Utility infrastructure inspections—underground and overhead are unglamorous, often forgotten, but essential for resilience and reliability. Whether it’s manholes buried beneath our feet (sorry about the gender specific reference, but in the old days, utility workers were mostly men and the term stuck) or transmission lines stretching across mountains, the mission is the same: keep the lights on, the people safe, and the regulators happy.
In the old days, inspections were clipboard affairs—manual, messy, and maddening. But that world is changing. Fast. Modern inspections are smart, seamless, and surgical. GIS is the center of that transformation.
The Trouble with “Business as Usual”
I once worked at a power company responsible for more than 16,000 manholes. Our goal was noble: inspect every single one. We started at manhole no. 1 and proceeded numerically. Paper forms were in hand, and crews ventured out. After a full year, we had inspected a few hundred.
The result? A pile of greasy forms and not real insight. We abandoned the effort. It turns out that trying to inspect everything equally is a sure way to accomplish almost nothing. It’s inefficient, expensive, and ultimately ineffective.
That lesson applies to transmission lines, where inspections must stretch across hundreds, even thousands of miles of rugged terrain. Using ground crews to inspect every pole, tower, span, or insulator on a fixed schedule is unsustainable.
Regulators agree.
Regulation Is Getting Smarter Too
NERC and FERC have clarified that reliability and safety are not optional.
Take NERC FAC-003, which mandates transmission line vegetation management and reliability standards. Utilities must identify and address risks before they lead to outages or fires. Then there’s FERC Order 881, emphasizing transparency in line ratings and urging real-time, situational awareness.
Out West, California’s General Orders 95 and 165 push utilities harder to inspect and maintain assets amid a wildfire-prone environment. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) mandates rigorous inspection schedules—and holds utilities accountable when something slips through the cracks.
It’s no longer enough to say, “We inspected that asset last year.” The question is, “Are you inspecting the right assets at the right time?” And that’s where GIS comes in.
GIS: Making Inspections Smarter, Not Harder
Knowing what to inspect, where, when, and why is the key to smarter inspections.
GIS lets utilities overlay spatial intelligence with operational data. This lets workers move from the brute-force world of one-size-fits-all inspections to a smarter model based on risk, priority, and efficiency.
GIS unlocks clues about:
Which manholes are near flood zones, trash-heavy alleys, or high-crime areas?
Which assets sit in high wind corridors or have a history of sparking fires?
Which transmission lines cross over environmentally sensitive terrain or critical wildlife habitats?
Which spans of line are near known vegetation growth hotspots or unauthorized encampments?
By mashing together GIS layers, such as asset health, vegetation, weather, fire history, crew availability, and drone imagery, workers don’t just inspect. They target and act with precision.
ArcGIS helps utilities manage data and workflows better, ensuring inspections make sense and go off without a hitch.
The Three Steps to Smart Inspection
1. Organize - bring everything together:
Assets—poles, towers, manholes, vaults—by type, location, and criticality
External data - wildfire risk, flooding models, seismic activity, and land use
Failure histories
Environmental exposures
2. Inspect
Leverage mobile apps, smart forms, and real-time updates—no more scribbling notes or shuffling through spreadsheets in a truck cab.
With ArcGIS Field Maps and ArcGIS Survey123, crews can:
Locate assets accurately (even in rural backcountry or dense urban cores)
Conduct digital inspections with built-in logic and photo capture
Automatically sync findings to a central dashboard back at the office
And if inspecting from the air? ArcGIS can ingest drone data, LIDAR, and imagery, transforming it into usable insights.
3. Report
GIS can:
Track inspection progress against regulatory deadlines
Identify assets trending toward failure
Trigger automatic work orders in connected systems like asset and work management systems
Share reports with regulators, auditors, or even the public
Smart inspections mean no surprises, missed deadlines, and no regulatory fines.
This isn’t just about technology. It’s about flipping the script, from reactive to proactive, paper-based to data-driven. Manholes that used to be forgotten are now prioritized. Transmission lines that once required expensive blanket patrols can now be monitored surgically. ArcGIS turns disconnected data into a cohesive strategy.
Final Thought: Don’t Just Inspect. Predict.
At the end of the day, inspections aren’t about compliance. They’re about resilience. By combining GIS, real-time data, and regulatory context, utilities can start predicting where failures will happen before they do. And that changes everything.
If I had ArcGIS while managing 16,000 manholes, I wouldn’t have started with manhole no. 1. I would’ve started with the riskiest, dirtiest, most-likely-to-catch-fire manhole. And I wouldn’t be buried in paper.
Learn how GIS mobile tools and dashboards can smarten inspections from manholes to transmission towers.
Bill Meehan is Director of Electric Utility Solutions at Esri and a longtime advocate for digital transformation in the energy sector. When he’s not evangelizing about smart grids and smarter inspections, he’s probably still counting manholes in his sleep.