Transforming modern electric grid design workflows

When electric utilities need to perform their most common, high-volume work like connecting new customers and members, swapping assets like poles and transformers, and extending lines, they encounter numerous time-consuming obstacles that create backlogs in their work.

Obstacles to efficient electric grid operations

Dependence on older, desktop-based solutions
Inaccurate asset data
Marking up paper maps
Manual data entry
Repeat trips to the field
Lengthy data transfers between multiple teams and systems

To meet today’s demanding requirements for both your customers and internal systems, there must be a better way. And in fact, there is.

Field design and digital staking

IQGeo’s Network Manager Electric provides a flexible, streamlined approach: field design and digital staking. Our single application for field users enables your teams to view and edit GIS data from the field, online or offline. We enable designers to digitally stake the assets location with your external GPS, while accounting for your utility’s equipment standards and building out the connectivity model.

IQGeo team demonstrating field design and digital staking

In the steps below, we detail how Network Manager Electric transforms traditional design workflows for any electric utility.

Step 1: Locate and designate

Today, designers will stake a design in the field and draw that design on paper. The next step is manual entry into a back-office system, either by themselves or by handing off a sketch to an admin tech. Engineers then apply these locations as work points in the GIS. With Network Manager Electric, a field designer can easily stake digitally – including GPS locating, guy wire details, and precise distance and angle designations – and do so immediately. The data entries from the field will update the system of record. This includes all points, features, connectivity details, and compatible units. Design managers can then quickly review the design package with matching work order and then move it to the next step in your utility’s process.

Step 2: Estimate

Accurate and timely costs are critical as well. Instead of asking engineers to create a bill of material (BOM) and then share that manually with accounting and warehouse staff, Network Manager Electric automatically generates a BOM for any new design using your utility’s compatible units. Designers can share that digitally with procurement and any other team. All the network design data is accurate and accessible in a shared user experience.

Step 3: Validate

As-builts have traditionally been one of the most time-consuming aspects of a new network design. A construction crew notes any as-built changes on a staking sheet print, takes it back to the office for handoff to an admin tech, and the updates are entered manually. This often involves multiple truck rolls before the process is complete. Then accounting makes manual updates, all before the designer can move the project to “as-built” state. Through Network Manager Electric, construction crews take the BOM and construction packets to the field. They can then update designs directly on tablets and have the data available to all office staff.

The electric grids of the future

Modern grids are simply too complex and the amount of work too high to continue depending on office work, manual updates, and disconnected systems. Whether starting a new design or confirming as-builts, IQGeo integrated mobility, and precise, geospatial-based digital tools will change the way you approach network design.