Victorian electricity distributors pass the first million-mark for tasks

14 May 2021

Powercor Australia

CitiPower and Powercor provide electricity to more than 1.2 million customers across Melbourne’s CBD and inner suburbs through to Central and Western Victoria.

Screenshot of Xugo’s mobile Application depicting a field worker’s tasks. Xugo’s app can be downloaded from the App store.

The business' primary activity is to manage the poles, wires and electrical infrastructure that delivers safe and reliable electricity to homes and businesses across the network. CitiPower and Powercor's vegetation related fire starts, prevent any damage to their infrastructure and to minimise power outages to customers.

Key Challenges

CitiPower and Powercor required a Vegetation Management Solution specific to each network, minimise process barriers and improve system reliability. An efficient modern system would need to overcome the challenges the businesses were experiencing:

Combine multiple systems (some legacy) managing separate activities
Improve data accuracy of the vegetation surrounding assets
Integrate with existing highly complex systems
Take advantage of all the data available i.e. LiDAR and access it easily
Better estimate time and cost to perform vegetation activities
Manage the timely approval of contractor invoices
Meet strict IT security requirements.

The Solution

Since early 2021 Xugo's web and mobile platform has become a major component of their utility vegetation program. The two utilities collectively use Xugo to function as the single system providing:

Authoritative data source
Xugo manages, stores and maintains all current and historic vegetation and operational management data critical to CitiPower and Powercor's vegetation program.
Tracks and allocates work (tasks) to provide transparency on the status across all vegetation network spans
The system supports granula information across the utilities 570,000 spans across 80,000+ kilometres of network.
Manages the full Vegetation lifecycle end-to-end
from initiating the program plan to creating & assigning work tasks for assessment, inspection (LiDAR & "boots on the ground") scoping, notifications (letter drop) & negotiations, treatment (cutting, herbicides, clean up), auditing and reporting cyclic and hazard tree programs. Unambiguous contractor invoicing through simple reconciliation with completed tasks.
Used across CitiPower and Powercor
Xugo is used by corporate, office users and by the field workforce that includes contracted service providers.
Manages communications and interactions with the utilities customers

“Xugo has centralised our ability to plan, track, organise and prioritise work. It enabled us to improve our processes by better identifying risks, to communicate and prioritise work and manage our field teams and contractors through a seamless, web and app-based approach. Xugo has helped to simplify the process of vegetation management for our business and works to improve our field personnel efficiency and team performance.”
CHRIS HEINZ, HEAD OF VEGETATION MANAGEMENT - CITIPOWER and POWERCOR

The implementation has saved CitiPower and Powercor from using several systems per day, reduced customer response times, increased productivity and accountability and has a user-friendly interface easily adopted by the office and field teams.

Since using Xugo, CitiPower and Powercor plan further ahead and continue to formulate an approach to vegetation management that will reduce network risk and deliver the biggest efficiencies. Through this implementation each utility can see in real-time the entire vegetation management program because of better data collection, increased user adoption and improved processes and workflow.

key benefits

Field personnel appreciate how easy Xugo is to use in the field and its "occasionally connected, always available" mode

Field teams are always able to complete their work tasks, even when network connectivity is limited or unavailable.

Complete audit traceability - delivers confidence

Having clear records readily available of "Who did What When" makes it easier to identify each activity - increasing transparency and control and demonstrating solid practices in place.

Optimised work planning & increased efficiency

Improved and centrally managed work plans, executed correctly, with multiple tasks sent to multiple field crews, scheduled and tracked. Reducing costs by crews not having to wait on other field crews to finish their tasks before they can start work.

Increased safety for employees and the public

Prioritisation of vegetation (including hazard trees) posing a high risk to the networks is identified with accurate and timely data and work tasks can be reclassified for immediate attention easily.

Robust system

Xugo is used by internal resources and external contractor service providers maintaining vegetation clearance on behalf of CitiPower and Powercor.

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Xugo Vegetation Management - Bushfire Mitigation Program at CitiPower, Powercor and United Energy

Want to learn more about Xugo

With SFI's Xugo, you can make your operations more efficient with full overview of your vegetation management activities - annual planning, coordination of LiDAR collection and analysis, field service activities, track & allocated work, schedule resources, reporting, management of incidents & equipment inspections. Get in touch and follow us on LinkedIn.