Empowering grid modernization and decarbonization.

Good morning, good afternoon, depending where you're joining from today and welcome to today's webinar. The title of today's webinar is Delivering Grid Modernization for Electric Utility Operators and we'll be talking about our solution called Network Manager Electric. My name is Adrian McNulty, I lead the Utility Solutions Practice at IQGeo and I'm joined by my colleague Jason Morton, he's a Principal Solution Architect and also leads the pre-sales team at IQGeo. I'm joining you from sunny Georgia today, it's already 90 degrees, it's 11am so it's going to be another hot day and Jason is joining us from Denver. So today's topics and what are we going to cover today? So we're going to start off and talk about what is grid modernization in the initial transition. We'll give a short introduction to IQGeo for those of you who are not aware of us yet. Moving into an introduction of the solution itself, Network Manager Electric and then the main or the bulk of the session today, Jason will be providing a live demonstration of the Network Manager Electric solution and then we'll open up for Q&A towards the end. But I believe there's a question box that you can type your questions in as you go through and we'll get to those at the end of the demonstration. So for now I'm going to close my video off just so you get the full screen experience and I'll move into the presentation. So grid modernization and the energy transition. So what is grid modernization? I believe this is the industry's response to the actual energy transition itself. So then it raises the question, what is the energy transition and how does it affect us in the utility sector? Well, the energy transition can be broadly defined as any significant change to the energy system, whether that's a change to the energy resources themselves, whether it's a change to the energy infrastructure, the network itself, whether it's a change to the energy consumption or the behavior consumption, whether it's a change to energy economics and policy. And a bit of all of these are in play at the moment. And we're going to look at how the impact is in the electric sector, specifically the network and the assets themselves. This image, I like this image, it's actually from an Accenture white paper, which is talking about the trends of the energy transition. And I like this because it highlights some of the larger trends and each of these have an impact on the design and operation of the electric grid or the network. So let's touch upon one of each of these or a few of these and talk about their impact. So decarbonization is a global theme across all sectors today. You know, we see a countrywide, statewide mandates and policies around net zero goals. And in the US, the administration has set a 50% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030 and a net zero by 2050. And this is echoed across the world by different companies in different countries around a net zero goal by 2050. And ways to achieve this, and some of these came out of the COP26, were to phase out fossil based coal and coal generation, significant investment in renewable energy, accelerate the adoption of EVs from a fleet perspective, and also to control deforestation. This carbon decarbonization is not limited just to the utility sector. We're seeing all sectors, different businesses, large and small, adopt their own net zero targets. But this will have a fundamental impact to the network itself. Let's touch on distributed energy resources or DER and the decentralization. So this to me is a key part of decarbonization. In essence, this is the move from centralized large fossil based generation to decentralized and renewable generation, whether that generation is through solar, through storage, through wind, whether it connects a transmission distribution or more local like microgrids, microgrids and even at the consumer level. This is moving the generation closer to where the loads are consumed. And in some cases to the same location. I read a recent report by Wood Mackenzie that forecast 387 gigawatts of DER by 2025, which is a significant change from where we are today. If we look at electrocution and transportation, this is an external influence that's going to have significant impact to how we build and maintain our our electric networks. The rate of EV adoption is increasing every single day. I saw an article through IEA where they stated that 2.5% of global car sales in 29 were EV. And that increased to almost 9% in 2021. With some forecasts that predict 30% of new car sales by 2030 will be EV. And this is backed by the major car manufacturers that have their own strategies of driving to a full EV fleet, whether that's General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, or I myself, I'm hoping that I can get either an F-150 Lightning or a Silverado. I've got my name down for those. But all, you know, this transformation is going to be significant. Because it's going to also require significant changes around how we charge that infrastructure, which again is going to have an impact on the network grid. A DOE report recently declared that in the US we will need around 56 charging stations per 100, sorry, per 1000 square miles. The current average is around about 18. So we've got a lot of work to do there. Today we see a lot more dense population of EV infrastructure in urban areas compared to rural areas. But we're seeing some momentum and utilities are making some big strides and momentum there. In the Midwest, there's 29 co-ops that are working together to build out EV infrastructure across rural communities. Also, some of the larger use have been working together to build out fast charging infrastructure across major US highways. Now, this is fantastic. It looks we're all collaborating to accelerate something that's going to change the way we operate. Now, those three decarbonization, DER and decentralization with electrification and transportation, they have a significant impact in terms of what we need to do today's network to the grid. The grid wasn't designed for some of the changes that we're forming today to. Or whether it's network reinforcements, whether it's new connections, whether it's redesigns. And then the other three areas, electrification of heat, energy efficiency and consumer to consumer, they'll also have an impact into how we design our grid. But at the end of the day, we're going to see a lot. These are all going to require a fairly significant investment on a failure, a very significant investment into the network itself. It's probably going to be the one of the largest overhauls since since the grid was actually put together almost 100 years ago. And with that, we'll start to see an increase in the number of assets in the field, the amount of data being managed and how the systems are actually operated. Many of today's existing solutions and systems and processes are not sufficient to the impact of these changes going forward. So like UGEO, we believe one of the key components to be able to manage the grid of the future is to have an accurate and up to date digital model or digital representation of the grid. If you look at today's or traditional geospatial technology and platforms, they tend to be fairly back end focused, complex to use. There's still a lot of paper processes or manual processes. There's still a lot of manual data entry or integration to point to point integrations. They lead to a time lag between the work that happens in the field or the assets that are really in the field compared to the data that's in the operational systems. And it's hard for these solutions to react to the quick pace of change. Now, we believe it's time to explore alternative geospatial solutions. You know, we should acknowledge that all of the assets are actually in the field. There's more and more work being performed in the field. We need to empower the field workers with easy to use solutions that are fully integrated back into the back office. So the workflow and efficiencies between office staff and field workers are improved. And for that, we, at IQgeo, we developed Network Manager Electric. We developed this as a single geospatial solution that can be used anywhere across the full lifecycle of the network. And today we're going to take a deeper dive into Network Manager Electric as a solution itself. Before I do that, I'd like to quickly introduce IQgeo as a company. Our focus is on helping network operators such as utilities and telcos build and maintain better networks. We have over 300 customers using our solutions today with over 70,000 end users using the applications. From a company perspective, we are headquartered in Cambridge in the UK with operations here in the US in Denver and Salt Lake City, as well as operations in Germany and Japan. Here are a few of our utility customers. As you can see, these are very well respected utility operators across the world. You may have recently seen a webinar where PGE Portland presented how they are actually have implemented our and continue to implement Network Manager Electric to help their operations. Earlier I mentioned decarbonisation goals. I'm very proud to announce that we have been recently awarded a carbon neutral certification for 2021. As a company, we believe in sustainability and are very committed to net zero operations. This is something we believe in from an industry, but also as how we operate as a company as well. All right, let's take a quick poll and I believe a poll question will pop up on the screen. The question is, does your organisation have some form of grid modernisation or decarbonisation programme in place? And I'll give a couple of seconds, 30 seconds or so for you to answer that. Okay, Samaya, do we have any, can we see the answers coming back in right now? Okay, that's interesting and it really aligns with the next slide, which I'll show from another survey. But an astounding yes in terms of some type of grid model decarbonisation programme in place. This, what you see on this slide. Oh, Samaya, can you close the question there? Okay, great, thank you. Yeah, this is aligned to a recent survey from a white paper from Black & Beach in Clarion, where they asked a similar question around, is your organisation involved in decarbonisation? And again, similar response, very high yes. As you can hear, many of the responses were related to either regulatory or state or local mandates. But we already see many utilities really trailblazing and putting your own net zero goals in place, independent of any state-wide regulatory requirements. Okay, so let's move into introducing Network Manager as a solution. So, first of all, I want to point out that Network Manager has been designed, Electric has been designed specifically for electric utilities and specifically to help you manage the assets on your grid for a full life cycle. It's been designed with mobile-first philosophy. All the assets are in the field, a lot of work's been done in the field, so we need to enable an end-to-end workflow that expands the office to the field and back again. We also have to make this very easy to use for the adoption from all types of users and accessible from the whole organisation. And also designed an application that is easy to roll out, so you get a quicker time to benefit. So, I mentioned earlier around the digital twin or the digital representation of your network and how important it is with the energy transition. So, we're very aware there's many different systems in place in a typical utility today. GIS systems, ERP systems, work and asset management systems, mobility solutions, and in many cases, multiple mobility solutions. Then there's other solutions such as ADMSs, outreach management systems. There's also lots of data that will help during the day-to-day operations that help you make decisions. So, what we built with the ICOgeo platform is something that is capable to bring data and integration from different applications, whether it be GIS, whether it be work and asset management or ERP, whether it be data feeds. Those could be map layers, weather layers, parcel layers, and really support the different workflows from the planning and design through asbelts, redlining, and capture behavior in the field, but have it seamlessly on one platform and visible to the wider organisation. So, looking at the network lifecycle, let's start thinking of the network and assets as a true lifecycle. It is changing. Day-to-day, there's lots of changes across the network, whether it be new connection requests, whether it be new construction, whether it be operation maintenance. So, let's deep dive into how network manager electric can help all these different stages of the lifecycle. So, in planning and design, we're already seeing a significant increase of new connection requests, whether that be new builds from housing subdivisions, whether it be new connections for renewable energy or DERs, whether it be network reinforcement to support some of the changes that we talked about earlier, the creation of work packets. We then move into the engineering and construction, the execution of work, the as-built process, changes to the initial design, whether it be the data capture from the field to update asset location, asset information, all of this integrated end-to-end through the operations and maintenance phase of the network. Now, we're looking at inspections of the asset on a regular basis and other workflows such as edge management. And some of our customers also use the platform for outage response and damage assessment. Then at the end of customer service, we can provide the CSRs and the customers with a geospatial view of what's really happening in the field. And one example of this is what we've done for some of our customers in the US and in Japan is a geospatial view of outage response over time to show what's being restored in the impact. So, it's a true end-to-end solution that can be deployed to really help improve productivity across the network lifecycle. Before jumping into the demonstration itself, which I'm sure that's why you've all joined, I just want to touch on a couple of the core capabilities of Network Manager itself. So, the ability to model, we built into the solution a very flexible, capable modeling capability. Whether it's building in, bringing in, sorry, the data from a model from your existing GIS or utilizing the model that's inherent into Network Manager itself. But one of the core things is the flexibility of your model going forward. So, the ability to adapt and extend the model, but without the need to go back and change the product itself. Remember, I remember the days when I was working in an OMS company and to change the data scheme in the OMS minute, significant change to the table structure. Took a long time to work through. Another premise of our core capabilities to use anywhere. We touched upon it briefly in earlier slides, but it's imperative that we allow the same capabilities regardless of the user and where they're located. So, this application is designed to be used in the office, in the field, on and offline, but all with the same user experience and bringing the data back and forward seamlessly. So, we don't see the latency from when the work's happened into the operational systems. To do this, we need to be integrated with all of the other systems in the ecosystem of utility workspace. And we touched upon a few of those earlier, whether it be receiving work or asset information from the EAM, whether it be working different types of work orders from different systems, bringing in the GIS. And another area that we're very mindful of is the systems that we deliver today need to be able to adapt to changing business models. So, we've built the IQgeo platform with very strong capabilities around workflow management, the ability to change user interaction as you adapt all of your different workflow processes and as you're building, bringing different systems into the end -to-end workflow of managing your network. Okay, so that's the introduction to the solution itself. Now, we're going to spend some time with Jason who's going to give a demonstration of Network Manager Electrics. So, give me a moment. I will make Jason the presenter. Thanks, Adrian. And Jason, you should have presentation rights right now. Yep. I'm just going to check to make sure that my screen is correct. My screen sharing is looking good. It is. Thanks for handing over control. Yeah, in fact, as you were mentioning, Adrian, we want to make sure that these environments are available for anyone who needs to be able to access them as part of these workflows. And that those workflows are becoming even more complicated than they have been and really need to embrace the field, as you mentioned. There's a couple of key parts to that that I'll hit on really quickly before I start clicking a lot of buttons. First of all, this is the IQgeo platform user interface that is used by Network Manager. And one of the biggest parts, and it's easy to forget sometimes, is that we have to make sure that this is easy to use. If field crews can't pick it up and start using the application right away, if it's having trouble because you don't have an internet connection or if it's just too many buttons to click on, they're just not going to use it. So we want to make sure it's easy to use, that it'll work online and offline inside of a web browser with an iOS device and an app on Android or Windows, so that everybody can participate in all the different processes that are being updated that Adrian was mentioning. So that's really critical. So I'll get into a quick demonstration here based on that easy to use user experience where you can basically run searches for anything up here using using typing or voice. You've got just a few buttons to be able to do your job along the top here, and that you can see all your data in a single pane of glass to do your work. In this case, we're going to go through some design scenarios. But those design scenarios, of course, are working on top of the data model. This can be replicated from existing systems and shown as different layers that are shown inside the view on the left hand side. This could be things that are more for traditional GIS, like the locations of service points and transformers and poles and things like that, that would be under the structure layer over here for things like poles and conduits. For all the different things you can see on the map here, like overhead and underground of primary and secondary, as well as other things you might be interested in, like what's the weather look like? Or where do I have work orders of different types happening in terms of where repair work is happening, etc. Or what is an operational view of the network look like in terms of where our circuit connectivity looks like? And we'll talk about the connectivity of the network model and how important that is for all these users as well as we go through here. Of course, it's also very important that these things are configurable as Adrian was mentioning because these things are always changing. We can't afford to go off for weeks at a time to do a data model change. We need it within minutes or hours to be able to have new concepts of deploying equipment and new configurations available to everybody so that we're all working on the same page to support that grid modernization approach in order to model anything. And you can see that as well down at the lower data model level where we might want to look at things that are in a substation. Or if I was investigating where I might be enhancing an underground design here, we might want to click into a transformer to find out all the traditional attributes of the transformer, but also links out to its compatible units out to what structure it happens to be residing with. Other operational type things like KVA information as well as network connectivity to be able to show what's upstream and downstream on this particular part of the network. And we'll show some network tracing capabilities as we go through here as well, because it's not just important to have that configurability. It also has to have a network centric approach in order to be able to model all those new and exciting things that Adrian was discussing. And we could, of course, see that on any of the different attributes, which are just exposed here on the left hand side to be able to quickly get to data, either to find it from that one box search. You could use your GPS functionality if you happen to be in the field by this transformer or, of course, as I did here, I could just select things on the map as well. The other important thing here is that we have to enable all sorts of different users to request or make changes to the network to keep that network up to date. As our networks become more complicated and more modern, it's more important to have more than just a small set of office users making changes to the data. We want to be able to make sure that folks in the field are making those changes right where the action is happening, as Adrian was saying. But we still want to have our traditional approaches of maintaining the data in a very effective way. And we'll hit on some of those as we go through here. But one of those core principles is having access to long transactions and version management so that I can isolate changes that are made by particular users, but not have them conflicting with changes that other users might be making or forcing you to lock data out. So in this case, you can always make changes to the data in IQ Geo and you can also see where other users are making changes down to the south. There's another design happening where you can see the changes in orange being rendered on my map. And I can see that for any design in the system with what we call active version management so that we can participate in conflict avoidance as we're making these changes. So there's no conflicts going to happen for the design that I can make to serve this new house up over here, up to the northeast. So then I can decide that I might want to start my design version from here as well. So I'm going to have my design. I might roughly sketch out where I might be making changes to help direct other users to where I am making those changes. Of course, we can have to have a name in here. But the other important things within this version management and participating in the design workflow is that you've got different types of designs that you can put changes to. And you also have a state where things will operate differently as they move through the state and include different integrations, possibly at different states as well. So in this case here, I'm going to put it right into a design state, but I might want to be read only later on after I've gone out for permits or once I've started my construction process. So I'm going to hit save. And of course, these can be linked to traditional work order management systems as well. Once I open this up, I get some information here that's available to me at any time. I can click through and say, you know, other things I need to find out about the design changes my UI a little bit, gives me access to the ability to see what changes. There's no changes yet within here that but the changes that have been made by certain users within my design. I can check the design for how I'm doing in terms of rules and QA, QC and completion. And of course, I've got my version management capabilities to be able to to check for any conflicts, even though it didn't look like there were any before to publish things back up or to view a bill of materials where I'll show that once I start populating some data within here. When you're populating data, there's a couple of different methodologies that you can use to achieve that using these tools. Of course, you can also change your background images as well. So maybe I want to look at things in a satellite view or a hybrid view from Google, Bing, OpenStreetMap or any of these other providers as well. Tools might automate a lot of data placement as well as giving you access to make additions to things like compatible units so that if you happen to be capturing new and the latest information that you're tracking the cost and the labor associated with those things as well using compatible unit concepts against those newer concepts that Adrian covered. So we've got also the ability to very quickly add certain sets of data as well. But for now, I'm going to close down the tools just to get a little bit more screen real estate here to work with on my design itself. The other very useful thing for for for placing for placing data. First of all, is it's always going to be a network model powered placement. So things are going to be connected up for me automatically and I'll be able to use tools like this to do network tracing once I once I've created some data as well. But this case here, I'm going to bring up our feature pallets. This also is float floating here. I can move that around. I can minimize it if I needed to get out of my way. Of course, you could take a more traditional approach where you're basically just placing things one at a time. But this is very configurable in a couple of different ways. One is that each user or groups of users can decide what they're going to see on their pallets for those different types of jobs. And users can also add their own features in here just by hovering over the dots here to add a new feature that will keep track of all of the attributes that you've set up as well as any compatible units you've associated with it into a macro. Each of those is available for different users or they can have their own that they're managing as well. And if you want to be able to have them all work together, you can simply by going into point and span mode down here at the bottom. This gives us really a very integrated, easy to use type way to start to enter data, even if that data has changed in the configuration so that again, we're innovating constantly here. And but not having it negatively impact the designer because they can also be very nimble in how they're configuring things. The things that will show up in the points and spans exactly reflects what's in the pallets. So users can control that themselves or be given standards to to follow. When I start up the point and span wizard, it looks kind of blank for now. Right. So but basically, as soon as you start clicking, it's going to start to to to be very active. Right. So basically, if I click somewhere that something is existing already, it's going to understand that. If not, it's going to ask me what I want to put at my first point. Then I can click another point and another point over here. And I haven't actually put any of the palette data in here right away. I'm just coming up with kind of my my skeleton drawing that I want to come up with for the design that I'm coming up with here. And it's building up the list as I go here to say, hey, we had a point feature here at the start. We had we had another point feature maybe at the start, and then we had a line that gets highlighted in blue and then all the way through to the end of where I clicked. And I can draw more lines in here or add more vertices and it will add them in here as well. It's saying, hey, I know I'm connecting in here and where I'm connecting up already. I might want to then, you know, decide if I want to add things or remove things from this list as well. So I can basically click through and say, well, you know what, we had a little bit of a misclick there. So I can then say, well, no, you know what? I actually wanted to more go over here where we had some existing primary. And we'll do that. And it's just going to react to everything that I click through here. So now it's going to say it's connecting to this transformer here instead of where it was just trying to connect directly to some secondary where would it give me an error. So I'm going to click through there as well and say, OK, we're going to start at this particular transformer. It recognizes its properties that it already has a pole or in this case, actually not a pole. Sorry. It had a surface structure to participate in already as as as structure itself. And then I can start to lay down information here and say, well, you know what? I really wanted to have a certain underground single phase there. It's going to tell me what the length is. I can edit and those attributes as I go through and that'll push things over here in the left hand side. We'll show that a little bit later on. I might want to have another structure here. I'm going to put in a pedestal. You could have an offset if you're doing overhead. I'm doing underground. So I'll say no offset. You can also bring up all the attributes as well as jump into the compatible units if they weren't automatically assigned to you right away. Where we can have our favorites. We can search for things, etc. So I'm going to go ahead and add a see you for the pedestal where it's going to add that in there. Save that we could add additional things in each one of these levels as well. But for this one here, I'm going to make this into some secondary single phase underground. And then at the end, I could have things like another surface structure or I could add in a customer connection. If I scroll down here, we could have a service point or I could say, you know what? There isn't really a structure at the end. There's just a connection that I can delete those as well. This way we are automatically connecting up to our existing networks. We can add features to any point and we can make use of offsets and macros that have been set up as part of those pallets by the user or as part of the design type. With the use tied together that will show how we're integrated together with everything to build up the build of materials. Some of those CUs will be automatically assigned if they were wrapped in as part of the pallet. And if they weren't, then you can go in here at any time and say, I want to assign additional CUs for a meter that I might be adding at this particular end of the end of the design. So if I could set it set OK here, I can go back as well at any point in time and make changes back here. Right. So if I wanted to make a change to this particular underground and have some some different sets of CUs for some certain wire types, some of those might be within my favorites. They show up with a little star here and then we can have different quantities and lengths and things like that to override, etc. We could, of course, do measurements and add all sorts of other things within the design as well. But if I'm happy with what things are looking like here, I can hit save. It's going to check some some rules for me. Tell me if there's anything any problems that I missed. It's still going to accept the other things that I've done, but it gave me a little notice that I needed to maybe consider adding another piece of equipment in between in between two particular spans. So we've we've done our design here. We can also do other checks as well. So you can have those checks that are happening as you do the work or you can go back into the. Into the tools or into the palette and check our design. So I could have bring up the tools again over here and say, you know what? I actually wanted to run a bunch of different data validation on here and find out. Yes, I did have some warnings that need to be addressed and maybe a junior designer. It's going to tell me over the left hand side what were the things that I didn't quite do right and that I might need to be able to fix. So you get some interactive feedback as well as some feedback as we go through here as well. That's though all going to be immediately available to participate in the my network model. So I could run network traces from here to run upstream and downstream from different devices. If I was wrong, the transformer here, it's going to recognize that it's on the on the electric network. It's going to check for different phases. You could run in different directions, et cetera, and find out where the next upstream device happens to be from that design that I've been working on as well. By the way, these could all be sent out to KML or CSV. These results get put into this hierarchy over here for what is right now a very simple network trace. I could have gone all the way back up to the substation with different options as well or thrown it into a schematic or other places too. And of course, we could always turn on our other layers at any point in time during that design as well. But we're able to run all those different types of validations to make sure that we have that accurate digital twin that Adrian was discussing of our network. And by the way, we can also share that map as well with people who have access to the system or not. So you can basically share things in different ways. I could copy and paste it into a text or an email, or I could switch it to a QR code if I was just in the field working in my truck and need to go out into an area where I can go to the system. And then I could go out into an area where I need to take my tablet instead that I can transfer that session over to the another device just by quickly scanning that QR code. As we were building this up as well, it's keeping track of all those compatible units and all the different concepts within the design that is important to us to be able to track the costs associated with things. Users can see that as well. Users can see that as well and administrators can manage it from a compatible unit manager. So this doesn't have to be done within the design, but I'll just show very quickly here. I'm a super user logged into the system, so I'm able to actually add new compatible units to the system or import them from those connected systems from Maximo, from SAP and other places. So that way you can always be managing the cost per foot, the labor costs associated with work that you have happening in the field that gets tracked associated with the design as well. So when users are making use of those compatible units, in fact, I could go back here at any time and add in some more compatible units for any of those things. So let's say I think I had one for that pedestal already, but we could still go in at any time and edit this. Maybe I missed that one and I could say go to my favorites and pick ones that I like. I can also create my own favorite category as well and go in here and find that I forgot maybe this one here. That will update our quantities and our costs, et cetera, as soon as I hit save here. OK, it's building up all these relationships for us with the relationships out to any equipment that's there to to anything that you want, including things that are upstream and downstream, just like we saw with the wire connectivity at the original transformer that we could click through here to be able to see all that upstream and downstream connectivity. So we can see already where when I went in here before we had a couple of pieces of secondary tapped into this transformer. Now we've got a third one over here and then we could also decide, you know, maybe there's got to be a different type of transformer configuration here as well. So I could go back and edit that and all of the different attributes associated with it. Some of these might be read only because they're automatically populated for you. And other things are things that I might have automatically put in that I might have to change, like impedance and KVAs. And then, of course, it's going to track other things like your metadata associated with everything as well as the network model. So what substation are we connected to? What feeder are we on? And so on and so forth. So we can we could also add any CUs to existing things as well or edit the attributes associated with existing things. So I could go through here and find a transformer for the labor that's going to be taken to make modifications to the configuration of that transformer that we have deployed there already. And we can have basically just add transformer labor associated with with things as well. Now, I didn't actually do a whole lot in that design, but let's take a look at our bill of materials anyways. And then I'll show you another bill of materials that we've already already created and have ready for users to be able to access. But I'll zoom out a little bit here and go back to my design. By the way, this kind of watermark will float around. I can move that wherever I want. I could also turn on other things in here as well if I needed to see like an overview map or I need to see more accurate coordinates on the map or so or know what those coordinates are, etc. So I can I can interact with my my my kind of configuration here, but it's still going to stay very simple. Right. We're still not adding a whole bunch of buttons that folks aren't going to be able to figure out how to use. They're fairly self-explanatory. I might want to edit things or get driving directions or zoom to something. Right. So and if users do get lost, they can always click on the help tab over here to help them remember that, hey, really, all that we do with the IQ. So we can see that the data that we can see on the Google Street View as we search for the data like I talked about at the beginning. We might select items on the map that will show us our attributes, all our network connectivity, as well as other things like Google Street View, which reminds me I could also click on this type of data and get my Google Street View down here at the bottom embedded in here. Or I can pop that out and see where I've got some underground facilities tapped into and coming off of the overhead that we can see on the Google Street View, as well as a configurable set of layers here that are available to us as well. Also, other things on the help is that you might control those map layers, just like we said at the start. And of course, as we're editing any of these attributes, we could also add photos and file attachments as many as you want to get get captured. All this is available with the exception of some of the fine Google capabilities, even if we're working offline. Well, I'm working on if I'm working offline, this green button down here at the bottom will turn to red. If I have a poor internet connection, then I'll turn yellow. But we're always going to keep users staying productive, that they're basically always going to have the ability to to do their work, to capture data, to have the network model running for them, to do designs and start new designs or participate in existing designs. Even if they're not on an active internet connection. Back to what I was saying, though, we as we're completing that design, we could change it to a different state. We could also check our bill of materials here, where we're starting to get a buildup of the cost of the labor and the materials that are associated with this particular design. I'm going to switch to another design so we can see kind of a cooking show version of what it looks like when the design has all the CEUs attached to it and completed here in a moment. And of course, I could also either and other users are going to see this design right away. Right. So all the changes that I've made are going to be available to users when I switch designs as well. And when I'm completed, I can also publish that or check for conflicts as well. But for now, I'm going to close that design. I still get access to all my different layers. So I'm going to for the moment forget about that design and just go back into my layers here and turn on a couple of different things. So first of all, we've got the locations of where those designs are happening. So we've got those other designs and the new one here. Right. That we did called Webinar labeled there as well. I can also turn on the proposed features so I can see exactly what the network is going to look like in its proposed state for things that are at a certain state. Either right now I've got it set to be showing up as soon as it's in the design state. It can also just show up in a later state for construction. But these are all things that you can navigate through, click on, et cetera. I'm going to run a quick query here and run to over to another demo area that I had built out already with a little bit more of a bill of materials. So I'm going to open up a different design in here. Again, I can still see that design that I worked on before. So I know what's happening up here to the north, how that's going to impact my circuit, et cetera. And then I'm going to pop up here just what I thought was a more of a completed one. I think I put the wrong one. Sorry about that. It's a live demo. So this bill of materials now has a lot of stuff in it. Right. Associated with the summary information up here of what the design is going to cost us based on linear equipment, based on equipment itself, based on the number of structures and the cost of those structures. We can scroll down and see what the summary of that looks like. By the way, you can also download that or share that through the through the links that we saw earlier. But quite often you might just want to send that as a PDF for a CSV file for other folks that you can download right from here as well. We could add other things into these into these designs as well. Later on, we could go in and do inspections that are happening. If we find out that there was a repair that needs to happen farther up in the network, we can pop up any of these forms, which are just part of the IQ geo platform and are completely configurable to add other things into the system. Those can be very simple forms like like it like an inspection form on the left hand side where you can add a photo and a link to the feature. Or they could be more complicated safety forms that you might be filling out that have different tabs and groupings and things like that with sign off things that have to happen as you're as you're as you're adding things into the system or scanning barcodes or attaching documents. Or links out to videos. All those can be included in the network model that we showed earlier, or they might make sense just to have as a part of these forms that are going to be tied in. Maybe while you're out in the field or later on as we move out of the design concept, more into how do we maintain and operate our network as part of our daily operations. And of course, you can always print things out if you if you if you if you need to go completely offline without a device at all or you don't have access to to the system. So that was a lot I know, but but that's a quick summary of what we're doing with Network Manager Electric from our design perspective. I think for the for the rest of the webinar, we're going to open things up for some questions that were that Adrian and myself are going to work through. Although we also have Andy Gay with us as well to help us out with to answer any questions that might come up here as as well. So I'm going to throw throw things back to to you, Adrian. Let me just stop my sharing and make you the presenter. Okay. You should be able to see the screen just a Q&A session. So thank you, Jason. Though we were in a short period of time, we focused on one small area of the end to end workflow, which was design. You know, we could spend hours and hours going through the different applications of how this could fit into to your operations and how you could benefit. But now it's time to open it up for the Q&A. We have had a few questions from the audience. Adrian, if you can hear me. So, yeah, we've got one here that says does IQ Geo accept any data model at all? Or there is a base data model that others have to be converted to in order to use this application? Adrian, I'd like to handle that one. Go ahead. Thanks, Jason. Andy might have some comments as well. And you guys feel free to add any color commentary. But this was actually something that came up very, very early in our discussions a few years back when we started out with network manager electric. And we decided that we needed to have both. That we would have certain customers who have a data model that they love, that they would just want to replicate and build on top of. That's actually something that IQ Geo has been doing, replicating existing data models out of systems like Esri and Small World and Synchronous and others for over 13 years now. So that replicated data model approach is an option here. So we can adopt existing data models. But we also provide a tremendous data model. That's what I demonstrated today. That gives you an option if you don't like the data model that you're on right now. Or if your vendor is moving to a data model that you don't like anymore, that you'll have an alternative. And we think that a design tool like this that really enables mobility should also be able to adopt to the exact data model that you're plugging into. And we're seeing similar trends on the gas side as well. And even a little bit on the fiber side too. But yeah, to be able to do both is very important to us. And as I said, I'll let Adrian and Andy comment on that as well. Thanks, James. I think you covered the question quite well. SMI, is there a less answer? Do you have any more questions? Yes, there is another one here. How does UN model fit in here seeing it has a network management functionality? Yeah, and it's a great question as well. We are also replicating UN models and enabling those for field access. So, you know, you can, you, the customer can decide what the balance would be of what you might want to design sitting in the office using a very complicated tool like the utility network. And what processes that you want to simplify out to be able to be accessed in the field. And we can, we can help UN customers just like we can help customers who are using older models like ArcFM and SmallWorld or customers that don't have a model that they like at all. So, I know, I know that this comes up quite often with UN in the market. So, I'll let Andy and Adrian make any comments on that as well. Jason, this is Andy. So, yes, you're right. But also, I want to make the point that you mentioned our, we have our own model. And it's being augmented as we speak by our product development team. So, you're right, we can use any existing model. But we have a very nice, elegant model that will come with network manager. It's an alternative to really anybody's model. And we think it's not only less complex, but much more elegant and easy to use, which, of course, is our mantra. Yeah, great, great, great point, Andy. Andy, yeah. Yeah, so I think maybe to summarize that one real quick, Samaya, is that, you know, if you've got a model that you love, we can use it. But if you don't have a model that you love, then we'll give you an even better alternative. I'll squeeze in one more question really quickly, because I know we've kind of gone over our time a little bit. There's one that's come through that says, we have an existing GIS and work and assessment management system. How would this application fit into our current environment? And what benefits would it provide? Yeah, we'd love to deep dive that with whoever's asking the question, because I think we could probably spend a lot of time on that. But we're designed to integrate with existing GIS and work and asset management systems. So really, it's to augment that, to simplify things in the design process, as Andy said, and to get things out to the field where the real action is happening with these new modern networks. So, yeah, that's my quick answer. Yeah. And Jason, I'll add to that. I think there's two things that happen that I've seen with customers using IQ.geo for various work processes. One is examining the process itself, which is not a technology thing, but it's very powerful when you get a team together and look at, you know, why do you do the things you do and the way you do them? And that married with our platform, and we've talked about how easy it is to integrate and get information from other systems and how easy it is to use in the field. The combination of those two things is very powerful. And we've seen business cases that are like no brainers to not just automate workflows, but provide a next generation of automation to workflows that are maybe, you know, 10, 15, 20 years old. Brilliant. Sorry, just to quickly wrap up. Just had one more. What utilities are using this application currently? Well, I know the ones that I work with, Portland General Electric, Montana Dakota Utilities, Duke Energy, like we said in the beginning, Tokyo Electric. I think we had a slide on that, but we have a lot of smaller, medium, large, extremely large size customers across the globe. And gas companies as well, like Northwest Natural, again, LGE, KU, and again, Duke. So, we have an equivalent system for gas as well. Andy, sorry to interrupt, but we also had a webinar recently on Portland's approach to this. So, if folks are interested in kind of seeing an even more customer-specific example, they could go to the IQ Geo site and connect to that webinar that we had before specifically with Portland that was showing similar examples that I did, but in a real-life scenario. And just to add to that, some of our customers who have both gas and electric are using the IQ Geo solution across both gas and electric for the different workflows as well. Brilliant. That's all the questions we've got time for today. Thank you so much for joining us and thank you to our hosts. We have recorded this version of the webinar and it will be available for you to view on demand. I will be sending the link out shortly. Yeah, many thanks. Have a good day. Thank you, everybody. We encourage you to reach out if you've got any questions or would like to have a deeper discussion with Andy, Jason or myself. Thanks, guys, and have a great day. Thanks, guys.