Utility Collaboration

If you view utility collaboration as the holy grail of cost savings, effective use of labor, prudent use of finite right of way space, and minimizing customer disruptions, then lets start a conversation!

SaskPower and SaskTel reaped a $13M savings from Joint Infrastructure Installation

2020-21 CIC Crown Collaboration Report pages 6,15

The road to all great rewards always runs through a field of challenges. If your team is trying to navigate these challenges, then I would like to share my first hand experience as:

• Program Manager and Design Lead searching for alignment between our business needs, developing the cost sharing model, serving as a technical expert for the legal framework, inventing tools to share engineering resources, authoring common engineering practices, leading the design for the record high annual budget of $18.3M Urban Residential Distribution (URD) program executed jointly with Fiber to the Home in over 46 geographic areas.
• Construction and ComissioninG lead splicing, testing, and setting up terminal equipment. Solving the technical challenges that inevitably come connecting different networks, working with multiple utility crews that have different work methods, and meshing designs produced by different engineering firms. Turning up the network that gave SaskPower, SaskTel and RCMP a geographically redundant fiber optics from North Battleford to Meadow Lake in 2012. Completing more than 20 helicopter flights to finish the last mile of the 566km OPGW network that brought high-speed internet to Key Lake in a collaboration between SaskPower, SaskTel and Cameco in 2015.