Infrastructure and population have grown at a record pace over the past 20 years, outstripping many of the utility industry's tools for inspection and management oversight. Most utilities manage multimillion or multibillion dollar asset bases critical for providing power and communications to businesses, hospitals, and residential customers, making utility asset management an important concern.
Utilities fall into several major categories, including electric, cable, telecommunications, oil/pipeline, etc. All electric, cable, and telecommunications utilities maintain complex infrastructure on utility poles and underground facilities. Even wireless and cellular providers need a place to attach and energize their equipment. If you look up at a pole in any urban area, you'll probably see a proliferation of wires and equipment.
Electric, cable, and telecom utilities collaborate with "joint use" by sharing poles between each other.
The challenges of "joint use"
The utility industry employs a collaborative concept called "joint use," in which multiple utilities attach wires and equipment to a shared pole. The dangerous electrical wires are at the top of the pole, cable television is below, and telecommunications is typically below that. These days, most poles are owned by electric utilities, which rent space to telecom, fiber, and cable companies. The owner of the pole is ultimately responsible for safe construction and maintenance. In a rapidly-growing area, this can lead to safety and communication issues for both owner and renter.
Increased competition and the race for deregulated market share, combined with investor demands to generate cash-flow, drives utilities to construct their systems quickly and cost-effectively. A joint user attaching something else to the pole, such as a cable television company, often subcontracts installation to a third-party construction firm, which may be unfamiliar with the specific safety and design requirements of the pole owner. Results can include nonstandard installations and poor communication with the owner of the pole.
The pole "attacher" is expected to apply for a permit prior to installing equipment on another utility's pole. Often, this is handled through an inter-utility notification service, such as the National Joint Utility Notification System (http://www.njuns.com). Sometimes proper permitting and notification slips through the cracks.
Unpermitted attachments not only mean lost joint-use rental revenue for the pole owner, they can lead to serious National Electric Safety Code (NESC) violations and engineering mistakes based on incorrect data about field facilities.
PoleTrack
Utilities need a solution to collect data in the field and then integrate their findings with the utilities' databases. A few years ago, an Oregon electric utility partnered with Accent, a Microsoft Gold partner specializing in utilities, to develop an integrated pole management software system called PoleTrack (http://www.poletrack.net). This software is being used by a growing number of Northwest utility companies, and is being evaluated by utilities across the U.S. Ongoing improvements to the PoleTrack software are driven by a users group of utility representatives.
PoleTrack includes a server-side database and a mobile client for the collection of data. PoleTrack Mobile, Pocket PC Edition, was developed in the .NET Compact Framework on a SQL CE database. It allows the field inspectors to access a complete database of all their poles while disconnected from the network. It runs on any standard or ruggedized Pocket PC utilizing the Windows Mobile operating system. Utility employees or subcontractors use PoleTrack Mobile to:
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