Varec has recently completed a fuel management upgrade for the city of Atlanta at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
The City of Atlanta owns and has oversight over two of the three fuel farms at the airport, the City Fuel Farm (CFF) and the International Fuel Farm (FIS), Delta Air Lines owns the other fuel farm.
Louis Berger ATL Fuel Services took over management of CFF and FIS on behalf of the City on June 1, 2019. Between CFF and FIS, the City of Atlanta has a total fuel capacity of 19.9 million gallons across 14 fuel storage tanks. CFF provides fuel to T-North, C-Concourse, D-Concourse and South Cargo. FIS provides fuel to E-Concourse and F-Concourse.
As the new management team began reviewing systems and processes, they discovered problems with existing fuel pedestals that serviced ground service equipment. Connectivity, inventory control, and inventory reconciliation issues all needed to be updated as well as the pedestals themselves.
Varec had been supporting the CFF and FIS fuel farms with level measurement tank gauges and field communication, as well as inventory management and inventory accounting software for many years. Aware of the issues with the existing fuel pedestals, Varec suggested that Louis Berger Services and the City of Atlanta replace the legacy pedestals with the Gasboy Islander PRIME fleet fuel management system. This device is at the center of a Varec’s electronic point-of-sale fuel management solution currently used by their U.S. Department of Defense customer.
“With the Gasboy pedestal, we no longer have the accounting issues we experienced when we took over management for these two fuel farms,” says Jerald Mitchell, General Manager at Louis Berger Services. “Now, our operators and fuel accountants can focus on their core duties. Previously, they were spending between 30 minutes to a couple of hours most days trying to troubleshoot or research missing or inaccurate data.”
Justin Deadwyler, the DOA Fuel Farm Contract Manager for the City of Atlanta adds, “The new system also enabled us to replace the PIN access process for fueling operators. The PINs were hard to manage and maintain, we had no visibility into when to shut down PIN access. Today, we use a more secure process with access cards that the airlines request. With these cards, we can ensure that only authorized personnel per airline are able to access fuel, and that the product being requested matches the correct fuel vehicle.”
The new Gasboy system is installed at North Cargo, CFF, and D-South locations. Depending on the location, the system supports allocations of ground service equipment for Jet A, unleaded, or diesel fuel products. Varec integrated the Gasboy system with its FuelsManager software platform to provide a single repository for all transaction data from the fuel farm to the flight line.
For more information visit: www.varec.com
