Elenia has been awarded international certificate for the quality of electricity network asset management
Elenia is the first Nordic electricity distribution company to have been awarded the highly valued PAS 55 certificate by British Lloyd’s Register for high-quality electricity network management. PAS 55 certification represents international recognition for the quality of Elenia’s electricity network development, construction, maintenance and use.
Lloyd’s Register specialises in safety and risk management in companies. During the autumn of 2013, it carried out an extensive and complete study of Elenia’s electricity network management, comparing Elenia with international certification requirements and the practices of leading companies. Elenia was compared with Publicly Available Specification 55 (PAS 55) developed by the British Standard Institution (BSI). PAS 55 is used to evaluate operations in asset-intensive industries.
According to Lloyd’s Register, Elenia exceeds the requirements of the standard. In addition to the energy industry, Lloyd’s Register has strong experience as an auditor in shipping and rail traffic, among other fields.
“On a European level Elenia´s operation as an electricity distribution company compares very favorably with other organizations assessed by Lloyd’s Register EMEA. Elenia has many mature Asset Management processes and can be proud of their achievement of certification to PAS 55-1: 2008, which was an excellent result”, said Bernard Woods Lloyd’s Register EMEA, Senior Assessor.
In Finland, similar certification has previously been awarded to the national grid company, Fingrid. Elenia is the first Nordic electricity company distributing electricity directly to households to have received the certification.
“PAS 55 is a cornerstone of our operations that will guide the building, maintenance and repair of our electricity network, ensuring efficiency and high quality. We will maintain and renew our network to meet our customers’ needs even better than before,” says Tapani Liuhala, CEO, Elenia.
“This is wonderful recognition for all of our employees for their long-term work to improve our services. In addition, the certification requires that our suppliers and service providers commit to responsible operations of a high quality in accordance with our operating methods,” Liuhala emphasises.
“Based on our PAS 55 certification, we will continue our extensive project to build a weatherproof electricity network with underground cabling, where our annual investment in electricity distribution is more than EUR 80 million. In 2009, about 20% of our electricity network was underground cable. Our goal is to increase the proportion of underground cable from the present 26% to approximately 70% over the next 15 years,” says Liuhala.
Mr Bernard Woods from British Lloyd’s Register EMEA thanked Mr Tapani Liuhala, CEO of Elenia Oy, and Mr Jorma Myllymäki, Head of Operations and Network Performance, for the excellent results in PAS 55 cerfification.