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Fugro Helps Western Power Strengthen Its Network's Asset Management

Oct. 18, 2018
Western Power has awarded Fugro a contract valued at more than AUD 5 million to capture data and undertake modeling of its electricity assets.

Western Power has awarded Fugro a contract valued at more than AUD 5 million to capture data and undertake modeling of its electricity assets. The company is a Western Australian State Government-owned corporation with a vast transmission and distribution network and is directly responsible for managing the physical network including its poles, wires, substations and other infrastructure.

Under the contract, Fugro will capture engineering-quality data of Western Power’s complete 75,000-km overhead network and will host the data on its cloud-based Roames platform. Roames combines remote sensing technologies with cloud computing and machine learning algorithms to deliver a complete and accurate, real-world, digital twin of a power company’s assets.

The data captured by Fugro will provide asset and vegetation analytics and desktop scoping opportunities and solutions, helping Western Power to deliver a number of asset management programs. Another important part of the project is to match all surveyed assets with Western Power’s geographical information system (GIS), removing ambiguities in spatial information. In combination with Roames, the information forms an enabling platform for developing and implementing advanced digital and analytical decision support tools for asset management that can help drive business efficiencies.

Jared Baronian, Fugro’s Manager Power Asia-Pacific, welcomed Western Power to the fast-growing group of global utility providers using the Roames platform for virtual world asset management.

“Fugro monitors well over two million spans of network on a yearly cycle in Australia, Europe and the USA, through the Roames platform,” he said. “This latest contract demonstrates our continuing focus on developing asset management solutions to help utility companies reduce operational costs and improve safety and customer service.”

About the Author

Amy Fischbach | Amy Fischbach, EUO Contributing Editor

Amy Fischbach is the Field Editor for T&D World magazine and manages the Electric Utility Operations section. She is the host of the Line Life Podcast, which celebrates the grit, courage and inspirational teamwork of the line trade.  She also works on the annual Lineworker Supplement and the Vegetation Management Supplement as well as the Lineman Life and Lineman's Rodeo News enewsletters. Amy also covers events such as the Trees & Utilities conference and the International Lineman's Rodeo. She is the past president of the ASBPE Educational Foundation and ASBPE and earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism from Kansas State University. She can be reached at [email protected]

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