The supervisor of vegetation management at Blue Ridge Electric Co-op (Pickens, South Carolina, U.S.) knew he needed help. Like many utility companies, Blue Ridge had some employee turnover and its tree-trimming program was largely undocumented.

The company turned to Davey Resource Group (DRG), a division of the Davey Tree Expert Co., and asked it to conduct a workload survey and program evaluation. At the end of the survey, DRG recommended, among other things, that the utility institute a more formal work-planning system.

To evaluate the effectiveness of work planning, a pilot project was completed. In the past, tree-trimming crews would simply prune anything on a circuit they believed would interfere with the conductors. But during the pilot project, a mid-cycle trim on a problem circuit was planned using DRG software. Because the Blue Ridge line-clearance coordinator specified the work, the crews trimmed only the trees identified by the foresters.

Once the work was completed, the utility realized savings of US$35,000 simply by using the work-planning software. Following the results of the pilot demonstration, the company began using the work-planning software throughout the Blue Ridge system.
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