Woolpert and Fulcrum put utility vegetation management risk data in field crews’ hands

Utilities manage vegetation across every mile of corridor they own, usually without a current picture of what’s growing into the lines. Work gets scheduled by calendar, so some spans get trimmed years early while encroachment builds somewhere nobody’s watching. 

Woolpert and Fulcrum have partnered to close the distance between the two.

Woolpert brings the view from above. The global architecture, engineering, and geospatial firm surveys utility corridors and scores encroachment risk across the network. 

Fulcrum brings the view from the ground as the Field Operations Management platform field organizations use to run, record, and close out their work. 

The two halves connect, so the office and the crew work off the same prioritized utility vegetation management picture.

Scoring the risk from the air

Woolpert flies utility corridors with lidar and high-resolution imagery, then builds a connected 3D model of the network. The model scores encroachment and clearance risk down to the individual span and canopy. Every conductor, pole, and tree carries a position and a condition, so prioritization runs on measurement.

Utilities end up with a ranked view of the whole system, grounded in what the sensors measured on the last flight. The highest-risk spans move to the front of the queue, replacing a fixed rotation with one that follows actual conditions.

Getting the ranking to the right crew

Woolpert’s scored spans become prioritized field work in Fulcrum, ranked by risk and tied to a location. Crews see which spans need attention first, do the work, and close it out with a documented record.

Photos, GPS coordinates, timestamps, and clearance measurements go in as structured data while the crew is still on site. Completed work flows back to Woolpert, updating the utility vegetation management model with what the crews found and what they cleared. The record carries what was surveyed, what got done, and what’s ready for the next compliance cycle.

Crews work from the survey, and the survey updates from what the crews record. Each pass through the cycle sharpens both, and the risk score turns into work that gets done. 

Here’s the handoff on a single corridor, flight line to close-out record.

A utility vegetation management record that holds up

Clearance documentation and hazard-tree identification get captured as structured data at the point of work. Wildfire and safety exposure drop for crews and the public when the clearance record stays current and complete. Every entry ties a crew, a date, and a span together, and the utility can trace any of the three back to a specific survey and close-out.

From survey to close-out and back again

The integration is live today. Utilities maintain an up-to-date vegetation program between flights, with crews and the model continuously refining the data as work progresses.

The same lidar-to-field-action model is heading to facilities management next, verifying clearance between buildings and high-voltage lines.

Utilities end up with a utility vegetation management program where the survey, the crew, and the record all describe the same corridor on the same day.