This past January 2020 marks two years since Esri’s Utility Network Management Extension (UN) went live!

For those of you who receive our Energy Advisor newsletter or read our blog, even if it’s not currently part of your plans, you’re no doubt very aware of the UN. For others, the UN is still somewhat of a mystery. Even for those like SSP who have been deeply involved since well before the official ‘go-live’ date, our first blog on the UN was back in July 2016!!

It’s hard to believe that the UN has now had a number of major production iterations, following along with ArcGIS Pro releases on 2.0 through 2.5 and many point releases. As much as all of us in the utility space like to approach our major programs with caution and careful planning, even we at SSP feel we’re pushing things if we call a 2 year old product “new.” 🙂  The UN is as much a part of the Esri platform as Survey123, Collector, Portal, Operations Dashboards, ArcGIS Runtime, and countless other integrated Esri offerings.

Like the solution itself, the industry investment around the new Esri platform is growing and building momentum. If you haven’t heard SSP’s CEO, Skye Perry, talk about the building wave of UN over the last 4 years, you will soon at this year’s SSP iLLUMINATE conference. At the time of writing this blog, we’re working on three of the largest and most complex ArcGIS Pro and Utility Network implementation programs in the world for utilities with a combined customer count of over 10 million meters. In addition, we have performed, or are performing, almost 30 Utility Network related projects ranging from Utility Network Consulting engagements such as UNAP and Strategic Roadmaps, as well as Utility Network Jumpstarts and Prototypes, to the fully integrated production implementations I described above. Right now, we’re working with customers not only from the traditional heavy users who maintain distribution models, but also transmission, generation and telecom groups within utilities. We’re extremely excited helping our customers take advantage of this new platform and the benefits, all while sharing our lessons learned along the way with the community.

What are we learning about the capability?

It’s not just about the Model

For quite some time, many (including SSP) have been focused around the implications that the new Utility Network Model will have on their business, or more specifically, their existing GIS environment, including their integrations, customizations, and third-party tools.  The increased ability to model the real-world, and next level detail of facilities, has tremendous benefits to an industry that is increasingly focused on asset management and its ability to monitor, track, and respond to incidents that relate to equipment that in the past weren’t tracked or understood.  Grid modernization, regulatory compliance, safety, and security are strategic goals for utilities that our new model can not only improve, but in some cases, will be required to support.

The more we take a step back as part of larger planning and implementation exercises with customers, the more we’ve had the opportunity to re-examine the breadth of an organization’s ability to benefit from what the ArcGIS platform brings as a whole. For most of us, GIS programs were implemented with a goal to create a model to support OMS, perhaps some CIS ‘customer linking’ and mapping functions, replacing a paper or CAD-based process with a set of new tools, but not necessarily a new process.   Over time we’d add more integrations, additional functionality, and often a field tool such that we could start to consider it an “enterprise” system by virtue of its size and its importance to an organization, across many business units.

But did we truly implement our GIS as an enterprise system from the ground up?

I’d argue than in many, if not most, cases we implemented the core goals above and then ‘bolted on’ more capability as described. While this helped us benefit in the use of the data we managed in the core GIS, it also drove the scope of how we expanded GIS and took advantage of the platform. It typically focused on the data resident in the GIS, rather than taking a step back and looking at the need of the business as a whole, and architecting our platform to meet those needs. The implementation of the UN is an ideal time to look at the big picture of how geospatial information is used throughout the utility!

Go broader

We’re learning that the benefits that the ArcGIS platform, centered on ArcGIS Enterprise, go far beyond the data we model today.  We’re engaged on projects that started with simply mapping and visualizing assets, typical of a historical GIS.  Not long after go-live, we’d replaced a number of spreadsheet and paper-based inspection processes. Which included capturing images of facilities, stored separately, with a fully integrated Survey123 solution.  While the inspections may be related to assets managed in the GIS, it’s the automation of the process, including mainly inspection detail *not* stored in the GIS, that provides the benefit. Along with the ability to do this not only on one software platform, but a single hardware device such as a tablet or phone. Where in the past we might have had a laptop, some paper, a camera, etc.  The benefit isn’t just the end result, it’s the speed and simplicity in which we can implement. The ROI is high because the investment is low, and the return comes fast.

We’re seeing examples of ways to increase benefits through platform usage in numerous cases. As implementers, it opens up more conversations with other parts of the business. We’re asking question such as:

• How do you share data today? (not just spatial data)
• How could geospatial data improve your workflows?
• How can we streamline use of your equipment?

These types of questions don’t need to be limited to typical GIS user groups. It’s always surprising to learn the amount of folks whose work is based on spatial context. For example, “I work on substation facilities” or “I work on interconnect agreements” and the location is important! Yet has no knowledge of a GIS, and frankly, they don’t need to. Often, we can improve the processes that these groups use to create, store, share, and access information by injecting a spatial strategy to how they work with data.  This type of thinking improves the way geospatial information can benefit the enterprise.

See what others can’t

There are new discussions we’re having almost daily on the level of data that utilities would like to see in their new model, both from the perspective of their current GIS model and also the evolving technologies their GIS supports (distribution planning, ADMS, distributed energy, etc.).  In some cases, those internal customers are keen to gain more fidelity from the GIS.  In other cases, they are just not ready (a good argument for SSP Sync Product) and are content to be provided with data in a similar format to their current model. In all cases, the new fidelity that the UN model provides, along with the ability to share this in a variety of ways (services, JSON, GP Tools), allows us to revisit a utility’s broader, strategic goals that go well beyond the traditional boundaries of a historical GIS.

For example, with the new 3D capabilities inherent in ArcGIS Pro and UN, combined with the ability to model and connect multiple commodities (electric, gas, water), along with network types (generation/gathering, transmission/mid-stream, distribution) and real-time information, we can finally ask the question, “What would you do if you could model the real world today?” Picture your heads-up view and ask:

• What if I could see facilities that operated inside that substation/plant/building/factory?
  • What if I could see what devices were in an abnormal state?
• What if I could see facilities that were underground before I started work?
  • What if I could see facilitates that were underwater after flooding?
• What if I could see the energized state of lines as I drove by them? Or the location of a gas leak and impacted customers?

We’re learning a ton about the capability of the solution itself. But what’s more exciting is that by working on so many UN projects today, we’re learning more about how that capability can benefit the industry as a whole.

What are we learning about these implementations?

A lot of questions we’re asked include, “what does a project looks like for me?”  The answer is the one we never like to give, which is “it depends.” If all we’re looking to do is replace ArcMap, replace your custom tools with ArcGIS Pro, move your data into the UN, and support integrations like-for-like, then we’re not talking about an extremely sophisticated effort. There are some non-Esri vendors using the new Esri technology as a means to try to ‘scare’ customers into considering moving off the Esri platform altogether. This is ironic because one of the main drivers of a UN project is to enable a customer to use more of the platform across more of their organization. The platform IS the differentiator even more so than the UN extension. Why move away from a solution provider who is investing hundreds of millions of dollars a year into making the platform better for more users that has a community of thousands of partners along with exponentially more customers?  What we’re learning about these implementations is that there are benefits to using the whole Esri platform (mobile, web, desktop, and services). Many components of which have been established for years and aren’t just about the UN and the new data model.

What business problems can we solve now?

Probably the biggest difference in these implementations is the flexibility in how we approach them.  Our traditional projects focused on the migration of data, associated quality related items such as preparation, clean-up, QA/QC, validation, development of tools to support editing and data maintenance, integration, batch tools, etc. For certain end goals, like supplying an OMS/DMS a valid model, there’s no avoiding many of those tasks. In the past, we’ve waited until after many of those activities were completed before leveraging what the Esri platform can bring to your business. Not all of these benefits require all of the data to be migrated into a complete model first. In fact, many, primarily mobile and web solutions, don’t require ANY data to be ready in a new model before we start to take advantage of them.

Mobile and Web first

For many, solutions such as Esri Operations Dashboards and Web AppBuilder, along with Survey123 and Collector, they are already being used extensively to support the business of the utility. These are representative of quick win solutions that provide quick and powerful solutions to end users. In many cases, they’ve been deployed to address individual business unit or capability needs.  These tools, and others that are based on the same platform (such as SSP MIMS which employs Esri runtime technology), provide more in-depth and flexible approaches to mobile exposure. While we know that a complete, connected model might ultimately be required to support integrated systems and analysis, there’s a tremendous amount of value that can be achieved by taking a look across the organization to see what can be achieved if we start with “web and mobile first” as opposed to traditional desktop-based workflows.

For example:

• How many mobile-based workflows simply need to know where an asset is to support their work?
• How many need no assets at all?
  • Think third-party damage (accidents, dig-ins) that we can enable field users to submit, track, and report on using a mobile app, and have that status reported back into the enterprise.
  • Think of trouble calls, issues, and bad information that can be reported on and communicated to others both in the field and in the office.
    • Weather, floods, traffic, active shooters – anything that could impact our crews, customers, or facilities.
  • How many applications were constructed inside ArcMap or a customer’s legacy GIS desktop app because that was the go-to application when accessing geospatial data? Can we move these to the web?
    • Now that we can access a variety of functions via REST endpoints, using the same services that we access in ArcGIS Pro, do we need a desktop app for these functions? Can we reduce the footprint of our solution?

In many cases, the solutions above don’t really care about the model. For those that don’t, can we implement these tools as part of our new program in an enterprise fashion and get some quick wins early? We’re working with customers today on initiatives that involve using Esri-based mobile apps months ahead of their full migration into the new model. In some cases, years. These applications will continue to function during (and after) the new model is implemented with little, if any, disruption during that transition. It’s these types of projects that provide the value to customers earlier in their geospatial roadmap and it’s a new way of approaching these projects.

New methods for traditional problems

As much as many utility users desire the real-world view and locations of information in the field, there are a number of operational reasons why alternate views of this data is required. The Google street-view option might look cool, but it won’t help a field crew understand the impact of opening/closing a valve or switch like a simple schematic will.  Esri has provided options for these schematic views for years, with representation capability (essentially an alternate coordinate for a feature) and ArcGIS schematics.  This required some level of data maintenance to keep the schematics up-to-date and in many cases, utilities retained some version of these separate, one-line views that age and, as a result, represent real safety issues for crews.

With Network Diagrams, new to UN and ArcGIS Pro, we have a world of new, fully integrated schematic views of your GIS data. Out of the box, the UN will keep a diagram view of every subnetwork (think circuit, pressure system, etc.) that keeps it up-to-date as you manipulate the underlying GIS data. Over a dozen layouts (think tree-views, hierarchical, etc.) are available and rules can be configured to manipulate these so that only showing devices that can interrupt flow, for example.

At the end of the day, we still need to maintain our existing utility workflows. This new schematic capability is just one example of many that the UN and ArcGIS Pro enables. There are folks who like a real-world view, and we now have an answer for them. For the first time, we can also easily answer those tricky edge-case and operational-based use cases.

Leveraging the platform across the enterprise

Most utilities that manage multiple network types (transmission, distribution) and commodities (electric, gas, water), or are comprised of multiple operating companies, have functioned as separate entities. Each with their own set of processes, tools, and approach to solving business challenges.  For the most part this was simply based on legacy. The organizations once were indeed separate companies. And the benefits to merging  business processes versus the cost of this change was challenging to justify.

One major movement we’re seeing in the market is a push to consolidate core technologies and business practices across and within companies, and to leverage the benefits of investment across the entire enterprise. The drivers for this initiative vary, be it an organization-wide asset management or grid modernization program, operational benefits of sharing resources across companies, leveraging IT infrastructure cost savings, regulatory requirements, etc., the move is to streamline. That is especially true in the event of disaster and disaster recovery scenarios. Southern Company, comprised of Alabama Power, Georgia Power and Mississippi Power (along with Southern Company Gas), is undergoing an “Application Rationalization” program, seeking to consolidate and leverage enterprise technology wherever possible.

I’ve already mentioned above how the UN can support multiple domain networks and commodities.  Not only does this provide specific functional benefits, such as analyzing the impact an ice-storm impacting transmission towers has (in turn) on Distribution networks, but it’s built to truly enable the types of strategic consolidation goals described above. Think of Substation facilities. We’ve met with utilities who maintain substation data in three different areas: the Transmission GIS, Distribution GIS, and as manual drawings to support a Substation SCADA system.  We can support this now in one environment, one set of tools, and one set of interfaces. No more mismatches of identifiers such as “Company Number,” or other conflicts based on confusion around the source of truth.

Earlier, I also described the flexibility that the new Esri web and mobile platform provides your business. This flexibility has emerged in more recent years and has been adopted by the community as an efficient means of deploying tools quickly to end-users. But, if implemented without a view of benefits across the whole organization, we risk leaving some economies of scale on the table.  Bringing new tools to the enterprise – that’s where customers are seeing the real benefits:

• One source of geospatial truth (not separate mapping systems across groups, with potentially different coordinate systems, duplicate data entry, etc.)
• One platform to support for IT across the enterprise
• One set of processes and tools for common practices across all groups

Less reliance on third-party “heavy” apps

One of the questions we get asked every single time we visit a utility to discuss the UN is:

“Can I get rid of my <custom software/third-party vendor/home-grown tech>?”

The answer again is, “it depends.” The slightly longer answer comes after a question we ask in return:  “Why were you using <custom software/third-party vendor/home-grown tech>?” Esri has provided a tremendous amount of core capability in the platform that eliminates the need for another heavy layer of technology in between you and your system-of-record, the GIS model.  Esri (and SSP) will state that there is a large space for partners to address in terms of usability, process optimization and business specific tools. But the days of a proprietary model and only one means of getting to your data are over.  A lot of the reasons for investing in custom solutions really don’t exist anymore. Esri has covered those requirements in the core UN software.

The key term we like to use is alignment. Esri has grown their footprint, in terms of capability, to the point that the more aligned, and less disruptive, a partner solution can be with regards to the Esri platform, the greater opportunity a customer has to take advantage of everything Esri is investing, which is not just utility focused. From the mobile applications I’ve already mentioned, and others such as Esri Tracker and QuickCapture, through to GeoEvents Server, GeoAnalytics, ArcGIS Insights, and ArcGIS Hub. These are all, at their core, non-utility focused applications, that you, as Esri customers, can leverage as part of the platform. If you can believe it, we’re even implementing the brand-new ArcGIS Hub at a utility today. We’re also providing tools that augment and complement the Esri experience. Leaving the choice to customers as to their best fit solution. Even as we invest in products, our SSP mantra continues to be “solution-oriented consulting.” We’ll recommend a solution (whether it be core Esri tech, SSP products, another partner solution or otherwise) that makes the most sense for you as our customer.

The UN has opened up an entire new market of partners and opportunity, and SSP welcomes this.  Competition always drives market innovation and leads to us, as a community, breaking new ground.  For utilities, this opens up a whole new approach to your geospatial platform. One that is non-proprietary and flexible, yet comprehensive and powerful.

What does the future look like?

The Digital Twin

If I had to suggest an area in which the geospatial world may look different in the coming years, it’s the world of augmented reality. Whether utility data is ready for 3D and augmented reality-based workflows is a conversation specific to each company, but the world of digital twin is absolutely coming. When we think about safety, an absolute critical component to a utility’s method of operating, and how much investment the automotive industry has made in spatial awareness technology, the path is obvious. If some of the cheapest automobiles on the market can now detect street signs and take braking action, or detect obstacles in their path and avoid them, and provide feedback to drivers instantly, why shouldn’t our crews in the field? They’re operating complex and potentially dangerous equipment that can impact thousands, have similar views when it comes to information critical to their business? Why should utilities not have even greater access to this data?

The digital twin will enable us to seamlessly transition between our traditionally 2D view of field facilities into the 3D world of Facilities Management and Building Information Management (BIM). With substation information, not only is the network data itself critical, but the nature of the facilities, dense and stacked, means that it’s challenging to support inspections using the same processes and tools we do for more traditional networks. By the way, we are currently migrating substation data into a Utility Network model for a production UN model, have completed another pilot, and are about to start another.

The great news is that the Esri technology to support these functions is already here. ArcGIS Pro and the UN support 3D natively. You can execute functions in 3D just like you would in a 2D environment, as opposed to 3D being a ‘dumb view’ that users could not interact with using advanced tracing, analytics, etc.  There is at least one utility outside the US who is looking at 3D-based design process to manage work on their electrical distribution system. Another critical component is Esri’s work with Autodesk in the area of AEC (Architectural, Engineering, and Construction) integration. There has been tremendous work done to support processes that enable a CAD-based design to be loaded into an Esri environment, thus enabling a 3D aspect of your data not only for viewing, but also asset management, inspection, operations, etc.  This technology is already being used in various industries — it’s simply up to the utility industry to take advantage of it.

Rapidly dealing with our environment – a fast-moving utility

Utilities are under tremendous pressure to react to their live environments, in the form of regulation and compliance, but also in customer expectations of service based on the pace of technology in other areas. For decades, a utility only knew a customer was out if they actually called. Typically, into an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, where it could deduce if someone else was out using an Outage Management System (OMS), fed by a GIS-based distribution model. When advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) meters started being installed over a decade ago, we gained much more granular data. Even at that point, customer expectations for service outpaced the technological capability.  “If I can turn off my lights using an app from the other side of the country, why can’t a utility restore power just as quickly?”

Now, real-time information sharing has reached new levels. Traffic, weather, floods, etc., alert customers instantly. Utilities need to take this information, often information they do not own, and act on it. The ‘do not own’ part is critical because, unlike AMI data and IVR before it, utilities don’t own the information source which makes it harder to integrate into a typical business process. If you own the source system, it’s pretty easy to build an integration, cater for failures of delivery, set up mitigation upon failure, control restoration, request updates, etc., all of which assume elements of control. But what if the information is crowd-sourced? Unreliable, but critical? What if there are many sources for information, but conflict? Such is the nature of real-time information. The good news is that Esri technology is designed to incorporate and share this data, even outside the operations center, enabling utilities to react faster and with more data. Our friends at Data Capable do a great job using machine learning to aggregate crowdsourced data points and present the information in a format that enables a utility to respond to events their customers are already well aware of.

It’s not only about getting data into a utility quickly and publishing this information faster. It’s about enabling your teams to execute tasks, sometimes very specific to an event, quickly and efficiently. I like to use the term “disposable application” to describe this.

If you’ve been to a Disney park recently, you might have experienced this yourself. Based on advice from others, before a trip to Disneyland a few years back, I downloaded the Disney mobile application. I could instantly see wait times for rides, the status of the ride, routes, and other details that gave me a real-time view of the park that helped my wife and I not only plan the day, but modify our plans as we received more data. With the right pass, I could use the app to reserve fast pass entries from the other side of the park! This meant that unlike visiting a ride at 9am to get a fast pass, I could now check out dozens of rides and select which one made sense to reserve, all based on where we were or where we were planning to be (location!). I could fully optimize my family’s trip. After the vacation was over, as truly life changing as that app was, I deleted it. It was disposable.

At utilities, we aren’t nearly as familiar with disposable apps. Most technology projects are so heavy and intense that we hate to think of throwing them away. This means we also try to design our apps with every single use case up front even if we may never have experienced that need at the time of design; this concept is changing.  The newer world (again, picture tools such as Ops Dashboard, Survey123, Collector), means we can deploy apps quickly and efficiently. After the gas explosions at Columbia Gas in Merrimack Valley, MA in 2018, Esri resources were on the ground right away, and SSP resources were a few weeks later. Both teams supported processes that were underway to turn gas, including heat, back on to around 8,000 customers during a cold November. Among other activities, this included deploying Survey123 apps to field users inspecting appliances and feeding that back into dashboards that were used by the Governor of the state, as well as every other level of emergency response AND the general public. These are real use cases where Esri technology enabled a utility to respond to an event quickly with tools configured to meet the specific workflows required for that event. But guess what? The response used almost exclusively ‘disposable apps!’

What does this mean for you?

Is the UN ready?

Along with getting asked about the need for custom software in the UN world, the other question we are always asked is, “Is the UN ready?” When we dig a little deeper to understand the intent behind the question, what is really being asked seems to translate into variants of the following:

• Does the software have issues?
  • My credibility as CTO of SSP would be put into question not only by the community, but also by our close friends at Esri, if I said, “there are no issues.” I’d make the same statement regarding my iPhone or Windows laptop though. The difference with the impact of software issues with the UN and ArcGIS Pro versus the old world, is how the patterns to resolve these issues has changed. If you’ve started up ArcGIS Pro, you may have noticed options of checking for updates and upgrading your version of Pro automatically, just like your Microsoft Office applications do today. The practice of DevOps aims to shorten the system’s development life cycleand provide continuous delivery with high software quality, is in practice at Esri and SSP.  As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, with the release of Pro 2.5, we are at the 6th (count from 2.0 through 2.5) major release and many point releases, all addressing issues and defects that partners and customers have discovered.  We at SSP are working hand-in-hand with Esri on issues as they arise.
• Will I be first to go?
  • No! There a number of utilities already live with UN, including Guam Power Authority, Alta Gas, and National Grid. SSP is currently working on three of the largest UN implementations. The first already has ArcGIS Pro live for IT Telco (based on implementation of the core UN model) and Generation groups, and will go-live soon on Electric Transmission with a full UN model, including substation data. Southern Company Distribution is well underway with the first large Electric Distribution Implementation for Mississippi Power going live later this year. Alabama and Georgia Power companies go live next year, totaling over 4 million customers. A third is focused on implementing the Utility Network and ArcGIS pipeline referencing (APR) tools for gas transmission throughout the IL area. Those, along with over 30 UN related programs today that we’re undertaking, from roadmaps through prototypes, pilot, and full projects, the movement is underway and it’s time to get on board!
• Does it have everything I have today?
  • This is the most complex question to answer because we can’t honestly say, in most cases, that the UN has 10-15 years’ worth of custom development-based capability in the core solution. The real question is do you need everything you have today? A mantra at SSP is to respect existing investments you’ve made in technology, including third parties, even those who might compete with SSP. In most cases the answer is no, the complete one-to-one match in terms of toolset is not there. But what we’ve found is that more configurable, scalable, manageable, Esri core-based (or Esri-aligned partner-based) solutions exist and will lower your total-cost of ownership over the life of your solution. We absolutely respect the sophisticated tools that you or your in-house team may have developed. But let’s examine this and see if there’s a method you (or we) can deploy using the cool new Esri tools (think attribute rules and arcade) that reduce the overhead you have in maintaining custom tools like these. Your time is valuable, let’s apply it where it makes sense to do so.

Determining when you are “Ready”

When you are ready to make the move is a question only you can answer. Independent of your technology environment considerations, the combination of your own strategic goals, your resourcing constraints, your projects underway or proposed, and your regulatory environment, creates your very own unique constraints around timing.

One of the key responses we provide to the “Is the UN Ready?” question is “We can help you determine when you are ready.” From a causal phone conversation, to a full-blown Utility Network Advantage Program (UNAP), we’ve had this conversation many times and have been able to use this experience to build a library of considerations for you to examine and test against your specific circumstances. We’ve also been able to incorporate our real program implementation experience into these discussions at a ‘high-level.’ We now have real experiences from multiple implementations to draw on and inject into these planning activities.

Of course, as I mentioned at the start of the blog, the UN itself is just one part of the reason to examine the platform. The true benefits come when we view your business as whole. For that reason, we’ve hired experts in areas not just including GIS, but inclusive of the entire business of a utility. This better positions SSP with broader business perspective (including newer DERMs and DG-related areas) when we are looking to help you plan.  These hires, including Mehrdod Mohseni – VP of Consulting,  Darrell Rhodes – EVP of Data Management, Chris Ash – VP Product Management, Mike Goggin – Principal Consultant, Isaac King – Senior Consultant, David Miller – Senior Consultant. They alone represent well over 100 years of experience with utilities, and over a majority of those with direct employment experience at a utility. We are growing this experience constantly, thus allowing us to view the move to the UN not as a discussion focused on technology, but one focused on valid business decisions.

It’s been a busy and exciting period over the last 3-4 years, including preparing for the release of UN, prototyping, piloting, and planning programs with utilities. Now, the UN is alive, well, and rolling. The wave is here. Everyone’s timing and circumstances are different and the decision on when to move is yours alone. SSP can help ensure that you’re examining the benefits, approaches, and asking yourselves the right questions.

All of us at SSP look forward to the upcoming year of activity around the UN, with more customers joining the movement. If anything in this article has raised a question for you, please don’t hesitate to ask! It’s been a busy two years since the UN officially went live and I’m looking forward to hearing from many of you on where you think you’ll be 2 years from now!