Project Summary: The client’s $5.3B Smart Energy Plan projects include more than 2,000 electric projects, wind generation, upgrading 10.5 miles of power lines, installing 200 new utility poles, building new state-of-the-art substations, and upgrading existing substations. A sample of the projects include:

• Installation of new utility poles, some fortified with composite materials, and new fiberglass cross arms and insulators to better withstand severe weather
• Installation of smart, automated sensors, switches and new self-healing systems that detects and isolates outages, speeding up power restorations
• Developing a communications network to monitor and enable analytics from connected devices
• Expanding the client’s fiber network to 50 substations using fiber-optic shield wire, that provides lighting protection and internal telecoms capabilities
• Installing private Long-Term Evolution (LTE) cell sites

The client plans to implement the Smart Energy Plan over the next 5-7 years by utilizing key management structures and tools, including:

• Our project management organization (PMO) services
• Collection and internal reporting of capital investments and operations and maintenance (O&M) expenditures, forecasting, and a resource allocation process
• SAP dashboards that track total capital spends, capital investments by ZIP code, customers by operating centers, and spend by category
• Tracking progress as the plan is implemented

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K&A Scope: K&A is providing our client with three project controls (PC) specialist on a full-time basis to support the substation, underground and overhead teams on the Smart Energy Plan projects. The PC specialists work alongside the client’s PC team in the St. Louis, MO, office to provide both the weekly PC schedule support, as well as the bi-weekly schedule health reports, mentoring, and client’s PC team development support.

K&A also is providing Project Manager support for the substation, heavy underground, distribution overhead, PLTE and Solar programs along with material requisition support staff.

K&A has just been awarded their first substation design project for this client.

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