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Industry: General Utilities

Optimizing Field Workforce Operations Using GIS Technology for Improved Environmental, Social, and Governance Outcomes

Posted on by Epoch Solutions Group
Utilities today continue to implement environmental, social, and governance (ESG) business practices to help preserve the environment, improve working conditions, and safely deliver energy to the communities they serve. While ESG continues to be a guiding force for the industry, adhering to ESG principles takes thoughtful strategic planning and the right investments in tools and technologies. By all measures, advances in GIS mapping technologies are helping utilities fulfill their responsibilities as stewards of the environment. Here are four ways GIS frameworks can help utilities optimize their field operations to advance their ESG vision and deliver safer, more sustainable environmental outcomes as a result.

1. Supporting the Prevention of Wildfires

One of the most impactful ways GIS technologies improve ESG outcomes is in the fight against wildfires and other impacts of climate change. The ability to digitally map the terrain across service areas at a granular level allows utility companies to better track vegetation growth patterns – and determine which wooded areas pose the greatest fire danger going forward. With this real-time field data in hand, utility companies can proactively address potential trouble spots before they escalate and manage vegetation in ways that minimize environmental risks.

2. Going Paperless

Traditionally, field data collection has been a paper-intensive process, requiring crews to fill out hard-copy forms, take notes manually, and draw their own illustrations and schematics to record the condition of infrastructure assets. With an advanced GIS mapping technology implemented in a field service management platform, utility companies can instead fully digitize data collection, allowing field crews to capture, record, and disseminate the field data they collect using just their smartphones. The most sophisticated platforms on the market today come with a highly intuitive mobile app that field workers can easily download and operate, online or off, from any mobile device they use on the job. Not only does this technology eliminate the volumes of paper once generated by the industry, but it also facilitates faster, clearer communication between field crews, internal employees, and customers, for better response times to service requests and improved infrastructure performance overall.

3. Reducing Energy Consumption

GIS mapping technology is proving instrumental in helping utility companies prioritize the scheduling and deployment of crews and ensuring that their time and equipment are fully optimized. One of the most valuable benefits GIS technology offers utility companies today stems from their embedded route optimization tools. These tools of productivity allow utility personnel to pinpoint the exact location of field crew members, equipment, and other resources, and automatically determine the most efficient route from their current location to the next deployment. As a result, crews can minimize their time in transit – and their fuel consumption – as they travel from place to place. In addition to reducing a utility’s energy usage, route optimization applications are yielding significant cost savings for customers across the region.

4. Safeguarding the Field Workforce

For many utilities, pipelines, powerlines, and other infrastructure assets span a highly diverse terrain, from complex urban settings to remote mountainous areas, swampland, deserts, and waterways. Inspecting, maintaining, and repairing utility assets often takes crews into dangerous, unfamiliar settings that can put their safety at risk. GIS technologies help ensure safer working conditions for field crews by allowing utilities to quickly sift through the immense volumes of field data they collect and pass pertinent information on to crews, so they are aware of – and prepared to navigate – any hazardous conditions. Once on site, field crews can send up-to-date data back to internal operations teams as well, information that can be stored, shared, and analyzed immediately for real-time actionable insights into the condition of infrastructure assets and their surrounding environment. Having this level of situational awareness helps utility companies quickly identify workplace hazards and make more informed, proactive decisions on how to address them.

The Benefits of a Platform-Level Solution

As a utility company executive, the technologies you implement today will have a significant impact on your company’s ability to operate sustainably in the future. To ensure that your utility continues to meet advancing environmental standards, deploy a comprehensive, platform-level field workforce management solution using GIS technology. A feature-rich GIS mapping framework allows your utility company to easily collect, access, and share field data, seamlessly integrate your infrastructure assets, and enable the technological scale and extensibility needed to deploy future innovations. To unlock all the benefits offered by GIS mapping technology, look for a field management solution that features a powerful, integrated scheduling engine designed to streamline and automate operational workflows. The platform you select should also feature a highly visual, interactive map-based interface that updates and displays real-time field data and allows internal teams to automatically initiate crew deployments with drag-and-drop simplicity. With GIS mapping technology deployed as part of your field workforce management platform, all stakeholders, from your administrative teams to field crews deployed in the most remote locales, can better communicate and collaborate – and ultimately make more informed, data-driven decisions to ensure safer, more sustainable energy delivery. Let us help you plan the next steps on your ESG journey. Contact us for a free demonstration of our EpochField platform utilizing GIS technology today.
Scheduling Guide

3 Ways to Incorporate the Needs of Field Teams into Utility Digitization Plans

Posted on by Epoch Solutions Group
New GIS mapping platforms are fast emerging, helping utility companies digitize their field data and automate their operations for improved service reliability, accelerated response times, and better communication across back-office teams and field crews. However, while these platforms hold significant promise to transform the way utilities operate, introducing them to the thousands of workers deployed in the field can be a challenge. After all, many utility field crew workers have been doing their jobs the same way for decades – and learning entirely new processes and workflows can be challenging as well as unwelcome. To help field crews more readily embrace these important new tools of productivity, utility companies should consider the needs of this pivotal workforce in the earliest design phases of a solution. As aptly stated by Customer Think, “good user interface design determines the success of an application. If the customers find the application to be too complicated to navigate or too busy and confusing, then irrespective of how many features and add-ons it provides, it will be left desolated, untouched, and unused.” Here are three steps utility companies can take to ensure that their digitization investments are aligned with the needs of all stakeholders, and that the solutions they deploy deliver the features, functionality, and easy navigation their field crews require.

1. Conduct a Needs Assessment

With any large software implementation, this is always a best practice. So, what exactly goes into an effective needs assessment? According to IT Alliance a needs assessment is defined as a “systematic review of your company’s technology requirements, taking into account what is needed today, and the expected needs based on your plan of growth.” To determine your current and future needs, it is of paramount importance to gather input upfront from all employees, contractors, vendors, and others who will be using the new platform. Accordingly, your needs assessment should query stakeholders on what they like and dislike about their current processes and workflows, and what improvements they would like to see a new technology deliver. Communicate with field crews the reasons for the new solution, and how these changes will both benefit the company – and help them do their jobs better, faster, and easier. In bringing many voices to the table, and listening to field crew input, you will have a better understanding of the pain points in their daily tasks today – and can proceed intelligently and confidently with the development of your software design requirements.

2. Select a Configurable Platform

The next step in the development process will be selecting a vendor partner. When considering an initiative as broad and complex as the deployment of a field management digitization platform, it is best to take a holistic approach that considers only solutions that are enterprise-wide, and highly configurable. A flexible, extensible, enterprise-grade digitization platform will allow you to seamlessly implement customized features and functionality to meet specific user needs your field crews and others have outlined – and build out the platform with emerging technologies that will enhance your field operations for years to come. In addition, this flexibility allows the new solution to seamlessly integrate into your current processes rather than forcing new ways of working unnecessarily. Ultimately, the digitization solution you select should serve as a point of integration across the environment, including the many business and GIS applications your utility has hosted in the cloud and on back-office servers. It should also enable automated, data-driven field operations scheduling and dispatching, and should support a device-agnostic app that is easy for field crews to access, download, and use from their own mobile devices. Finally, the new platform should enable real-time data processing, synching, and visibility across all systems, applications, and users, so informed decisions can be made, and collaborative processes between internal teams and field crews are improved.

3. Provide Testing, Training, and Support

Once the development of your new digitization platform is near completion, it is essential that you conduct beta testing with a variety of internal users before going live with the solution. As noted by Adobe, beta testing is “a type of user acceptance testing where the product team gives a nearly finished product to a group of target users to evaluate product performance in the real world.” Involving members of your field crew workforce in beta testing ensures that they can provide feedback on how the solution is performing for them, so you can make any modifications to the features, navigation, and other aspects of the platform’s functionality before the solution is moved into production. Remember, though, that you are also asking your field crews to make significant changes to how they work. To that end, make sure that you offer sufficient training and support resources so field crews can confidently move forward, taking full advantage of all the advanced functionality and efficiencies digitization has to offer. According to software industry experts, there are four modes of training you should consider leveraging to ensure field crews can quickly master the new software: self-study, eLearning, face-to-face learning, and coaching. So, selecting a full-service technology provider with in-house experts who can scale training for the size and diversity of your field crew workforce – and provide ongoing technical support will be critical to the successful adoption of the new solution.

Partnering with Epoch

For decades, Epoch Solutions Group has been driving utility industry innovation by delivering technologies and tools that are purpose-built for the unique needs of utility companies. Our flagship digitization and geospatial mapping platform, EpochField, enables field operations managers to integrate data, systems, applications, and users into a seamlessly connected ecosystem that unleashes the power of data and enables easy, automated workflows and processes from end to end. EpochField’s intuitive map-based interface allows operations managers to identify, assess, schedule, and reassign field crews, equipment, and other resources, based on deep, real-time field data visibility – all with drag-and-drop simplicity. And EpochField is just as simple for field crews to use. A full-featured companion mobile app is easily downloaded and launched from any Windows, Android, or iOS device deployed in the field, and offers complete functionality both online and off. This allows field crews, no matter where they are located, to digitally collect, document, share, and report on infrastructure and environmental conditions right from their smartphones, leveraging all the benefits of EpochField’s advanced automation technology and the broad situational awareness enabled by real-time field data digitization. Because EpochField is highly configurable, it will seamlessly support future technology deployments as well, so you can continue to build out your infrastructure to meet the needs of your valued customers as your service area grows and changes. Let us help you transform your field operations and enhance service levels across the communities you serve. Schedule an EpochField demonstration today.
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7 Reasons to Invest in a Field Management Platform Featuring GIS Technology

Posted on by Epoch Solutions Group

For utility companies, effectively managing assets, documenting those activities, and scheduling any necessary maintenance or damage response is essential to promoting operational efficiencies and service uptime. Having real-time data on how personnel, equipment, and infrastructure are performing across the service area allows utility field crews and back-office teams to streamline the scheduling of routine maintenance, inspections, and service calls, and enables the swift response times consumers expect when outages occur.

To unlock the high levels of situational awareness utility companies need today, they are increasingly investing in advanced GIS mapping solutions that capture and process field asset data digitally, in real time. With this critical infrastructure data at their fingertips, field operations teams can quickly assess conditions on the ground and make more informed scheduling, dispatching, and planning decisions accordingly.

So, how can utilities leverage GIS asset management technologies to improve their operations, reduce outages, and deliver safer, more reliable energy to the customers they serve? Here are a few pivotal use cases for GIS mapping solutions that speak to the benefits of the technology.

1. Using data to drive maintenance and repair decisions

GIS mapping technology allows utility companies to automatically trace and track the history and condition of infrastructure assets throughout their lifecycles. With the technology, utilities can also track the exact whereabouts of field crews, equipment, and vehicles in real time – and view all this field data through one holistic, digital map-based interface. Using intuitive navigation tools, these interactive dashboards allow back-office teams to drill down into inspection, maintenance, and repair records for infrastructure assets displayed on the map, determine which assets are in most need of servicing, and – with touch-screen simplicity – automatically generate field crew assignments, work orders, and dispatching instructions accordingly.

2. Leveraging data to expedite field crew scheduling

Modern GIS mapping solutions drive scheduling across the entire service area as well, allowing back-office teams to automate the many processes and workflows involved in field operations management. Because field data is seamlessly integrated across a utility company’s enterprise, field crew scheduling can be conducted based on a breadth of information, including which crew members are available at any given time, what their skillsets are, and their proximity to infrastructure assets in need of attention. Once field work is scheduled, the work orders are immediately accessible for viewing and processing by all stakeholders, from back-office teams to crews out in the field. The most advanced solutions on the market also include route optimization tools that automatically provide field workers with the fastest route to get to their next assignments.

3. Reducing manual touchpoints – and the associated human errors

Field data collection today is still typically handled through a hybrid model whereby information is captured through both digital and manual processes. For back-office scheduling and dispatching teams, that often means scanning and keying in data from hand-written field crew notes and schematics and combining it with digital photos, video footage, online communications, and other data sources. This labor-intensive data collection process slows operational productivity, hampers decision-making processes, and is prone to human error. With an advanced GIS mapping solution in place, utilities can take advantage of integrated workflow automation technology to digitally collect, process, store, and synch field data across systems and applications. As a result, they can dramatically reduce the manual labor involved in data collection – and eliminate opportunities for clerical errors as a result.

4. Establishing a comprehensive, centralized data repository

Crews need real-time access to field data to get their work done properly once on site. When data access is limited – or when field data is outdated altogether – crews must pause what they are doing and check in with the home office by phone or email to clarify their next steps. Using an advanced GIS mapping solution allows all stakeholders, from frontline field crews to back-office schedulers and dispatchers, to be working off the same page, with data on infrastructure assets synched in real time across all the systems, applications, and devices they use. In turn, field crews arrive on site with full visibility into what needs to be done so they can conduct routine work more efficiently and strategically address any unplanned issues as well.

5. Leveraging mobile devices in the field

Field crews are comprised of a mix of full-time, part-time, and contracted workers, each with their own smartphones, tablets, and other computing devices. And they are employed by utilities in the thousands. To keep field crews seamlessly connected and communicating with back-office teams, the most advanced GIS mapping solutions on the market come with a mobile app that is easily downloaded and operated from any Windows, Android, or iOS-based device. Empowering field crews with the ability to conduct and report on their work via their own smartphones equips all employees with the data they need to nimbly and intelligently respond to conditions in the field, collaborate and troubleshoot more effectively, and better ensure that infrastructure assets are performing optimally.

6. Improving customer experiences

Today’s digital-first consumers and businesses have come to expect broad real-time data access for virtually any service they use – from Amazon deliveries to Uber ridesharing and restaurant wait times – and they expect the same kind of experience from utilities. The deep situational awareness enabled by GIS asset management tools allows utility employees that interact with the public – from contact center agents to field crew teams – to keep customers informed on exactly when workers will arrive, what type of work is being performed, and how quickly services will be restored.

7. Saving time, labor, and costs

Without the deep data access and visibility enabled by GIS mapping technologies, utilities may find their crews crisscrossing the vast service areas they manage to address issues that pop up unexpectedly in a scattershot manner. By contrast, having geospatial data universally accessible allows utility company employees to move from a reactive posture to a more proactive stance, in which they can identify and mitigate infrastructure issues and risks before costly outages occur. As a result, an investment in GIS asset management technology helps utility companies operate more efficiently and strategically, cut their response times, save time and labor, and deliver better outcomes for the communities they serve.

Discover how an advanced, platform-grade field asset management solution featuring GIS technology can digitally transform your field operations. Watch our video.

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5 Field Operations Workflows Transformed by Automation

Posted on by Epoch Solutions Group

For utility companies, automation is innovation. Until recently, utility field crew operations were managed largely through manual processes that required teams of administrators, reams of paperwork, and constant back-and-forth communications between internal employees and dispatched crews to assess conditions on the ground and direct field work accordingly.

While for decades this hands-on approach was the industry standard for utility field crew management, today that is no longer the case. New geospatial and digitization technologies purpose-built for the industry are now automating many manual workflows while making critical infrastructure data readily accessible for real-time reporting, analysis, dissemination, and decision making.

Here are five essential utility company workflows being transformed by automation today. Together, they illustrate the potential of advanced digitization platforms to modernize the industry, expedite processes, and make energy delivery safer, more sustainable, and more reliable than ever before.

1. Field Crew Scheduling

Field crew scheduling is a costly and complex task. Deploying thousands of field workers across the vast geographic regions most utility companies serve presents a host of logistical challenges, including difficult terrain to navigate, volumes of data to sift through, and unreliable Internet access in many remote locales.

With field data digitized and synched across systems and applications, administrators can leverage real-time situational awareness in every scheduling decision they make. And with automated workflows in place to streamline scheduling processes, they can eliminate the phone tag, email threads, and manual data entry they once relied on to coordinate field operations and keep crews informed.

2. Outages and Repairs

Outages can occur any time during the day or night and managing a customer’s experience during an unexpected outage can be a critical interaction for any utility company. When this happens, repairs are frequently needed after hours and on weekends when labor costs are high, and many workers are not available. So, workers are often redirected from their regularly scheduled responsibilities, which can significantly disrupt previously planned work schedules.

Automating the tracking and dispatching of field personnel allows administrators to deploy the right crews to areas in need much faster than through manual processes. The most advanced workflow management tools also automatically reconfigure master schedules following an outage so vitally important routine maintenance work gets done on time and on budget as well.

3. Assignments and Dispatching

Deciding where to deploy field crews is a data-intensive exercise. If data is not captured and stored digitally in a central database for automated updating and dissemination, crews can be left with confusing or incomplete information out in the field.

Automated dispatching processes through a comprehensive scheduling and workflow management tool allows administrators to quickly pinpoint the current location of field crews, equipment, and assets, and determine where crews are most needed next.

The most sophisticated workflow solutions on the market enable the dispatching and relocation of crews through highly visual, map-based dashboards that automatically generate work orders and dispatching instructions from intuitive, touchscreen interfaces.

Digitizing and automating field operations data also allows utility companies to leverage emerging intelligent technologies, such as AI, to create predictive models from historical data that can aide in the planning of future field crew assignments.

4. Inspections

During field crew inspections, workers are tasked with assessing the condition of field assets and their surrounding environments, recording their findings, and delivering this information to back-office teams for analysis, scheduling, and dispatching purposes.

When this data is collected in a manual fashion, it is often provided piecemeal to the utility company, and can include many hard copy documents that need to be scanned or keyed into central databases – extra steps that can slow productivity dramatically.

Documenting inspections through advanced workflow management tools allows field workers to conduct data collection processes digitally instead, capturing photos, information, and notes via their mobile devices. Once data is recorded digitally, it can be synched in real time to back-office systems and applications for immediate use by administrative teams. The most advanced solutions in the industry come equipped with device-agnostic mobile apps that allow information to be captured both online and off, from any Windows, Android, or iOS smartphone a field worker may be using.

5. Vegetation Management

To effectively reduce the risks associated with vegetation fall-in and grow-in around power supply systems, utility companies need ongoing visibility into the status of each asset’s surrounding terrain.

Accordingly, utility companies gather vegetation data from a variety of sources, including field crew documentation and aerial imagery, using both manual and digital techniques. Data arriving in different formats must then be digitized and processed by back-office applications so administrative teams can assess how vegetation is growing in each locale and manage it accordingly.

The ability to automate data collection processes allows vegetation data around utility assets to be tracked digitally on a continuous basis. Based on this dynamic, real-time field data, utilities can plan their vegetation management practices and better ensure that the environment is preserved, lives and property are protected, and that the utility company is operating in compliance with environmental standards set by local, state, and federal agencies.

Let us help you digitally transform your field operations workflows. Schedule an EpochField demonstration today.

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Digitizing Workflows: How 4 Utilities Are Putting Geospatial Mapping to Work

Posted on by Epoch Solutions Group

Natural disasters like the recent landing of Hurricane Ian on the shores of Florida remind us of how important our energy resources are and just how complex the management of them can be.

While millions of Floridians waited patiently for power to be restored in the aftermath of the storm, the utility companies grappling with the event pulled thousands of field crew operators together in a coordinated taskforce to bring much-needed energy resources to the areas impacted.

While hurricanes the likes of Ian occur infrequently, the fact is that the gas and electricity Americans rely on from coast to coast are both vitally important to the safe, efficient operation of our economy and reliably available thanks to the dedication, expertise, and responsiveness of utility companies nationwide.

To help mitigate the effects of outages large and small, a new generation of geospatial mapping technologies is fast advancing. These innovative solutions are already proving to be true game changers for the industry by streamlining, automating, and expediting energy delivery processes and enabling real-time data visibility and sharing across field crew and back-office teams alike.

Here are a few examples of how the technology works – and how Epoch Solutions Group is leading the way to a new, more efficient, reliable energy delivery network by placing cutting-edge innovations in the hands of digital-savvy utility companies.

Empowering Mobile Field Crews at Ameren

For too long, staff at Missouri-based Ameren relied on mobile mapping solutions that were only updated quarterly, resulting in outdated information—or data that could only be used online—which was impractical for workers on the go. And because Ameren’s existing work management tool didn’t have an integrated map, mobile crews struggled to gain spatial reference as to where their work needed to be done.

To address this challenge, the utility partnered with Epoch Solutions Group to implement its EpochField field operations management platform and leverage the company’s extensive GIS consulting services.

Scalable and highly configurable, the EpochField mobile mapping solution is built on ArcGIS Runtime SDK for .NET. Using the SDK’s Xamarin libraries, the app runs on Windows 10, iOS, and Android devices, allowing users to work offline or online, download and view updated GIS data on demand, and draw accurate field diagrams with the map markup tool.

Equipped with an offline, map-centric mobile solution configured to their unique needs, mobile crews at Ameren are now completing their daily work—from routine maintenance and inspections to making repairs and dealing with service outages—using the most up-to-date information available.

Because they enjoy offline functionality and real-time data sharing with back-office staff, field operations have been transformed, communication between teams is much faster and clearer, and all stakeholders company-wide can now deliver the outstanding, reliable service their customers have come to expect.

Read the full case study here.

Modernizing Workforce Management at Entergy

A full-service utility, Entergy generates and distributes electric power to 2.9 million customers across Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, and natural gas to 108,000 customers in the New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas.

Recently, Entergy embarked on an enterprise strategic initiative to modernize its electrical and gas operations by deploying an enterprise asset management system (EAM) and a workforce management system (WFMS) across all its operating companies.

Initially, Entergy selected EpochField to enable faster, more efficient field inspections of gas assets, and in 2018 the utility company built on this implementation by deploying EpochField as its mobile workforce management solution for all field crews responsible for electric transmission and distribution, gas, and vegetation management.

Ultimately, EpochField proved to be the right solution for Entergy because the platform was able to integrate with the utility’s complex legacy systems for GIS and asset management, and with its mobile client application as well.

A single product suite for all field workflows, EpochField delivered the geospatial data crews and back-office employees needed to schedule, author work types, and create work orders for the utility’s thousands of field crew workers. According to Entergy’s management team, EpochField outperformed other solutions on the market in its ability to automate and expedite field service operations and workflows.

Since the full deployment of EpochField in 2020, Entergy has achieved the operational efficiencies and enterprise-wide integration the utility company needed to ensure reliable energy delivery to its vast customer base. Today, the tool is proving instrumental in the utility’s quest to reduce overall storm response time which, in turn, is yielding significant financial benefits – and consumer goodwill – as efficiency gains are improving service uptime while reducing operational costs.

Read the full case study here.

Enabling Real-Time Data Visibility at FortisAlberta

As a regulated electricity distribution utility serving central and southern Alberta, Canada, FortisAlberta is responsible for ensuring the safe and reliable delivery of electricity to more than half a million residential, farm, and business customers across the region.

To achieve the consistent reliable service its customers require, the utility’s 1,100 employees work day and night to keep systems up and running, prevent and respond to outages, survey and repair infrastructure assets, and maintain the power grid. Recently, FortisAlberta has developed a Grid Modernization Program that includes enhancing, replacing, or upgrading existing operational technology and information technology systems to better serve its customers, improve the reliability of its distribution network, be prepared for changes in the regulatory environment and distribution grid with the introduction of renewable energy, and gain operational efficiencies.

The solution is an enterprise-wide Mobile Workforce Management (MWFM) system based on Epoch Solutions Group’s EpochField technology and specifically, its Work Scheduler Solution.

Unlike other applications on the market, FortisAlberta found the EpochField platform to be configurable for their unique needs. “Our objective is to put in place a single system for all work scheduled in the field, and to provide all stakeholders wherever they may be located with a single source of truth on what has been completed, what is happening now, and what is planned for the future,” said Dave Stratichuk, Manager of Operation Technology for FortisAlberta.

According to Stratichuk, the tool is performing as planned. “When we are making real-time scheduling decisions, we automatically have accurate, up-to-date information on who is on vacation, who is taking sick leave, and who has other scheduling limitations. Before, all this information had to be input into systems manually,” said Stratichuk.

Read the full case study here.

Digitizing Field Operations at San Diego Gas & Electric

San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) serves approximately 1.5 million electric and 900,000 gas customers in Southern California’s San Diego and Orange County communities. Until recently, the utility company relied on its legacy back-end systems and applications to guide its field operations, including annual infrastructure patrols, technologies put in place years ago.

However, when the software provider of SDG&E’s primary field management solution announced its plans to retire the application, SDG&E’s management made the decision to invest in new infrastructure tools and technologies to power the future of its field operations

According to Jeffrey Lewis, an experienced industry consultant working with SDG&E to orchestrate the digital transformation initiative, the utility was seeking a new platform designed to deliver more robust functionality to its field crews and to aide in the annual patrols critical to identifying areas in need of further inspection, vegetation management, repairs, and other routine maintenance tasks.

After a thorough review of solutions, SDG&E selected the EpochField enterprise-grade field crew mapping and management solution. A platform-level application, EpochField digitizes field operations data and connects field workers on the frontlines to third-party, back-office systems and applications – from anywhere their deployments take them via its device-agnostic mobile app.

Before implementing EpochField, SDG&E field workers relied primarily on paper maps – some 27,000 of them – to manually record infrastructure data collected in the field during its annual field patrols. This process generated volumes of hard-written forms, sketches, and other documents that had to be individually digitized and formatted for uploading to SDG&E’s back-end systems and applications.

For SDG&E, implementing EpochField has been a huge step toward faster, more efficient field operations – and more sustainable business practices overall. “EpochField has empowered our field workers with its intuitive, automated mobile app which has delivered all the functionality workers need to quickly and easily record infrastructure data in the field, right from their smartphones, tablets, and laptops,” said Lewis. “Now, for the first time, SDG&E is bypassing many of the redundant manual steps once involved in the collection, recording, and processing of field data.”

Plus, he adds, fewer manual touchpoints have led to greater data integrity and accuracy, vitally important to grid safety and compliance, and to ensuring reliable service uptime for all the utility’s customers.

Read the full case study here.

Discover how geospatial technology can transform your own field crew operations. Request a free EpochField demonstration today.

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Ensure Your Field Solution is Configurable for Your Utility Operations

Posted on by Epoch Solutions Group
Utility company field operations run on a complex maze of systems, applications, and networks that have been developed and advanced over time. Within these distributed environments, legacy systems must connect to the latest cloud, on-site, mobile devices, platforms, servers, and applications to expedite workflows and enable efficient and accurate field crew and resource deployment. This often needs to occur seamlessly across thousands of miles of physical assets within the utility’s service area. For many utility companies, the sheer complexity of infrastructure assets they must maintain presents numerous challenges, especially when new technologies are introduced into the environment. To take full advantage of all that Big Tech has to offer the industry, new software implementations must be tailored for the unique composition of each utility’s infrastructure. And no two utility company enterprises are alike. Like many utilities today, you may be looking to modernize your field operations systems in order to achieve greater integration across assets, data visibility, workflow automation, and other pivotal benefits. To ensure you are selecting a platform that can be configured for your own unique needs, investing in the right partner provider and solution is key. Here’s what you need to know.

Developing A Platform Configured for the Way You Work

While there are many infrastructure solutions for utilities on the market today, not all enable the flexibility, scale, and configurability needed to adequately serve the industry’s complex demands. When selecting a platform, it is of paramount importance to ensure that the solution you standardize on will meet your needs now and grow along with you as you add field assets, your service area population grows, and new innovations emerge designed to streamline utility field operations. First, you need a platform that enables digitization of field asset and crew data – and that serves as a point of integration across the full array of software and hardware solutions that populate your enterprise. This type of ecosystem-wide framework will ensure that you are able to leverage the investments your utility company has already made in other infrastructure assets, including feature-rich point solutions that address pressing operational challenges. Because there is an urgency about the work you perform, the solution you select should facilitate automation of routine tasks, such as data entry, that can slow field scheduling and dispatching processes and become devastating bottlenecks should an unexpected outage or unfolding emergency occur. Real-time, two-way data synchronization between all mobile devices field workers may use and both the back-end systems and cloud-hosted applications driving your enterprise is essential to have as well, as this will enable easy, fast, communication and dissemination of data to all stakeholders. This solution you choose should also work in concert with a companion scheduling engine, designed to leverage digitized field mapping data and enable the deployment of field crews and resources to wherever they need to be quickly and easily. The most sophisticated platforms on the market today present field data to all stakeholders in a single, holistic, digitized map of the service area, which automatically populates and updates as work is performed and field crews are redeployed. This real-time data sharing provides your teams with the ongoing situational awareness needed to pinpoint and troubleshoot problem areas and ensure that crew deployments are prioritized and positioned optimally, according to your service area’s needs. The interface of this dashboard is important to consider as well. The ability to dispatch and reassign crews automatically with drag-and-drop simplicity allows your team to work more collaboratively and to visually see what is happening with deployments, and where, without having to manually prepare and pore over work orders and other manual documentation.

Beyond the Platform: Why Service and Support Are Key

Because the solution you choose today will serve as your operations foundation for years to come, you need more than technology to ensure reliable energy delivery. You need ongoing access to technical experts that bring both the engineering experience and deep industry insights required to help you build out your field operations platform as your needs grow and change. This right partner should include full-featured, infrastructure-wide digitization, work scheduling, and dispatching solution you need to meet the challenges you face on a daily basis. It should also maintain a full staff of engineers, project managers, and other industry experts who work with your own internal teams from the initial design phases to tailor the features and functionality of the utility platform for your needs. For utilities, the need for configuration is most pressing when it comes to workflows and scheduling, with workflows presenting the greatest challenges. This is because each workflow that is configured can impact the performance of others that it touches across the technological continuum. To ensure that workflows are optimized and prioritized in ways that meet the needs of all stakeholders, make sure your partner developers hold pre-design workshops that bring together all who will work with the with the goal of generating a list of project deliverables for everyone involved.

Unlocking Data Visibility, Automating Workflows

To achieve the integration across the environment to enable the real-time data sharing utility companies need, the best utility field operations automation platforms should be able to directly communicate with all of your utility company’s application stack and databases – including fundamental business process applications, such as Esri, Oracle and SAP. To complement this, a queue mechanism should be able to handle long-term processing tasks, such as work order creation, which requires tracing an electrical feeder to identify all structures along a circuit in need of inspection, for example. The use of Python scripts allows both process execution and automation in configurations that are unique to each company’s needs as well. With the right tool deployed, your field operations administrators can schedule and dispatch resources with the full confidence of knowing that data is up to fully up to date. This means, for example, if someone has taken a vacation or sick day, the scheduler automatically knows this and sets schedules accordingly. And when an emergency occurs, the system should quickly deploy the right workers, with the right skillsets, who are located in proximity, to the most critical locales to get services up and running quickly.

Making the Transition

While transitioning from manual processing and reporting of field data to full digitization of these workflows can present a learning curve for employees and field crews at first, your teams will appreciate the simplicity of EpochField’s interface, and the dramatic improvements they realize in efficiency, productivity, and resource utilization when using the tool. Ultimately, having the real-time data they need right at their fingertips is transformative, enabling visibility into work being performed and the seamless collaboration between teams your utility company needs to keep service levels high for your valued customers. See how EpochField can be configured to handle the unique demands of your utility company’s field operations. Schedule a free demonstration today.
Schedule a Free Workforce Management Assessment

How Utilities Can Improve Productivity and Decrease Labor Costs with Automated Scheduling Software

Posted on by Epoch Solutions Group
For utility companies today, field service scheduling is one of the costliest and most complex tasks they undertake – and one of the more critically important. According to industry research published on Energy Central, field operation labor costs typically represent as much as 60% of the overall asset maintenance costs utility companies incur. For many water and gas utilities, these costs can be as high as 80% of total spend. This is because so much of the scheduling and workforce management processes are carried out manually by utility personnel. While this labor-intensive approach was sufficient for the needs of the industry years ago, today’s public is accustomed to much faster, more responsive services from the organizations that touch their lives (think Amazon and Netflix), and utilities must digitally transform their service models to keep their operations in step with what consumers today expect from them.

Achieving Workforce Efficiencies, Cost Savings

Consider that the average utility has about 500 to 800 field crew workers – without field service scheduling software, utilities typically employ one scheduling administrator for every 12 to 15 field crew members they manage. In implementing an automated scheduling software solution that is data-driven and mobile-ready, utilities can “cut ratios from one scheduling staff member per 15 field workers to one staff member per 80 in the field,” according to commentary published by consulting firm BCG. The productivity gains achieved through an advanced, automated scheduling solution allow utility companies to increase workers’ availability in the field as well – by as much as 50% and “reduce by 25% the time needed for routine jobs.” This is because scheduling and workforce automation allows utility companies to dramatically accelerate their ability to track all the moving parts involved in the scheduling and dispatching processes and complete field work much more efficiently. Digitizing and automating the scheduling solution also allows utility companies to leverage AI and machine learning technologies, which can create predictive models of their future staffing requirements based on historical data. As a result, advanced field service scheduling software can enable highly accurate, data-driven capacity planning throughout the year so utility administrators can arrange for all the field crew workers they need well in advance. And when a crisis occurs that leaves a group of customers out of service due to a storm, fire, pipeline leak or other adverse event, automated field service scheduling software can quickly process the real-time geospatial data surrounding the area and determine the best, fastest routes for field crew teams to get to impacted areas. In addition to saving valuable time for field workers and operations managers alike, an intelligent automated scheduling solution can significantly cut labor costs for utilities as a direct result of these productivity gains.

Choose the Strongest Scheduling Tool for Your Field Automation Needs

The most advanced automated work schedulers on the market today empower operations managers and dispatchers to streamline field operations resources. They offer these capabilities:
  • The ability to map out both scheduled work and work to be scheduled
  • Dynamically updating maps that display the location of all field crews and equipment
  • Access to field data from any connected device, from field crew smartphones to back-office servers and the cloud
  • Both map-centric and non-spatial presentations of work order information, with the ability to query the database
  • Work and work cycle scheduling functionality and dispatching features for the field – considering each worker’s personal time off and other scheduling data recorded in external systems
  • Automated assignment of work to users, user roles, and groups of users
  • Management and assignment of field equipment resources
  • Automatic creation of work orders based on network tracing operations
  • Auditing features for completed work
  • Creation and archiving of historical records
  • Reporting and analysis functionality for work performed
  • System and application event logging features
Learn how utility companies are using automated field service scheduling software to streamline business processes, accelerate field crew response times, and deploy the right equipment to locales in need with our latest guide, “Working Faster, Smarter: A Guide to Automated Field Crew Scheduling”.
Schedule a Free Workforce Management Assessment

3 Unique Utility CEO Challenges Solved by Digitizing Field Operations

Posted on by Epoch Solutions Group

For utility company CEOs, the demands of the job have never been higher. An aging workforce and staffing shortages are impacting the ability of utility companies to maintain high service levels and quickly address emergency outages when they occur.

Legislation governing utility companies continues to advance as well, imposing ever higher standards for vegetation management, environmental preservation, and other aspects of utility business practices. Rising costs to maintain and expand infrastructure assets are also impacting utility companies, a dynamic fueled by supply chain issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

To meet these and other industry demands going forward, utility CEOs and their teams must make sound strategic decisions and technological investments now. Fortunately, new advanced digital utility tools are fast emerging that promise to help utilities better manage key aspects of their field operations and infrastructure.

So, what should utility CEOs be doing now to digitally transform operations, and how can investing in the right utility software solutions help CEOs and their teams overcome their most pressing field operations challenges?

Challenge #1: The Staffing Squeeze

With 50% of utility workers set to retire over the next decade, the industry will soon face a massive loss of field technicians, operators, engineers, managers, supervisors, and administrative employees. In addition to leaving them shorthanded, this loss of experience and institutional knowledge will create room for operational errors which can put field workers in danger.

To mitigate the impact of a shrinking workforce, utility CEOs must focus on supplementing experienced workers with intelligent technologies and hiring or training staff to utilize these tools that:

  • Digitize workforce management to reduce human error and accelerate productivity
  • Enable real-time tracking and tracing of assets and conditions out in the field
  • Integrate systems and applications across the environment for better communication and faster data processing

Solutions that support field-level digitization are continually being updated and expanded upon to meet the most current needs of the utility industry. Consider platforms that are planning to enable intelligent technologies, such as AR-enabled collaboration solutions which capture critical knowledge from video calls and other sources for future reference by inexperienced new hires entering the industry. They should also be preparing to leverage AI and machine learning to help guide critical operational decisions, such as where to deploy field crews first when disasters strike.

Challenge #2: Regulatory Headwinds

The regulatory landscape governing utility companies is changing as well, and CEOs are faced with increasing requirements for tracking and tracing the location and condition of their infrastructure assets.

For example, consider ASTM F2897, a new regulation requiring gas companies to track the location and condition of assets at a much more granular level. New mandates designed to preserve the environment and help prevent wildfires continue to be enacted as well, calling for greater, more detailed tracking of power grids, pipelines, and other infrastructure assets – with fines imposed when service outages occur.

Broad access to field crew data and the ability to digitally analyze this data can help utility companies prove that their operations are in full compliance with industry laws. The digital workforce management platform selected should also allow utility companies to:

  • Leverage geospatial technology to track and trace assets in great detail
  • Display data in visual, map-centric dashboards, making it easier and faster to identify risks
  • Automate business processes to expedite workflows and reduce service downtime

With the ability to capture and record pivotal field data in real time, utility companies are much better prepared to demonstrate compliance with the high regulatory standards being set for them.

Challenge #3: Spiraling Infrastructure Costs

Utility CEOs are also grappling with rising operational costs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the related supply chain challenges. As the costs to repair, replace, and upgrade infrastructure assets rise, utility company CEOs must advance their utility’s digital tools and enact new business practices to reduce their labor needs and associated costs.

Implementing a single, enterprise-wide solution can help eliminate the workflow bottlenecks that can tie up personnel, delay field deployments, and result in compounded, costlier damages when emergencies occur.

Ideally, the platform selected should automate these and other essential business processes including:

  • Scheduling field personnel
  • Tracking work in progress
  • Assessing performance
  • Managing assets
  • Identifying opportunities for improvement

With an enterprise-grade digital workforce management platform implemented, utilities can achieve the operational efficiencies needed to reduce headcount which in turn, helps them offset the increasing expenses imposed by rising equipment costs and other supply chain challenges.

Choosing a Provider

For utility CEOs, an investment in a digital workforce management platform should be made with an eye toward the future. In addition to enabling design flexibility and scale, the platform should integrate well across a utility company’s existing infrastructure. The platform selected should also be backed by an organization with a proven track record for overcoming industry-specific challenges.

For more than 15 years, Epoch Solutions Group has helped utility companies manage the full complexities of their field operations by leveraging advanced geospatial and workflow automation technologies. See how EpochField can transform operations for your utility company. Schedule a demo with one of our geospatial technology experts today.

Schedule a Free Workforce Management Assessment

Leverage Utility Field Operations Digitization to Enhance Customer Service

Posted on by Epoch Solutions Group

The economy is digitally transforming, and utility companies are taking note. In fact, according to IDC, by 2023 digitally transformed organizations will contribute to more than half of the global gross domestic product. And the investments made by public and private entities to digitize operations are clearly paying off – so much that organizations the world over are doubling down on the strategy.

Consider industry research showing that 35% of business executives claim digital transformation helps them “better meet customer expectations,” 40% say it helps improve their firm’s operational efficiency, and “38% of executives plan to invest more in technology to make it their competitive advantage.”

To keep pace with innovation and deliver the kind of customer experiences expected today, utility companies are modernizing their infrastructure, automating and digitizing workforce management processes to improve employee productivity and operational efficiencies.

More than Cost Savings

While digital transformation strategies can yield significant time and cost savings for utilities, eliminating manual touchpoints from gas and electric customer service processes is a delicate balancing act. Even though modern consumers value – and expect – the easy, fast access to information they get using your website, social media outlets, chatbots, and other self-service resources, there are many instances in which only a live agent can meet a customer’s service needs.

Though the quality of the customer service you provide isn’t typically associated with your field operations, having an enterprise-grade, digitized workforce management platform in place can prove invaluable during the most critical, time-sensitive customer service interactions. Without immediate digital access to remote field service teams and infrastructure data, your agents may be ill-equipped to respond to customer inquiries during times of need – such as when an outage disrupts their daily lives or ability to conduct business.

Investing in the right utility digital tools can transform service interactions into positive customer experiences that resolve issues faster and instill consumer confidence in your brand. The most advanced solutions on the market today empower live agents and other internal staff members with these and other benefits:

  • Instantaneous exchange of data across systems, applications, locales, and personnel
  • The ability to distill data into strategic insights for more informed decisions on field deployments and other aspects of your operations
  • Automated workflows that expedite processes and reduce human errors
  • Faster, more accurate responses to service inquiries, for more positive customer experiences and better consumer sentiment overall

Beyond Technology

While the breadth of functionality achieved through digitization can prove transformative to your utility company’s operations and service levels, as with any organization sweeping changes to your infrastructure should be supported by a comprehensive change management strategy. Ultimately, staff members need to be well trained on the technologies you are introducing and comfortable assuming any new tasks and responsibilities your digital transformation initiative requires of them.

When evaluating field operation solutions, ensure possible partners provide the training and support resources utility companies need to educate both internal staff members and critical field operations teams on our industry-leading technologies. Implementation teams should be part of the process from the design and development phases of a project through the platform’s roll-out and beyond.

Why Choose EpochField

Epoch Solutions Group’s EpochField Service Platform transforms customer experiences by laying the foundation for business process automation, enterprise-wide data access, and real-time communication between field operations and internal teams, including vitally important customer service agents.

Based on the industry’s most advanced geospatial and workflow management technologies, EpochField enables seamless integration across your utility’s digital infrastructure and automation of processes ranging from data collection and reporting to field operation scheduling and work order management.

With EpochField, utility companies achieve deep visibility into what is happening throughout the regions and communities they serve and can therefore communicate up-to-date information to customers and other stakeholders in real time. Broad data access also helps internal teams quickly prioritize field operation team deployments to optimize service levels and minimize downtime when adverse events occur.

Highly configurable to meet an individual utility company’s unique infrastructure and service requirements, EpochField offers a breadth of essential features, including:

  • Mobile offline viewing for field personnel who are often working in remote locales
  • High-performance maps that dynamically update as new data is fed into the system
  • Configurable work order forms that can be customized for the customer service request at hand

With a track record of success extending back decades, we bring to clients a deep understanding of the technological, operational, and customer service challenges facing utility companies today – and proven industry best practices you can easily adopt now to ensure your investments in digitization deliver on their promise for years to come.

Contact us today to request your free consultation and EpochField demo.

How to Use Geospatial Technology to Automate and Streamline Your Utility Field Operations

Posted on by Epoch Solutions Group

For many utility companies, data collection is largely a manual process, or one that involves a mix of technology and manual record keeping. Data must be collected, digitized, processed, and kept up to date when on-site infrastructure and assets change. Field workers are often also deployed to remote areas with no online connectivity, making it difficult to access and enter the data required to do their jobs. 

In-office personnel also face a variety of challenges around field workforce management – namely, the sheer volume of data being collected from a variety of sources. Data recorded in legacy, on-site systems is also challenging to disseminate to teams of field workers, particularly when it is siloed in disparate computer systems and applications and needed in real time. 

So, what is the solution? With the geographic reach and service demands of utility companies continuing to expand in both size and complexity, the need to digitally streamline operations is more pressing than ever. The right geospatial technology can help companies automate and streamline the management of their geospatial data. 

Key advantages of geospatial technologies include: 

  • Integration of data into operational and business workflow processes to influence decisions on resource allocation and expediting the deployment and management of field crews. 
  • Ability to display physical assets digitally in interactive maps that allow utility personnel to drill down to pertinent details about the assets and their surrounding terrain. 
  • Fast, easy workflow creation and management, efficient work scheduling engines, and data synchronization modules for asset map data. 
  • Integration with enterprise GIS and business applications used by employees and other stakeholders, including Oracle, IBM Maximo, and SAP.

View the recording of our recent webinar, “Uncover Opportunities to Automate & Streamline Field Operations Through Geospatial Innovation”, to learn more about geospatial technologies, as well as the features to look for when selection the right solution for your company.

View the Webinar Recording

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Modernizing Your Approach to Vegetation Management

Posted on by EpochTester

The safety and reliability of power line systems is essential to consumers and businesses alike, and in the era of climate change, vegetation management has never been more critical.  

When vegetation around the power grid is left unchecked, it can interfere with power line systems, with catastrophic results. In fact, vegetation grow-in and fall-in remain the most dominant causes of power outages today. Even more concerning is the devastating impact unmanaged vegetation can have when power line systems are impacted by extreme weather events, such as windstorms, which can bring lines down and send dangerous sparks into the surrounding terrain.  

While in 2021, the financial impact of Western states wildfires reached an alarming $10.9 billion, the human costs of wildfires fueled by downed lines are simply beyond measure. Consider, for example, California’s 2018 Camp Fire, caused by extreme heat and wind conditions that damaged power lines and ultimately ignited one of the worst wildfires in our nation’s history. The Camp Fire consumed a full 153,335 acres in just two weeks, took the lives of 85 people, and destroyed 30,000 homes. Moving at a pace of 80 football fields per minute at its peak, this out-of-control blaze ravaged the entire town of Paradise in four hours. 

To help mitigate the effects of wildfires and power outages, utility companies today are making vegetation management a top priority, seeking new tools and technologies to aid in the fight.  

Why Digitization Is the Answer

Inspections and forecasting of vegetation are key mitigators of vegetation management and drivers of operational priorities and budgets for utility transmission and distribution departments. To effectively reduce the risks of vegetation fall-in and grow-in around power supply systems, utility companies need deep ongoing visibility into exactly where vegetation growth is posing the greatest threats.  

To gain that level of visibility, utility companies conduct routine line inspections and gather vegetation data from a variety of different sources as well, such as aerial imagery and LiDAR, which is typically employed to capture data from above, using helicopters, airplanes, and drones. Because all this data is collected via disparate manual and digital processes in a range of different technological formats, structuring, synthesizing, and processing it presents challenges.  

The vast amount of data available to utility companies today also presents technological challenges – along with opportunities. For example, rapid deployment of new satellites is increasing the geographic data available to the industry exponentially, information that can be used to dynamically track the state of vegetation around the power grid. However, processing all this data in an efficient manner takes immense computing power, and utility companies are often restrained by existing legacy infrastructure that lacks the high-performance computing required to analyze such volumes of data. 

Utility companies also often suffer from an inability to convert raw data into the standardized formats required to leverage new advanced technologies available to them, such as AI and machine learning. Going forward, utilities must modernize their approach to vegetation management by advancing their infrastructure to keep pace with innovation, digitizing and standardizing the data they aggregate, and automating workflows to streamline their operations and meet the high vegetation management standards the industry has set. 

Selecting the Right Technology

As a first step, utility companies should invest in a single, enterprise-wide platform that serves as both a central repository for field data and point of integration across systems and applications. Having the right digitization platform in place will ensure universal data access by stakeholders and ultimately help streamline workforce deployment workflows. Integration across the environment will help eliminate workflow bottlenecks and enable support for innovative new technologies as they emerge. The most sophisticated solutions in the industry today are web-based, offer expansive support for mobile devices deployed in field operations, and are built to scale.  

The ideal digitization platform should also capture and standardize data from a breadth of resources, including drones, satellites, mobile devices, and manual documentation. Support for new, emerging industry AI and machine learning solutions is essential to have as well.  

Optimally, the platform should also automate business processes from end to end – including scheduling field personnel, tracking work in progress, assessing performance, managing assets, and identifying opportunities for improvement.  

Meeting the Challenge with EpochField

While there are many digitization solutions on the market today, few offer the functionality, flexibility, and scale needed to meet the vegetation management demands of the utility industry. 

A web-based, enterprise-wide solution, the EpochField workflow automation and management platform is tailored for utility companies and can be configured to an organization’s specific needs. EpochField comes with full-featured modules for field workflow creation and management, work order and workforce scheduling, and asset map data distribution to the field, and is built for seamless integration across the infrastructure, from field mobile devices to on-premise servers and cloud-based applications. As the use of emerging technologies becomes more widespread, EpochField will continue to adapt to these and other data collection sources to provide utilities with the critical data needed for ongoing decision making. 

As a foundation for network and asset workflows, EpochField offers features like offline viewing, high-performance maps, and configurable work order forms, allowing utility personnel to easily view their assets on a map-centric interface, wherever they are located – in the office or in the field. 

As a result, utility companies can meet the complex challenge of vegetation management head on, dramatically increasing system uptime while preserving lives, property, and the environment surrounding the power grid. 

Click here to schedule a demo today. 

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Top 4 Considerations for Finding the Right Technology Partner for Utilities Companies

Posted on by EpochTester

Utilities companies must improve their flexibility and resilience by enabling new technologies and solutions in an era defined by digital transformation. By embracing a new technology partner, organizations can drive new business models, move beyond traditional and conservative processes and operations, and enhance their workforce capabilities.

Utilities companies that embrace digital strategies and make bold commitments to digital transformation will drive industry-wide innovation. Exploring new technology partnerships helps businesses achieve their digital transformation goals. Choosing the right technology partner is key to a successful transformation and helps organizations:

  • Overcome industry-specific challenges and those unique to your individual business
  • Set up new operations and processes to run more efficiently
  • Easily integrate technologies with new and existing systems
  • Leverage a repeatable and lasting solution

Technology manages the complexities resulting from digital innovation so that businesses can continue to create solutions that positively impact people’s lives. Utilities companies must transition to digital technologies in order to be competitive, offer enhanced customer experiences, and survive and thrive in an age driven by technology.

1. What to Look for in the Right Technology Partner

Technology partnerships help organizations redefine and enable new business strategies. They seamlessly connect business and IT environments, so businesses can generate value through technology adoption and enable their workforce to focus on innovation. A technology partner should understand the inherent challenges of the utilities industry and how their solution can seamlessly fit into a company’s digital transformation strategy.

2. Understanding Unique Industry Challenges

Great technology partners understand unique utilities industry challenges, like environmental issues, economic competitiveness, and security. The right technology partner will help a business expand their IT capabilities, handling important technology updates and maintenance, so that existing IT and technology teams can focus on more crucial work and innovative projects, which can also help with employee retention.

Many energy companies have been around a long time, with legacy systems and processes that have been SOP for years. As they modernize their infrastructure and further enable data and analytics-based decision making, the need could arise to embrace new cloud capabilities like the ones offered by companies like Fortinet and firms alike. Transitioning to modern technology should be seamless and frictionless, and technology partners should offer Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions so that companies can:

  • Easily implement new technologies that are continuously updated over time
  • Facilitate a quick migration process compared to upgrading hardware
  • Scale architectures up or down as needed

Organizations like Epoch Solutions Group offer EpochField as a service that integrates with multiple back office IT systems, such as GIS and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM). This enables them to deliver new services and help companies overcome the limitations of on-premise deployments.

3. The Need for Configurability and Customization

Technology partners must be able to configure their technology to integrate with an organization’s existing systems, processes, and workflows. New solutions should be set up seamlessly and shouldn’t require a talent overhaul to operate. These solutions should be repeatable and serve as a foundation for future growth and opportunity.

Technology partners should also help business and IT teams expand how they use technology in their everyday workflows. It’s about providing a solution that helps organizations reduce the complexities of work via enhanced workflow processes.

Organizations are preparing for the future by shifting to new digital business models so they can unlock significant value. This is not simply an engineering-specific transformation. Rather it requires a holistic change to the business and operating model across culture, supply chains, products, and more. Configurable solutions from technology partners take into consideration the unique needs of every organization so that teams across the business and IT can benefit and operate in their individual capacities.

4. System Integration

A lack of system integration can lead to short-term challenges and long-term operational inefficiencies. Creating a sustainable business foundation that will support future technology additions and integrations should be enabled by a technology partnership.

Digital transformation for organizations is a continuous pursuit driven by the impacts of artificial intelligence, data availability, and analytics. As organizations build their technology architecture to enable data-centric decisions, the insights need to be accessible across teams and business areas to maximize the value and effectiveness of these strategies.

System integration helps people use their data quickly and efficiently, solving data management challenges that typically impede growth and opportunity. Organizations will have clarity and visibility into their operations and data that helps them to drive new products, services, and solutions.

Choose Epoch Solutions Group as a Technology Partner

Epoch Solutions Group understands the critical capabilities necessary to make digital transformation successful. They include:

  • Overcoming industry-specific challenges and those unique to your individual business
  • Setting up new operations and processes to run more efficiently
  • Integrating technologies with new and existing systems
  • Leveraging a repeatable and lasting solution

Contact a consultant to learn how Epoch Solutions Group can help your organization achieve its digital transformation goals now and in the future. Click here to schedule a demo today.

How Digital Innovation Helps Utility Companies Quickly Get Things Back Up and Running After a Storm

Posted on by EpochTester

One of the worst winter storms swept through Texas in recorded history during 2021, causing power outages to millions of people and businesses. According to McKinsey and Company, this catastrophic event led to Governor Abbot issuing a disaster declaration in 254 counties. 2020 and 2021 were two years that had the most named storms in history, with 30 and 27 named storms respectively.

From hurricanes, to devastating winter storms like those in Texas and increased weather activity throughout the country, the impacts of storms on energy infrastructures is far reaching. Managing these systems and monitoring and responding to a power crisis in real-time is highly complex. Utilities companies need to implement a flexible digital infrastructure to meet the many challenges they encounter when providing consistent and active services, and to be prepared to get services back up and running quickly in the case of a storm emergency.

Responding to New Energy Landscapes

The effects of climate change are significantly impacting the utilities industry. Frequent and severe weather conditions have pushed infrastructure capabilities to their limits, leading to power outages, lower efficiency, and higher costs.

Water, electric, and environmental regulatory environments are evolving. As a result, energy companies must reimagine maintenance and inspection goals and approach new solutions that give them greater control of their assets.

Implementing weather-resistant, mobile electrical structures like these modular e-houses that can accommodate almost any power structure could be one of the many solutions. The advantages provided by these e-houses, such as withstanding the elements while ensuring resistance to fire, explosions, and galvanic corrosion, seem to be in line with the requirements for outage prevention due to storms and other disasters. With that said, technological solutions can also come into the picture and help utilities provide immediate and timely services during emergencies.

Climate Change, Regulations, and Consumers

Amidst new climate and regulatory landscapes, utilities companies are faced with new consumer demands and behaviors that are changing alongside the digital world, like smart home environments and smartphone applications. Consumers are driven by personalized experiences that give them more control and data at their fingertips. Energy companies must deliver these experiences to keep pace with modern consumer needs for transparency and personalization.

Utilities companies should respond to climate change, regulatory environments, and consumer demands and generate value using new, innovative solutions that:

  • Optimize operations
  • Overcome the limitations of legacy systems
  • Improve the customer experience

A utility company needs the right digital capabilities and solutions that help them more efficiently manage their operations while equipping the workforce with new digital tools that improve workflow processes and collaboration. Energy companies need real-time access to the right data to assess changing environments and instantaneously react and respond accordingly.

Utilities and the Impacts of Digital Technology

When the Texas power crisis occurred, harsh weather conditions were devastating. In the event that power outages occur, power grids and power lines are damaged, utilities companies require the capabilities to respond and restore power quickly.

Energy companies need customizable solutions that put their customers first and equip their employees with new capabilities to deliver and enhance services in a modern digital world. They must reimagine how they approach numerous business functions like asset management, workforce deployment, field workforce management, and vegetation management.

Assessing damage and quickly deploying field service crews helps energy companies restore power rapidly to their customers. EpochField, a solution from Epoch Solutions Group, enhances data collection workflows with tools that enable strategic planning, field data collection, and real-time analysis. It integrates operates with existing systems including outage management (OMS), work management (WMS), geographic information (GIS), and customer relationship management (CRM).

Innovative digital solutions like these improve damage assessment back-office functions. Teams utilize dashboards to provide a better view of to view outages, crew locations and work locations on a spatial map with integrated GPS tracking. Systems receive notifications when outages occur, and field crews are quickly deployed.

Also, scheduling optimization tools help utilities companies efficiently assemble and deploy large groups of field crews more accurately and efficiently. Field crews also use their mobile devices for online or offline work orders, sending and receiving information from the back office, electronically syncing data with the back-office enterprise systems. Any system user can create work order forms, document inspections, streamline maintenance, and demonstrate compliance to regulators.

Organizations need to prepare for today and tomorrow. Digital solutions from Epoch Solutions Group enhance utilities companies’ agility, resilience, and flexibility. Epoch Solutions Group drives innovation and opportunity with a technology platform that helps organizations respond to digital transformation, enhance operational efficiency, and overcome the challenges resulting from climate change, regulatory environments, and shifting consumer behaviors.

Digitize Your Utilities Operations

Schedule a demo today and discover how Epoch Solutions Group can help your energy company prepare for storm outages, the impacts of climate change, new regulatory landscapes, and changing consumer behaviors.

EpochField 5.0.2 Release for Mobile, Administrator, and Work Scheduler

Posted on by EpochTester

It’s officially Fall 2021 and the products team here at Epoch has been busy working on a few new enhancements and updates to EpochField for iOS, Android, and Windows. EpochField 5.0.2 can be found in the Apple App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft Apps store.

We are introducing a number of new features and enhancements in the EpochField Mobile 5.0.2, EpochField Administrator 5.0.2, and EpochField Work Scheduler 5.0.2 release. Read on for the summary release notes below.

EpochField Mobile

  • Lasso tool enhancements and fixes
  • Click Integration enhancements
  • MapMarkup text box fixes
  • Click Integration Tool multiple selection fixes
  • Multiple ad hoc task type with same geometry fixes

Known Issues

Android – Due to a Xamarin Essentials bug reported with Android 11, users will need to set their Android device location permissions manually. To do so, go to the “App Location Permissions” section of your device’s “Settings” app and choose “Allow Always” or “Allow Only While Using App” for the EpochField app.

Copying text does not work with APRX documents published to ArcGIS Server 10.7.1.

EpochField Work Scheduler

  • Manage Group Visibility enhancements
  • File attachment fixes
  • Zoom to asset fixes
  • Work order grid status enhancements

Known Issues

None

EpochField Administrator

  • Work order comments in Scheduler for mobile fixes
 

Known Issues

None

Increasing Readiness and Assessment Efficiency with a Sound Damage Assessment Solution

Posted on by EpochTester

EpochField optimizes storm management, before and after a storm, by automating common damage assessment workflows.

Increasing Readiness and Assessment Efficiency with a Sound Damage Assessment Solution

Old Methods and Process

Historically, utilities have utilized manual methods and processes when approaching a damage assessment workflow. A common approach to a manual assessment typically goes as follows: the use of printed paper maps, assigning work tickets to a field worker, handwriting assessed damage data, and then manually updating back-office outage management systems (OMS) once the data has been delivered.

Increasing Readiness and Assessment Efficiency with a Sound Damage Assessment Solution

Open Loop Damage Assessment Process:

  1. Printing of maps.
  2. Assigning damage tickets and maps to field crew.
  3. Field crew collects and reports damage by hand, on printed maps.
  4. Driving back to the storm center with maps notating damage.
  5. Aggregating all the notations on each map to a) make sense of it, and b) determine a game plan for repair.
  6. Someone else manually entering the status of the damage ticket in the Outage Management System and creating a work ticket.
  7. Beginning the routing process for work tickets.

The open-loop damage assessment process is a lengthy process, inefficient, and prone to errors when compared to modern methods. Often, a damage assessment team can run into several problems such as difficulty interpreting handwritten notations, lack of accurate data collection, and the difficulties of printing and using paper maps.

Automating a Damage Assessment Workflow

Although automating damage assessment workflows is a process in itself, the long-term benefits are worth it. Even though a damage assessment workflow will change case by case, generally the automation approach starts with using mobile devices in the field to collect damage data, electronically synching that data with outage management systems, then planning a restoration plan based on that data.

“Utilities can increase restoration efficiency following a major storm by automating data collection, scheduling, and restoration planning with EpochField.

Where Does EpochField Fit In?

Damage Assessment starts in the back office with supervisors viewing outages on dashboards and crew locations on a spatial map in real-time with integrated GPS tracking. By using EpochField Administrator and EpochField Work Scheduler, a plan and assessment strategy is developed based on crew location and outage areas. Field crews utilizing EpochField Mobile on lightweight tablets receive work orders from the back office and note damage specifics on configurable forms. Progress is tracked in real-time with tools and dashboards, enabling utilities to prioritize restoration areas.

Sometimes, in areas such as with high hurricane or tornado activity, the damage is so severe field crews cannot determine where utility assets were located. With the tablet’s internal GPS and GIS information, field crews will know exactly what materials are needed to be replaced. EpochField will then build a list of materials required for restoration and sync that data to the OMS for warehouse personnel to load construction materials on trucks for the crews.

Utilities can quickly restore power using EpochField by taking advantage of timely damage assessment information. With EpochField, utilities can quickly gain a detailed picture of the damage, identify and prioritize damaged areas, and assist staff with a restoration plan based on accurate GIS data.

Schedule a demo today to learn more about how EpochField can transform your storm damage assessment and response processes.