Industry
Energy, Resources & Utilities
Rebalance the energy equation
Highlights
- UK Power Networks wanted to digitise its property and consent management for improved efficiency.
- TCS helps UK Power Networks integrate legal documents with their GIS system to create a consent database of key metadata.
- The company improved operational efficiency and customer satisfaction with this new digitised system.
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Overview
UK Power Networks is the UK’s largest electricity distribution network operator.
They serve 8.5 million homes and businesses across London, the Southeast, and East of England, ensuring power flows reliably, safely, and securely. Founded in 2010, UK Power Networks aims to achieve net zero for all their directly controllable emissions by 2028 and runs more than £25 million worth of innovation trials to support the UK's transition to net zero.
They strive to meet customers' evolving needs by continually improving their service, providing support, and aspiring to go above and beyond for their communities.
Challenges
UK Power Networks wanted to improve process efficiency by digitising property and consent documents.
Britain’s largest electricity distributor's property and consents department held approximately 350,000 hard copy legal documents for their property (poles, towers, and substation) portfolio installed on third-party land. The customer faced increasing challenges in maintaining their consent records, keeping them up to date, and ensuring easy and quick access to the wider business.
The customer wanted to integrate their legal documents such as wayleaves and deeds (easement, freehold, and leasehold) with their GIS system to create a consent database of key metadata.
In addition, the consent retrieval process needed to be made more efficient as it was time-consuming and would take over 20 minutes on average. The documents had to be managed in line with changes in ownership, specifically for wayleave agreements, to ensure the right landowners received the appropriate payment for the equipment held on their property.
Solution
TCS carried out a comprehensive approach to digitise and integrate legal agreement documents within the existing GIS system (GE Smallworld).
TCS implemented a customised solution for the company’s property and consents department. This solution integrates the assets from each agreement document in the GIS system, and the respective digital agreement document in a cloud repository. TCS also deployed a consent database application on the cloud. This application has enabled UK Power Networks to extract customized reports to manage their day-to-day operations and future business planning.
Considering the ongoing changes in land ownership, the solution inherently linked the agreement document with the respective land registry title number. This has become a key enabler to the proactive management of wayleave agreements and corresponding payments aligned with the potential for near real-time land ownership changes.
Outcome
UK Power Networks improves operational efficiency with instant document retrieval.
This solution has revolutionised UK Power Networks’ approach to managing its consent asset base, making it possible to retrieve accurate consent information with a 100% document retrieval success rate, in just a click.
By making the records available to the entire business, UK Power Networks has enhanced operational efficiency, reduced occurrences of any mismatch in payments, and improved office space utilisation.
TCS' first-of-its-kind approach has helped UK Power Networks to proactively manage their consent asset base and improve customer satisfaction.
The implementation of a digital strategy has enabled the near real-time access and accurate retrieval of consent documents to the entire business. This solution is a first in the industry and has helped UK Power Networks to significantly improve its consent management and relationship with landowners (customers), who are our key industry stakeholders.”
