By late summer of 1986, the Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. engagement with the City of Dallas Water Utilities was in full swing. I was brought in due to my ADR Datacom, system development and financial background, though I was a little reluctant to leave the Annuity Board, compensation being the motivating factor. The project titled Customer Information, Accounting, Billing System (CIABS) was not a ground-up development but an enhancement to natural gas system which was purchased from the state of Minnesota.

The gas system was chosen due to the similarity in nature to a water utilities company business model (node tracking, accounts receivable, 30/60/90 day aging, etc.)

The head man at the utilities company was a man named King Moss, who was very high profile in those days. Our Managing Partner was the youngest Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. partner in the firm’s history at the age of about thirty five.

Towards the end of the project in the Spring of 1987, our team ventured outside to the plaza to watch the St. Patricks’s Day parade featuring free, green beer and “Spuds McKenzie” riding on the top of a City of Dallas firetruck at the front of the procession.

CIABS was still in use when I left the DFW metroplex twenty years later.