The Market
According to Edison Electric Institute, the size of investor-owned utilities' Industry Capital Expenditures was valued at US $139.8 billion in 2020. Add to that a report published by FTI Consulting, Inc., through its work for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and National Cooperative Services Corp., that found electric cooperatives contributed US $60.3 billion of capital investment between 2013 and 2017. Based on past performance, expectations are that these numbers will grow at a rate of 15 to 20% each year. Any additional capital investment in the country's infrastructure could significantly increase the market for the relevant technology platform market in this segment
The Challenge
Think Power Solutions (Think Power) is a leading infrastructure management solutions provider to the electric utilities, telecom, and construction industries across the nation. Think Power serves many blue-chip customers like American Electric Power (AEP), ONCOR Electric Delivery, Duke Energy, CenterPoint Energy, Xcel Energy, Texas-New Mexico Power, Entergy, LS Power, Cross Texas Transmission, Priority Power, Pedernales Electric Cooperative, CoServ, and many more. With projects spanning a myriad of stakeholders whose responsibilities often overlap, the need to quickly and easily document and share real time progress is critical to successful project completion. Additionally, longer term projects will certainly involve the turnover of personnel during their lifespan, requiring the seamless transition of project information and history to ensure details are not missed.
Solutions
The Kyro software platform provides the perfect vehicle for documenting project activities and issues from the field using the mobile reporting module. Following submittal of a field report, an update is emailed to key stakeholders and uploaded to shared online project dashboards, providing all stakeholders with the ability to check real-time project status at any time
Using the Kyro mobile module as well as the Kyro web dashboards ensures that all stakeholders on large projects can see what others are reporting and each can make updates appropriate for their specific area of responsibility.
Kyro allows:
Field oversight to make progress updates which drive the overall project completion estimateDocumentation of project issues and flagging for follow-upPhotos to be added to progress and issue updatesMark up of project documents and drawings (red-lining)Documentation of project changes and key decisionsAlert notification to engineering. As soon as issues arise in the field, alerts are sent with pixel perfect images leading to quick resolution and significant cost-savingsMonitoring of overall status, schedule, and staffing to ensure accurate reporting and budget planningReturn on Investment
Clients have achieved significant cost savings using Kyro through its accurate real-time monitoring of planned vs actual budgets on client CapEX programs. One client reported an annual savings of at least $150M per year on an annual CapEx budget of $3B; approximately 5% savings through the use of Kyro. Savings are seen in areas such as:
The digital project history created by Kyro provides an excellent repository of information for after the fact analysis that can be used for reasons such as justifying utility rate cases and improving processes and protocols.Documenting quality assurance, leading to higher quality construction, fewer punch list and warranty items, increased operational capabilities, and minimizing the risk of lawsuits.Documenting safety, leading to a safer jobsite, less injury, less downtime, and again minimizing the risk of lawsuits.Seamless communication and project handoffs between departments from project inception to construction completion. This significantly decreases the overall level of effort required by everyone involved during the project lifecycle.Access to accurate project status substantially reduces the need for project update meetings. All project status information is available in real-time via the Kyro website.Documenting project issues and change requests, increasing turnaround for resolution and approvals, and visibility to other stakeholders to evaluate impacts. This maximizes construction efficiency, schedule, and costs.Reporting is automated through emails and business intelligence dashboards eliminating the administrative cost of report scanning, input and formatting. Kyro has demonstrated improved efficiencies in the construction management program of the utilities with which we are currently working.Kyro has improved engineering and construction operations and provided actionable business intelligence to utilities.Issue captured by Kyro enables Think Power and the owner to review lessons learned and implement best practices. Once root causes of issues are determined, the management team agrees on a resolution that is then documented and distributed across the group for reference and best practices purposes. This allows a consistent cycle of collaboration and continuous improvement between engineering and operations that successfully identifies and educates stakeholders on common issues.Kyro's technological platform dramatically increases productivity and quality of deliverables to the owner. This enables Think Power to provide infrastructure management solutions, PMO, construction management. and construction oversight services at a competitive price. Kyro also enables Think Power to deliver to the owner a lower total overall cost of the program.