Learnings

Outcomes

To improve safety, data inaccuracy, fault location and third party damage prevention our GIS team is actively using the GSA application to determine where there are any issues with our network data and the nature of those issues by referencing user feedback, attachments and photos. They then assess their response and plan a remediation action to improve legacy network GIS records. 

During the project, we received positive feedback from customers and users operating in our SPN region regarding the improved accuracy of our network maps.  

To further increase customer and user insights, we have linked the live GSA application data to Power BI, a visual reporting tool, that gives us greater visibility of the number of companies working near our network. We have recorded that in a month we have over ~122k requests for our utility maps from 1,803 third parties.

In the light of such demand, we have engaged with our top five companies to understand better their needs, processes, user experiences and engagement with the tool to continuously grow and improve their safety.

Using this data will provide us a clearer understanding of areas for future improvement such as prioritising the vectorisation of an area where there is a high concentration of customers and user activity or sending a team to review areas and take action to remediate data issues.       

Lessons Learnt

To follow best practice and avoid data duplication, we decided to adopt the original user’s reference number when linking the LSBUD API to the GSA application for future tracking and reporting purposes.

Third party contractors will typically consult the free LSBUD online search service to request utility maps. Although all necessary data is available from LSBUD, we concluded that for greater flexibility and better control over the data, the feedback form should be hosted by the asset owner (UK Power Networks in this case).

Over the course of the trial, we have seen a significant increase in feedback from users due to the implementation of a QR code embedded on the network map. We previously found that recipients of our enquiry emails were not necessarily the field staff working on the ground but administrators hence the low feedback response. Introduction of a QR code on our network maps ensured field staff could quickly and easily open and complete the feedback form.

As mentioned in a previous section, crowdsourced feedback received doesn’t currently give us sufficient information to improve our legacy network records and we have adapted our response to the feedback to get value from the solution as well as improve future feedback.