By Jamal Syed, HEXstream CEO 

We’re living in turbulent times. Climate change is creating more powerful, more frequent, more damaging storms that cause power outages and property damage at higher rates than we’ve ever seen in the past.  

Similarly, geo-political aggressions put electrical grids in the bullseye for bad actors.  

And don’t forget wildfires that have been making headlines of late, causing untold damage to people, property and power infrastructure.  

Addressing solutions to these problems could fill a hundred other blog posts. Instead, let’s today focus on current tactics to rally utility and emergency forces to address and overcome these crises.  

We in the utility and emergency-response spaces use the term “mutual aid” to describe the marshalling of resources—human and equipment—to mitigate major incidents and get the power turned back on. Various utilities, contractors, and vendors will mutually aid one another during times of crisis, as workforces that are large enough to maintain operations during normal conditions are often undersized for periods of crisis.  

These crises-response scenarios involve many different components—creating workforces of the right size with the right skillsets, gathering vehicles and equipment to enable those workforces to actually work, solving logistical problems such as lodging and meals and time-tracking for personnel, etc. And remember, these responses are being implemented all while storms are battering communities, customers are clamoring for service, and regulators are demanding constant updates.  

We at HEXstream have seen dozens of these scenarios across the US in recent years. Utilities can foresee these crises, but they lack the tools and resources to properly prepare for them.  

We’re preparing to fix that.  

There is tremendous need for seamless, integrated processes to rapidly respond to these major incidents with complete workforces that are completely equipped with all of the tools and support needed. Utilities, crews and third-party contractors must be able to rely on shared platforms to truly convert different groups into one efficient team working toward one attainable goal.  

And rather than trying to patch together these processes each time an incident occurs, all parties would benefit from one solution that encompasses all of these disparate components.  

We’re preparing to provide that.  

We will always have to respond to crises of all sorts. That’s the nature of our world.  

But the growing recognition of this need for better coordination among teams that respond to those crises, and the focus on providing  process integration and automation solutions to those teams is encouraging to those of us who recognize that working in mutual alignment is the  best approach to weathering all kinds of storms.  

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