Digital transformation provides insight and better decisions sourced from better data.

Sacramento Municipal Utility District, the nation’s sixth largest community-owned electric service utility, needed to implement a more effective system for managing its real estate assets. Based on our partnership with Esri and our GIS and real estate expertise, SMUD brought our asset management team on board to work through enterprise system integration strategies and build an intuitive, reliable real estate GIS database with survey grade information.  

Prior to this project, SMUD’s real estate information was held in various locations, making data difficult to access. Even after converting hard copy documents to scanned digital copies stored in a document management database, it was still challenging to pinpoint real estate rights and difficult to log and retrieve survey information. Inefficient data management slowed SMUD’s response time for transmission easement based inquiries. 

Our first step was to locate SMUD’s above-ground transmission line easements. We sat down with them and laid out a work plan to transform hard copy legal documents into a digital twin, then locate the digital easement accurately working with our partner professional survey firm. Our team of information management, real estate, survey and GIS specialists conducted a pilot study on a short section of line to determine the right balance of surveyor time versus cost, and to streamline the process based on lessons learned. We worked to check document accuracy and identify data gaps where insufficient information was available to accurately locate easements before digitizing the data. As our team uncovered data gaps, we shared the information with SMUD and eventually provided a comprehensive document detailing the results.

To assist in communicating our findings with SMUD, we developed an interactive map of SMUD’s transmission easements. The map enables users to zoom and click on easements and view basic attributes like status and right of way width with an aerial photo background. 

Our land record GIS experts worked alongside SMUD to help it become the first utility to use Esri’s GIS Parcel Fabric solution for transmission easement data management. We’ve served as advisors to help customize and integrate the parcel fabric solution into their financial and document management systems with their internal facing web map application.

SMUD’s transmission easement data has undergone a digital transformation that simplifies decision making and makes data interactive and easy to access. Now it’s one step closer to system-wide data capture that enables collaborative, reliable information for asset management.