Welcome Your New Expert Interview Series: David Miller, New Expert in the Digital Utility Group – [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Expert Interview]

In this latest installment of our Energy Central Community Expert Interview Series, we do just that by introducing you to an accomplished voice in the realm of GIS technology and utility management, David Miller. David is a key player at SSP Innovations, where he brings years of hands-on experience and insight to the intersection of GIS and utility operations. We start this conversation by learning about his journey into the utility sector and his evolving role as an executive consultant.

Read on to learn how David leverages his expertise to help utilities navigate complex projects and transition to more digital, GIS-centric systems.

Matt Chester: These interviews serve to introduce you to our Energy Central Community, so I want to start by giving you a chance to introduce yourself. What is your role at SSP and how did you end up in this sector? 

David Miller: I’m an executive consultant where I interact with customers on whatever questions, problems, or projects they may have focusing on GIS technologies and their associated workflows.  I started in this sector as an engineering aide at Lincoln Electric System (LES) in 1998.  After a few years, I moved over to the operations space as a GIS technician where we field checked all the equipment being installed or replaced and played an integral role in outage and storm restoration.   My last 13 years at LES was as the GIS Analyst and GIS Manager, where I managed the GIS, CAD, fiber management, outage management, and a few mobile systems.  Basically, that department was the data broker for LES.  After 20 years there, I made the jump to the private sector when I joined SSP Innovations.

MC: You’ve worked extensively with technologies like Esri, ArcGIS, ArcFM, and many others. Can you explain how these tools have transformed utility management over the years, particularly in transmission and distribution design?

DM: I think those tools have helped put a wealth of information into the hands of any utility employee, be it a designer, engineer, line worker, whomever!  For a lot of utilities, it seems to be common to have to drive out into the field to doublecheck what facilities are truly installed.  But for the ones who have heavily embraced GIS and established strong data quality control workflows around it, they can design from their desk with very few mistakes.  Additionally, the topology model that GIS can and usually does maintain has quickly become the backbone for other enterprise applications such as planning systems, outage management systems, and advanced distribution management systems.  As data requirements grow for more advanced system analysis, I’m seeing GIS also growing into more of a data aggregation point.

MC: You’ve led numerous system implementations and workflow optimizations. What do you consider the most significant challenges utilities face when transitioning to a more digital, GIS-centric system, and how do you help them overcome these hurdles?

DM: Honestly, the biggest challenge I see in these types of transitions is that the utility itself doesn’t want to change as much as they say.  Change management is difficult and utilities try to avoid changing things drastically to keep the end users from having to learn new processes and procedures.  So much money is spent implementing the latest technologies.  And then even more money is spent customizing the latest technologies so it looks and acts like the same business process a utility stood up 30, 40, or 50 years ago.  If utilities looked at the costs, they would realize they spend much more money customizing and then maintaining the customizations then taking the one time hit of developing a business process that complements the technology and then training the users on the new process.

I try to help by asking hard questions about the “why” of a unique or legacy business process and try to get the customer to understand that a drastic change may be necessary to achieve their goals.  I also try to show what the costs are to maintain old processes, which I sometime refer to as the $400,000 PDF report.  We can spend the $400k to recreate a 40-year-old report format, but is that really where you want your money go?

MC: How do you balance the technical complexities of systems like ArcGIS and SAP with the real-world needs of utilities in field operations and outage restoration?

DM: I try to keep myself in the mindset of the field worker who is out in a rainstorm trying to restore power.  Do they want to be filling out complex forms with a lot of information or do they want to record things quickly and move on?  The answer is usually none of the above: they just want to work and leave the data entry to someone else.  Be that as it may, we need some data coming from the field and we need to make that data entry as fast, painless, and easy as possible.

While my last answer talked about customizations to persist legacy business processes, this is where I would rather a customer spend that time of money!  Invest in simple, intuitive GUIs and applications and keep the technical complexities buried out of sight of the field.  We did this at LES where the GIS map was the frontend for a lot of SAP workflows.  Users would click on the map and fill out a couple of data fields to generate a work ticket.  The GIS-SAP integration would derive the rest of the required information from the GIS system itself and pass the fully populated work ticket to SAP. 

Ultimately, we need to be respectful of the time we’re asking the field workers to commit to data collection during their daily and emergency activities.  Investments should be made to provide that respect while also fulfilling the goals of the organization.

MC: What are you excited about when it comes to getting more involved in the Energy Central Community as an Expert? And in what areas do you most look forward to sharing your insights? 

DM: I am excited!  I’ve been enjoying what I’ve been reading so far and like seeing all the different perspectives.  I’m looking forward to providing some of my own experiences and successes that are hopefully relatable to other industry experts.  My favorite areas to talk about are outage management and business process design (which should be a much broader initiative than people likely expect).  I also assisted in cyber security at LES and I find that security pretty fascinating.  The world is getting much more complex and those layers of complexity is where we are going to leave ourselves exposed.  We need to stay very vigilant on that front.

If anyone has any questions or want to engage in a conversation about electric utility business practices, please reach out!

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Thanks to David for joining me for this interview and providing a wealth of insights and expertise to the Energy Central Community. You can trust that David will be available for you to reach out and connect and ask questions as an Energy Central member, so be sure to make him feel welcome when you see him across the platform.

Other expert interviews in this series can be read here, and if you are interested in becoming an expert, you can reach out to me or  apply here.