiencing a shift in their data accounting requirements. These changes mean that they have to manage and maintain systems of increasing complexity.
“In a broader sense, today we are observing only the first stages of transformation, where IT systems are changing at the national level across the entire European energy sector. In the past several years alone, CGI has been tasked to overhaul asset maintenance and data exchange systems for the energy sectors of Denmark, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and others. A similar system is currently being implemented in Finland. A second stage is also coming, where these systems will be integrated on a European level. This is why having a partner with the experience of implementing such systems in multiple countries is a great advantage, not just in the short term but also in the due to upcoming changes,” says Karolis Baltrušaitis.
CGI starts the project in Latvia in March and plans to have the system fully running by the beginning of 2021. The project encompasses further system maintenance and development for a minimum of two years.
The implementation of the new system is intended to improve Latvenergo's operational efficiency and reduce the costs of technological asset management and maintenance.
It is expected that the costs of Latvenergo will also be reduced by increasing efficiency in repairs scheduling, avoiding unplanned failures and downtimes, and fine-tuning the management of ordering and storing spare parts.
“We are delighted that Latvenergo chose us for this project. CGI's know-how in the energy sector is undisputed worldwide. We have a team of over 6,000 specialists with experience in this sector, including our Lithuanian branch. We have tackled energy grid IT management issues for clients in more than 20 countries. Thus, the decision to apply our Lithuanian team’s experience of propelling processes forward to other Baltic states has been well-calculated. In essence, this is one of the steps we are making to secure a leading position for CGI in the Baltic region’s energy sector. Finally, we strongly believe in our know-how and ability to propose the best solution to meet the needs of Latvenergo. I do not doubt that this partnership will prove mutually beneficial,” concludes Karolis Baltrušaitis on the company’s decision to participate in Latvenergo’s tender.
IT solutions for the energy sector generate more than 9% of total revenue for CGI worldwide. In Lithuania, in addition to Litgrid and Amber Grid, CGI also works with companies of the Ignitis group, Panevėžio energija and others. In Estonia, its customers in the energy sector are Eesti Gaas and Eesti Energia.
