OR in British Gas

On most of the indicators of size, British Gas ranks as one of the largest UK companies. Numbers of Operational Research OR staff employed is not one of these usual indicators, but if it were, British Gas would again figure very prominently. Operational research has a long history of making significant contributions to the major issues facing the company. The rise of Operational Research OR coincided with the rejuvenation of the gas industry some 20 years ago. At that time, one of the major concerns was to minimize the cost of oil and coal feedstocks used to manufacture the gas. Then natural gas was discovered, and the emphasis became the planning and development of the nationwide system for delivering natural gas from the North Sea to our customers. Over the past 20 years this system has grown from nothing to its present state, in which it provides gas for some 17 million customers and almost half of the non-transport energy requirement of the U.K.