RTE uses Mattermost to manage France's power grid and reduce outage response time

“Feedback showed that we needed to strengthen our reporting procedures with tools dedicated to the crisis.”
Rémi Bayle Operations Manager
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Highlights

  • RTE uses Mattermost to collaborate in real time during electrical outages and other incidents
  • Mattermost lets operational teams in the field send and receive notifications directly on their phones, streamlining communication and keeping incident information centralized
  • RTE has reduced its time to manage incidents and improve responsiveness during outages by using Mattermost

It all started at the end of July 2018, following a fire in an electrical substation that led to a power outage for citizens and a major train station in Paris. Because of the time of year, Réseau de Transport Électrique (RTE), the manager of France’s electrical infrastructure, found itself in the middle of a controversy about its responsiveness.

rte

“Feedback showed that we needed to strengthen our reporting procedures with tools dedicated to the crisis,” says Rémi Bayle, Operations Manager for RTE. Indeed, the organization of communication by phone and email did not allow the management of situations that require a high level of reactivity from several teams. Mattermost was the solution adopted for its simplicity of use and data control. Responders are notified directly on their phone through the application, and information about the incident is sent back and centralized, reducing the use of telephony.

Today, thanks to Mattermost and its collaboration system, RTE has reduced the time to manage incidents and therefore the impact on its customers. Organized into seven regions, each part of the network is managed by operational teams who pilot the power in the network in real-time.

rte team in the field

As soon as an incident occurs, all employees involved in the company’s crisis management are notified in real-time through Mattermost, in order to establish immediate collaboration with the various teams, for example:

  • The Maintenance team can intervene quickly and communicate information (and photographs) in real-time on the status of the situation
  • The Communication team can use this information to communicate externally
  • The Sales team can prepare to quickly alert customers

For this critical organization in France, Mattermost enables real-time collaborative management of incidents and faster response to internal and external requests. RTE continues its collaboration with Mattermost with the use of Playbook to review and improve processes and Calls to manage crisis meetings.