Great Lakes Energy Rounds Out Technology Upgrade With Powel's StakeOut Field Design Software

ST. PAUL, Minn., June 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Powel, Inc., a leading developer of software that helps utilities work smarter, today announced that Great Lakes Energy of Boyne City, Mich., has selected its StakeOut® mobile field design client to streamline work flow as well as synchronize all office, customer and engineering data for greater access and higher productivity.

Great Lakes Energy is Michigan's largest electric cooperative, and one of the largest in the country, serving 125,000 members in over 26 counties across the western half of the Lower Peninsula.  

Great Lakes system engineer Gus Paz said that installing the client-server based StakeOut 7.5 was part of a substantial technology upgrade that saw them transition from paper to digital after commissioning a Milsoft WindMilMap GIS (Geographic Information System).

"Our plans originally called for acquiring a GIS system and we saw PC-based staking packages as a natural and necessary extension.  Until now, all of our field design technicians manually sketched drawings and calculated units.  Soon they will be designing new job sketches, adding construction units, generating cost estimates and producing staking sheets on a notebook PC.  And with built-in interfaces, that same data can populate our digital maps and update our Daffron CIS (Customer Information System)."

StakeOut is the industry-leading field staking software that tracks work through carefully defined processes from initiation to close out, making status updates available throughout the utility.  The software integrates with most CIS, Accounting and GIS packages using the NRECA's MultiSpeak Standard.  Work done in the field and posted to a GIS automatically updates the utility's system maps in near real-time.  Personnel throughout the enterprise have access to the most recent information.

The decision to go with StakeOut, according to Paz, was based on a selection criteria developed by Great Lakes when it began evaluating products.

"Obviously, the software had to interface with existing systems, but a primary concern was that it had to be user-friendly.  It needed tools to calculate design attributes such as loading and sizing transformers and wires.  There also had to be automatic connectivity checks to make sure the system was connected properly.  When we compared software packages against these criteria, StakeOut came out on top."

Even before the cutover to advanced mapping and staking, Paz said that Great Lakes Energy understood the productivity gains and improved customer service that could be achieved simply by the reductions in data entry.

"We won't have to re-draw maps into the mapping system and both the office and field will be able to share data without a lot of re-entry.  Saving all that time will allow us to pay for the StakeOut system in less than three years."

StakeOut is just one application within the Powel WorkStudio suite.  WorkStudio is a mobile work management platform with office-based analysis that helps utilities work smarter through the entire asset lifecycle.  Powel WorkStudio contains other complementary applications for vegetation management, storm assessment, maintenance management and timesheets.  By implementing applications based on a common platform, utilities can reduce the total deployment cost and risk.

About Powel, Inc.

Powel, Inc., (www.powelinc.com) headquartered in St. Paul, MN, delivers software solutions that realize our mission of "Helping Utilities Work Smarter."  Powel WorkStudio is a Mobile Work Management platform with office-based analysis that helps utilities work smarter through the entire asset lifecycle, from design to construction to service, including right-of-way clearance, maintenance and storm assessment.  WorkStudio incorporates Powel's industry leading StakeOut field design application.  Powel, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Powel AS, a privately held company serving customers worldwide.

SOURCE Powel, Inc.