SSP Innovations is proud to have Bruce Smith, Executive Vice President of Palmetto Engineering and Consulting, as a guest blogger on the Energy Advisor.

A Time of Innovation

In the 20 years I’ve spent in engineering and consulting, I’ve seen a lot emerge. Fiber remote offices. Dial-up Internet. DSL. Fiber to the home. And now, the Internet of Things (IoT). When Bell invented the telephone in 1876, it took almost 50 years for the mechanical switch to be invented.

Then it took another 50 before the Internet was created. Then another 30 before fiber became a distribution medium.  In essence, the voice-communication system has grown more in the past 20 years than it had in the previous 120 combined.  This is an incredible feat, and one can only imagine what the next 20 years will bring.

The Evolution of an Industry

When I began my career, telephone companies provided a telephone, CATV companies provided TV programming, and the power company kept your lights on.  Now, through deregulation, competition, and necessity, all three have crossed paths and in some cases, have become commodities provided by the same entity.

This increased competition has been a huge benefit to the consumer, because they have choices like they have never had before.  You can get your internet, TV and power from your trusted power company, you can get your TV and internet from your local phone company, or you can pick and choose what to buy from whom depending on who has the best service, pricing, and other factors.

What does this mean to the engineering world you ask?

Historically, telecom engineers relied on government agencies and procedures to guide planning, design, and installation.  Very specific requirements were needed because local phone companies were using federal money to build projects.  This was the “golden era” of telecom engineering.

Phone companies did not complain about price because they wanted the best engineers to do the best job.  CAD programs like AutoCAD were the standard for engineering specifications, large scale paper maps were manually updated by driving roads to record the number of homes and lots that needed to be served.

Outside Plant records were kept as straight line schematics with no underlying data, just the text on the diagram was used as reference.  Full time personnel were used to keep records clean and up to date.  For many folks in the industry, this process was ideal because it focused less on minimizing costs and more on maximizing the quality of the end product.

Competition and Technology Facilitate Change

The increased competition and rapid pace of technological advancement in the industry changed the attitudes of many.  Cost was now a priority, but time became the bigger priority.  While these changes were taking place, the expectations of quality of service and expert engineering stayed the same.  Companies still wanted top quality services, built expediently, but now built much faster and at much lower cost.

Engineering companies were now faced with finding ways to make processes that had historically taken years, now happen in a matter of months.  Change is hard, but changing processes that had existed for 100 plus years was even harder.  Enter GIS.

GIS Brings Efficiency

Early on, high quality aerial maps were hard to come by, were typically outdated, and of poor quality.  Even maps that were considered “spatially accurate” were pretty generic, and had no spatial projection associated with them.  Boots on the ground was the norm in the earlier days, but given the new time and cost constraints, this was no longer an option.

GIS mapping became the time and information saver that could fill the gap.  Companies like Esri, Microsoft, and Google brought a new view of the world to the masses that was previously not available to people outside of the space and intelligence sectors.

Being able to look at a whole area and get an idea of the existing structures and terrain, to see the entire picture of the plan that was needed, then utilize that information to plan and design meant that the time it took companies to get to market was reduced substantially.  This was a natural progression for all the aspects of engineering. 

Once the plan and design was complete, why use another system to make drawings which introduces double work when the GIS has what you need to construct the project.  Then, once the design is built, the necessary as-built updates can be made to the GIS, and this now is your System of Record for your network assets.

Utilizing one platform from start to finish eliminates double work, costly truck rolls to the field, and inadequate record keeping systems.

Palmetto’s Experience

We here at Palmetto Engineering & Consulting have shifted culturally. We’ve found ways to provide quality engineering with precise records. We’re trying to help companies build and maintain the infrastructure that not only defines their business, but also sustains it for years to come. And we do all this with competitive rates, fast deliverables, and continued support on going.   This is what defines today’s challenges for engineers and consultants.

How do we meet the challenge? We use GIS, specifically Esri’s platform.  We created a communication management software on the ArcGIS platform. This use of GIS lets us do more than just plan, design, construct and implement network. It also allows our clients to manage, maintain, and keep a quality network after all the dust settles.  Why go to the trouble?  Well, for one simple reason: We know that to stay in the game, you have to stay ahead of it.

And in the next 20 years, we can expect a lot of game changers. Perhaps more than we’ve seen in the past 140 years combined.