Accelerating Safety Through Technology: A People-First Approach

Utilities are investing millions of dollars in drones, automated monitoring systems and artificial intelligence applications. These tools offer unprecedented safety and operational advantages as grid complexities evolve – assuming crews willingly use them as intended.

New technology should make it safer and easier for frontline workers to execute their tasks, particularly when stressed or fatigued. Deploying drones to conduct post-storm inspections, for instance, keeps workers safely distanced from hazardous areas while potentially speeding up triage efforts. Digital pre-job briefing forms that incorporate AI-driven alerts offer crews enhanced, real-time understanding of worksite risks before they arrive.

But successfully rolling out newly adopted safety technologies is no small feat. Frontline buy-in depends on an organization’s cultural readiness. How can readiness be achieved? A sustainable strategy begins with people. It is then enforced via process and enhanced by technology. In that order.

Safety Lives in the Field
Safety starts at the top, but it lives in the field. Frontline workers will notice if senior leaders only speak about safety during budget meetings. By incorporating it into daily tailboards, performance metrics, public commitments and organizational strategy, leaders demonstrate that safety is a nonnegotiable organizational value.

Critically, leaders must be good listeners, consulting frontline workers for their firsthand insights into the organization’s operational risks and inefficiencies. Feedback loops assist decision-makers in determining the merits of new safety solutions. These loops are especially helpful when piloting AI-driven systems, whose accuracy is shaped through human oversight.

Technology buy-in often expands as workers witness the impact of their feedback. For example, one utility that uses an AI tool to enhance infrastructure inspections noted a boost in tool adoption when crews began gathering for post-shift debriefings. The time crew members spent analyzing AI images of their jobsites, flagging errors and feeding that data into the model increased its future reliability and relevance.

Change Management
Workers will commonly shelve new technology tools that are poorly rolled out. Leaders have various options to mitigate this risk, including appointing organizational safety champions as liaisons between field crews and technology/innovation teams; hosting cross-functional workshops during which information technology, operations and safety personnel collaborate to address adoption barriers; and celebrating quick wins that underscore new technology’s advantages.

Dominion Energy offers a good example. As part of a drone and AI implementation project, the utility designated safety liaisons to facilitate communication between leadership and field teams, which played a significant role in building early momentum for the broader rollout.

Employee Training
Technology can only be as effective as its users. Thus, employers must ensure their employees are trained to best leverage its value. Some utility organizations are using other technologies to assist with training, such as virtual- and augmented-reality applications that simulate real-world scenarios, reducing risk to trainees.

Peer mentoring, which combines relational and procedural learning, often complements formal industry training. Pairing seasoned lineworkers with younger, less experienced employees can be mutually beneficial, enhancing technology skills transfer and reinforcing institutional and industry wisdom.

Safety Accelerants
With the right people and processes in place, utilities can use new technologies to accelerate safer field operations. Consider the following three examples.

1. Drones
Drone adoption has become increasingly common within industry organizations. For instance, in 2023, New York Power Authority invested $37.2 million in its drone program. Integrated into these unmanned aerial systems are high-resolution cameras, light detection and ranging (lidar), and thermal sensors that enhance fault and damage detection capabilities while limiting worker hazard exposure and bucket truck deployments.

Frontline buy-in becomes more likely when crews feel confident that the data collected by company drones will be accurate, easily accessible and fully integrated into their workflows. Some utilities have addressed this by implementing joint flight validation sessions during which pilots and field technicians collaborate to review drone inspection footage. These sessions can uncover technological and procedural blind spots and reinforce to personnel that drones are considered tools, not worker replacements.

2. Artificial and Visual Intelligence
AI accelerates the identification of infrastructure corrosion, vegetation risks and structural faults at a scale that humans alone can’t match. Beyond speed and scale, human-in-the-loop AI models incorporate experienced inspectors to validate and refine model outputs, helping to reduce errors, build user trust and strengthen organizational learning.

Field safety can be dramatically enhanced when AI learns from humans and humans trust its support. During Hurricane Harvey, for example, one utility used AI-powered drone data to safely route repair crews away from flooded roads and damaged assets, improving response times while minimizing crew hazard exposure.

3. Substation Monitoring
Substations are sometimes inspected just once a year by a single technician. Today, AI-enabled monitoring systems offer 24/7 surveillance that alerts users to overheating, smoke, fire, unauthorized access incidents and PPE violations in real time. Some monitoring systems also act as a second set of eyes for lone workers, detecting falls and prolonged inactivity and triggering alerts.

Moving the Needle
As the U.S. electrical grid grows more complex, frontline employee safety and system resilience increasingly depend on the power and influence of strong, healthy organizational cultures. New technologies alone won’t improve safety or other outcomes. Utilities begin to move the needle when leadership sets clear intentions, builds and refines processes that reinforce cultural values, and rolls out new technologies with ample training and respect for workers.

About the Author: Kaitlyn Albertoli is co-founder and CEO of Buzz Solutions (www.buzzsolutions.co), a California-based provider of visual intelligence solutions to inspect, maintain and secure energy infrastructure.

Editor’s Note: Learn more from Kaitlyn in a recent podcast interview with iP’s Kate Wade, available at https://utilitysafety.podbean.com/e/utility-safety-podcast-using-visual-intelligence-to-strengthen-utility-infrastructure/.