News - PA Consulting and Dash Sign Partnership Agreement

Washington, DC, and Englewood Cliffs, NJ; 4th August. PA Consulting Group (PA) and Dash Optimization Ltd. (Dash) have signed an agreement to enable PA to use Xpress-MP from Dash in PA’s Capital Portfolio Optimization decision support software in the United States and Australia.

PA is using Capital Portfolio Optimization to assist its clients in developing a portfolio of projects that support strategic and operational goals and objectives. PA’s project manager Jeff Lewis explains, "Many companies are still using simple ranking or prioritization techniques for selecting capital projects, but these methods fail to adequately address a varied set of performance objectives. Using advanced optimization techniques, companies can fund a capital portfolio that simultaneously meets specific targets in a variety of different areas including reliability, O&M savings, safety, customer satisfaction, etc."

PA recently implemented Capital Portfolio Optimization at Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) with great success. "The Optimization process provides additional control and insight to the portfolio selection process", said OPPD’s Chief Financial Officer Chuck Eldred. "Since projects are submitted from competing business units that have different perspectives and expectations, the ability to remove a major portion of the subjectivity in selecting which projects are to be completed provides a significant benefit," he added. PA has assisted clients in energy, transportation, financial services, and telecommunications with Capital Portfolio Optimization.

Xpress-MP and its associated state-of-the-art development tools is an ideal platform for such products and applications. Using unique formulation, visualization and diagnostic tools, the Xpress-MP developer can build complex, high performance applications in record time, minimizing risk, cost and time-to-market. These are extremely important for PA which has an enviable record of delivering customer value, on-time and on budget. In addition, Xpress-MP is used in many real life applications throughout the electricity sector including electricity trading and pricing, capacity planning, network optimization and unit commitment.

According to Jeff Lewis, "We selected Xpress-MP and Dash Optimization because of the combination of industry experience, development tools, component performance and technical support. We have been very pleased with progress so far and look forward to a long and successful partnership."

Alkis Vazacopoulos, Director of Dash optimization Inc. adds, "The Dash Optimization Suite offers a rich modeling framework, leading edge algorithms and intelligent search capabilities. They can easily be embedded and extended, which saves development time and leaves an open evolutionary path as needs expand. PA’s successes in the highly competitive Energy market illustrate the way Dash components enhance software vendors’ reactivity."

PA is a leading global management, systems and technology consulting firm. Established almost 60 years ago, and operating world-wide from over 40 offices in more than 20 countries, PA draws on the knowledge and experience of some 3,200 people, whose skills span the initial generation of ideas and insights all the way through to detailed implementation. Further information can be obtained by contacting Jeff Lewis at 212-973-5988 or email at jeff.lewis@paconsulting.com.