Most U.S. electric utility companies were born before 1903. ITCTransmission (Novi, Michigan, U.S.) wasn't born until March 2003, when DTE Energy (Detroit, Michigan) divested its transmission assets. At this “birth,” physical assets included about 2700 circuit miles (4345 km) of overhead and underground transmission lines, 16,000 towers and poles, 30 substations in a service territory of 7600 sq miles (19,684 sq km) and 16 interconnections with neighboring utilities. In addition to physical assets, there were engineering drawings, standards, asset data and an extensive geospatial information system (GIS) model. ITCTransmission became the first publicly held transmission-only company on July 26, 2005, when it began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Business drivers for the new company included:

• An obligation to be completely independent of the previous owner

• A lean operating philosophy

• Expectations of significant process improvements

• Expectations of technology enhancements

• Affordable tactical decisions rather than expensive strategic commitments.

The good news about starting from scratch was that ITCTransmission had the opportunity to improve processes. The bad news, however, was that the lean operating philosophy dictated only a small core of employees. In particular, this meant no in-house GIS support group.

ITCTransmission conducted a comprehensive review of the engineering skill and technology requirements that would be necessary to ensure complete independence from any other market participant. Although some of the transferred information assets were electronic in nature, and therefore embedded in specific information system technologies, the very nature of a lean startup organization necessitated seeking alternatives to the large enterprise solutions that were on the market. Many files were usable as received, such as Microsoft Office documents (Excel, Word, PowerPoint) and Bentley MicroStation design files. But others included legacy application data that potentially required significant licensing fees, such as the Oracle Forms-based applications and Intergraph FRAMME.

The legacy Intergraph FRAMME GIS application environment was already rather dated at the time of DTE's transmission asset divestiture. While there was an initiative to evaluate upgrading to the next-generation technology from Intergraph, no migration of the legacy applications and data had been done. The new technology from Intergraph required significant conversion of data and porting all solutions to the new application development environment. These factors caused ITCTransmission to consider alternatives to licensing obsolete technology for its transmission system GIS model.

In 2003, the transmission GIS model was mature and complete. There were well-developed practices to maintain the centerlines and intersections land base for the service territory. The transmission system assets represented a relatively simple GIS data set. Overhead transmission lines, towers, poles and substations were included in the model; however, underground transmission assets and inside-the-fence substation equipment were not in the prior GIS model. Therefore, the object model for the transmission system GIS was extremely simple, consisting of overhead assets only. Towers, conductors and switches were identified as a very manageable subset of the larger GIS model.

One of the major objectives was to significantly improve the transmission asset base by upgrading transmission circuits, replacing obsolete hardware and adding new substations and circuits. These future system configurations mandated that the GIS modeling tool be capable of specifying both proposed and installed details. New system features such as towers, circuits and substations would have to be maintained by the new GIS tool set. This included placing, moving and editing the attributes of these features.

Managing the land base for any GIS model has always been a challenge. Because of infrastructure development, roads are constantly being added or modified. Similarly, geopolitical boundaries are changing as communities or taxing authorities are changing. Therefore, ITCTransmission had to develop a strategy for managing land-base details.

Recent developments in the governmental arena regarding public asset inventories, following the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center terrorist attacks, have accelerated the availability of quality land-base data. ITCTransmission contracted with The COGNET Group (Livonia, Michigan), which researched and found freely available, high-quality road intersections and centerlines, and county, municipality and school district boundaries. ITCTransmission evaluated the land-base data (Michigan Geographic Framework [MGF] Version 4b Land) and found it to be fully satisfactory for the GIS requirements. Reprojection of this data was required but readily performed to accommodate the GIS model data.

The state of Michigan has committed to periodic updates to the land-base data that is freely distributed. By subscribing to these updates, with minimal reprojection costs, the service territory land base will be maintained as current — and as intelligent — as possible. In addition to the land-base data, Michigan provides freely available digital orthophotoquad (DOQ) files for counties. Integration of these files was prototyped and a strategy was implemented to display these raster images as an optional backdrop. As finer resolution imagery is available, ITCTransmission plans to incorporate them, as appropriate, to support operations and maintenance of the transmission system.

ITCTransmission engineering staff had extensive exposure to the practical application of the current generation of graphics-viewing and data-editing engines. To supplement this experience base, The COGNET Group recruited Larry Cosgrove, a key GIS developer. His direct involvement in mobile applications development provided the technology expertise to leverage the GTViewer technology, from Graphics Technologies Inc. (Madison, Alabama, U.S.), for an innovative prototype. Cosgrove was convinced that a much larger GIS model could be supported. In addition, he knew from previous development experience that editing feature attributes, including moving the features in the model, could be managed in session files created by GTViewer. Cosgrove was confident he could extend this feature to support the entire GIS system model.