Leading provincial construction company

This construction company is a leader in transportation infrastructure and environmental services. They retain specialized technical expertise and centralized administrative resources to implement functional quality, safety, and environmental management systems.

The Challenge

Two of this client’s natural gas accounts fell into a seasonal distribution rate class that had very stringent criteria that needed to be adhered to, some of which was as follows:

• No more than 5% of each account’s annual contracted volume could be consumed from December 1st to March 31st of each year.
• Meeting the rate criteria allowed each account to receive a Seasonal Credit applied to their mean daily volume for a 4-month period.
• Failure to meet the rate criteria triggered a varying Seasonal Overrun Charge from December to March.

If the client failed to comply, a significant financial penalty would be levied that actually exceeded the total actual cost of supplying their gas.

This client usually saw a significant drop-off in production by December, but December 2020 was forecasted to be and was a seasonably warm month which extended their production period, and therefore extended their usage. Their allowed tolerance was 5% of their annual contracted volume but, using more than that would require specific utility approvals.

The Solution

We proactively coordinated with the customer’s plant to determine expected usage, then monitored daily meter reads to ensure consumption remained in check. When necessary, we issued overrun requests directly to the utility on the customer’s behalf when consumption was expected to exceed contract thresholds.