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Vegetation management

Embracing advanced digital technology to unlock efficiency

UTILITIES TECH TRENDS 2022

The Metaverse Continuum

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A cutting edge solution

Vegetation Management poses operational and maintenance challenges for utilities and there is considerable internal and external pressure to increase efficiency in this area of the business.

It requires crews to manually survey and identify vegetation that needs pruning, trimming and removal.

The task is critically important for public and environmental safety. Efficient vegetation management improves safety, reliability and performance during major storm events, which can lead to fatalities, property damage and environmental damage.

Accenture’s vegetation management solution helps utilities integrate new and emerging technology to unlock efficiency, productivity, improve safety and transform how utilities manage vegetation management work.

Vegetation management solutions in action

Vegetation management: Planning

Vegetation management: Quality assurance & control

Challenges

Regulatory pressures

Increased customer & worker expectations

Increased volume & complexity of work

Pressure to improve efficiency & quality of work

Proliferation of digital technologies

An end-to-end vegetation management solution

The vegetation management (VM) solution helps utilities Integrate new and emerging technologies to unlock efficiency, productivity, improve safety and transform how utilities manage vegetation management work.

Pre-initiation Use advanced analytics for scenario analysis to evaluate efficiency vs. reliability or risk associated with different VM cycles, maintaining the program at the circuit level.

Initiation Leverage advanced image analytics to identify work that needs to be done at the circuit level with minimal manual intervention and automation of the property owner approval process.

Execution Optimize VM crew utilization using an integrated work management system for resource management and job scheduling, coordination, and execution.

Close out Automate the QA/QC process via a mobile application, allowing field crews to capture field data using ML/AI algorithms to identify potential “go backs”.

Sourcing Use analytics to assess and rebalance the supplier contract risk and set up performance expectations.

Improvement levers

An assessment of a vegetation management program can reveal which improvement levers can be used to identify efficiencies without jeopardizing safety, reliability and compliance.

5-10%

Pre-Initiation
Data /analytics driven approach to identifying and prioritizing circuits and work plan while optimizing reliability performance.

5-10%

Initiation
Data /analytics driven approach to identifying and prioritizing circuits and work plan while optimizing reliability performance.

5-10%

Execution
Optimize exact areas which require vegetation management resulting in more efficient crew use. “The right work at the right time”.

2.5-5%

Close Out
Process re-engineering and image analytics to automate quality assurance/quality control and reporting processes.

5-15%

Sourcing
Negotiate improve contact terms with vegetation management contractors to streamline program performance.

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Our leaders

Miki Deric

Managing Director – Utilities, North America
LinkedIn

John Alford

Senior Manager – Consulting, Utilities, Transmission and Distribution
LinkedIn

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