On the fifth anniversary of its successful strategic partnership with Exacter, Inc., Davey Resource Group, Inc. (DRG), a wholly owned subsidiary of The Davey Tree Expert Company, announced the continuation of its joint venture with the Columbus, Ohio, technology firm.
“Over the last five years we’ve been very effective at utilizing Exacter’s proprietary, predictive analytic technology to help Davey’s clients improve reliability, and proactively address failing equipment,” stated Brent Repenning, Executive Vice President of Davey Resource Group, Inc. “It’s not only helped our customers improve reliability, but has been a catalyst for us to innovate new solutions to the reliability challenges that our utility clients face.”
A large number of DRG customers have implemented the Exacter technology since the partnership began -- many seeing dramatic results. One utility reduced SAIDI, a key measure of reliability, by a remarkable 4.5 minutes in one year. Another utility reduced year over year equipment-related power outages by 23%. At every utility, Exacter’s technology was able to uncover points of risks other technologies simply could not detect.
“Working with Davey Resource Group has been rewarding for Exacter beyond the increased revenue. Their innovative packaging of our solution with their current visual and IR inspections has led to the industry’s most comprehensive asset health assessment that Davey calls The 360° Assessment [CS1] ,” states Exacter President Geoffrey Bibo. “This approach of using visual, IR and Exacter is the only grid assessment that gives a complete picture of overhead grid health. We expect the 360° Assessment to be the foundation of our solutions going forward.”
Both Repenning and Bibo see the 360° Assessment binding the two companies much closer together in the years ahead. “Bundling our detection technology with Davey significantly improves the overall value of the assessment that we provide to our clients.”
The Exacter partnership also makes great business sense based on Davey Resource Group’s pioneering work in predictive vegetation management. “We have been advancing the predictive approach for years in both our vegetation work and asset inspections, so Exacter’s predictive technology and analytics are a natural fit into our core value proposition,” concluded Repenning.
Exacter founder and CEO John Lauletta agrees: “What we are doing by predicting potential risk from overhead equipment, Davey has been doing with vegetation for years. With the emergence of big data solutions in the utility industry, I feel both Davey and Exacter are postured to lead the way as providers of the most significant, indicative data for impacting reliability.”
Both companies shared their predictive solutions with rural cooperative utilities at the TechAdvantage Conference and Expo on Feb. 25-28. “This is such a strong strategic partnership because both companies occupy the same market space, and are completely complementary in the solutions they provide,” concluded Bibo. “I am expecting an acceleration of our joint business and even more collaboration in the years ahead.”
