About the Client

Xcel Energy is one of the largest electric and natural gas delivery companies in the United States, serving about 3.7 million electricity and 2.1 natural gas customers across eight states. In its SPS (Southwestern Public Service) territory, covering Texas and New Mexico, Xcel Energy manages a vast transmission and substation network critical to powering local communities and industries.  

In 2015, the company’s capital budget for transmission and substation projects had surpassed $700 million annually, with hundreds of active projects added each year. As project volumes surged, so did the need for cost control, operational transparency, and efficient collaboration between the field and office.

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‍“Our partnership with KYRO has been very productive and has led us to implement several new data-driven best practices in our projects. KYRO helps us in all aspects of our project management, documentation management, and benchmarking activities.”

— Substation Construction Manager, Xcel Energy

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‍Impact in Numbers

• $5M in annual cost savings from accurate matting tracking and reduced overcharges

• 50% faster resolution of field issues through instant documentation and escalation

• 35% increase in field productivity due to digitized workflows

• Real-time oversight of 300+ construction zones across two states

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The Challenge

Despite its scale and expertise, Xcel Energy faced persistent hurdles to execute its capital projects in SPS.  

• Without modern and digitized field tools to log progress on the spot, project managers relied on delayed handwritten or verbal reports with limited to no real-time visibility into the issues.  

• These reports often lived in emails and were never properly stored. When a recipient left the organization, all documentation of project progress were left with them making it impossible to track history or resolve any issues later.  

• Defective or missing high-value items like transformers and matting, were discovered only after crews arrived on-site, causing costly crew downtime and schedule disruptions.

• Lack of precise tracking for crew deployment led to frequent overcharges, costing hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars annually.

• Inspectors, engineers, and contractors worked in disconnected systems, slowing issue resolution and requiring redundant follow-ups.

With projects spread over SPS’ service area of nearly 52,000 square miles, these inefficiencies compounded quickly, impacting the budgets, timelines, and quality negatively.  

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‍The Solution

KYRO was selected as the central digital platform to connect Xcel Energy’s SPS field crews, engineers, inspectors, and leadership in real time. By combining robust data collection with business intelligence dashboards, it turned field inputs into actionable insights, helping teams benchmark performance, spot bottlenecks, and make informed decisions across hundreds of sites.

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‍“KYRO has provided a very helpful solution through its software. The data collection, business intelligence and documentation software have improved our ability to run our projects.”

 – Project Manager, Xcel Energy

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Here’s how KYRO helped

• Unified real-time progress tracking: Field crews used KYRO’s mobile app to log construction milestones, material deliveries, as-build documentation, and field issues from anywhere in the service area. Updates flowed instantly to dashboards accessible by managers and leadership, eliminating blind spots.  

• Offline capability: With offline mode, crews captured reports on the spot, even in poor connectivity areas. Information stayed accurate and fresh, avoiding delays or forgotten details. Once back online, data synced automatically and ensured nothing was lost.

• Instant issue escalation: High-resolution photos, notes, and tags captured in the field were available to engineers within minutes. This enabled same-day resolution of defective material cases, cutting the average delay from days to hours.

• Precise material tracking: Using KYRO, Xcel Energy monitored material delivery and usage down to the exact count per site, preventing shortages by knowing what was in stock, what left the yard, and by whom. This helped in eliminating overbilling and saved millions annually.  

• Data-driven quality control: Defective materials were logged and categorized in real time. Feedback was automatically routed to vendors and manufacturers, leading to measurable improvements in material quality over successive projects.

• Scalable digital model: Once the workflows were refined, Xcel Energy replicated the KYRO-enabled process across other capital projects in the SPS footprint, ensuring consistent performance without adding management complexity.

‍“I have noticed many improvements since KYRO has been involved on our projects such as increased efficiencies, safety practices, reporting tools and other practices that improved productivity.”

– Construction Superintendent, Xcel Energy

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With KYRO into their daily operations, Xcel Energy transformed a sprawling, high-budget construction program into a tightly coordinated, data-driven operation. Real-time visibility replaced guesswork, issues were resolved before they could derail schedules, and millions were saved through precise tracking and accountability.  

What was once a fragmented process across 52,000 square miles became a unified, scalable model, delivering faster projects, stronger cost control, and higher-quality outcomes for the communities SPS serves.

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