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Hydro One Networks Inc.
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A new solution reduces the time and cost of managing the real estate assets of one of North
America’s largest power transmission networks.
Hydro One Networks Inc. serves more than 1.2 million customers across Ontario, including residential, commercial,
industrial and agricultural customers, as well as municipal electrical utilities. It owns and operates a 21,000 km long
high-voltage power transmission network across more than a million square kilometers. In fact, it is one of the largest
transmission grid operators in North America.
How does Hydro One Networks keep track of all that real estate? It uses a new Integrated Real Estate Information
System (IREIS). According to Hydro One, it is the first Canadian utility to develop a solution of this kind using advanced
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology.
Challenge
In the past, Hydro One employees had to pull real estate information from a number of different systems, as well as
paper roll plans. Some of these paper documents dated back to the early 1900s and were practically illegible. The
process was so cumbersome it would take several people several months to take a province-wide inventory of operational
lands.
It was also time-consuming to answer the thousands of queries Hydro One gets annually about easement rights. These
searches are usually from real estate legal firms that would submit their request in writing, with a cheque to cover the
administration costs of the search. The whole process would take three weeks on average to complete.
Hydro One wanted to boost the efficiency of these operations by improving the way it managed its core real estate
data. But there were no packaged solutions available for this type of application. The answer? Build a new kind of
information system that would put this vital information at the fingertips of the people who need it.
Objectives
Hydro One set out to build a robust, scalable information system that would:
- Capture an accurate inventory of Hydro One’s real estate rights and assets and enable the company to
effectively manage over 60,000 real estate rights records;
- Provide timely rights information for business analysis and decision support across Hydro One;
- Maximize revenue opportunities for Hydro One and its shareholders;
- Significantly improve operational efficiencies within Real Estate and other operational business units; and
- Provide external customers with access to over 600,000 unregistered rights records and automated billing
capabilities via the Internet, reducing the turnaround time for processing unregistered rights.
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Solution
Hydro One’s IREIS system captures all of the company’s real estate rights associated with its high-voltage transmission
grid. In addition to serving as a real estate information database, IREIS provides a full suite of modules that allows
users to manage day-to-day business transactions. A separate Low Voltage Rights (LVR) module gives external users
access to Hydro One’s unregistered rights data via the Internet. LVR is integrated with IREIS and a third-party ASP
agency that manages the administration fee online.
To build IREIS, Hydro One worked with a variety of partners, including ESRI Canada, Inergi LP and Teranet Inc.
Innovative Use of Technology
Upon completing its mapping conversion program in December, 2004, Hydro One users will be able to search and view
any of its real estate rights across the province in a GIS environment. The early results are already impressive. They
include:
- New sources of revenue
Using IREIS, Hydro One has identified five major surplus property holdings for disposal with an estimated market
value of between $10 million and $12 million.
- Cost/time savings and efficiency improvements
IREIS has helped significantly reduce the time for accessing real estate rights data and performing spatial
analysis. Hydro One estimates the time/cost savings will equal five full-time employees per year. For example, the time
it takes to determine the province-wide inventory of operational lands has dropped from a number of months to
a few short hours or even minutes. These time savings will enable the company to redeploy staff to more
strategic activities.
- Improved organizational effectiveness
Hydro One now has a much more accurate picture of its real estate rights and assets. Employees have advanced
tools to help them manage its geospatial data and support business analysis and decision making.
- Improved customer service
External customers accessing LVR are able to complete each transaction in under three minutes, down from
three weeks for manual processing.
As Mike Sheehan, Vice President, Lands, Buildings, Services & Security for Hydro One Networks says, "The benefits
associated with IREIS have proved to be significant in the day-to-day management of our real estate and transmission
operations lines of business. In conjunction with our wider enterprise GIS program, we believe this solution makes
Hydro One a leader among transmission utilities in the use and application of GIS technologies."
A 2004 CIPA Winner!
For its exceptional and innovative application of Information Technology to solve real-world business problems and
bring greater benefit to all its stakeholders, Hydro One Networks Inc. was awarded a 2004 Canadian Information
Productivity Award of Excellence in the Customer Care category.
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