ArborMetrics keeps the lights on for millions of people with Forms

When 100 million people depend on you to get power, there’s no room for error. That’s why for ArborMetrics, a North American vegetation management company, efficient task management and data collection are a key priority. “Everyone is familiar with how an electric pole looks like,” says Amy McMillion, Operations Lead at ArborMetrics. “But what most don’t know is that each pole can have up to a hundred errors that make it unsafe for you, your child, or your loved one to walk by without getting electrocuted. Our field workers check for these potential errors.”

The organization employs over 400 field and office workers across Canada and 17 U.S. states. Every day, they assess, monitor, and manage vegetation that threatens the surrounding power lines to ensure people get electricity at their homes. “We employ arborists and linemen to oversee construction of new electric lines and rights of way of gas or utility lines,” says McMillion. “We influence whether your home or business has power to it.”

Branching out without drifting away

In the past, when the ArborMetrics crew comprised about 70 people, it relied on Excel spreadsheets and email-based communication to keep communities powered. “We were constantly sending emails with updated files, back and forth, as we couldn't collaborate all in one place,” McMillion reveals.

As the team expanded, managing thousands of Excel files to keep track of the infrastructure became overwhelming. “Geography is our biggest challenge,” says McMillion. “We needed processes that were uniform across all of our management team, yet customizable to each of our individual contracts.”

This led ArborMetrics to Smartsheet, which the company now uses across the board to align its policies and processes in all locations through centralized dashboard portals. Field teams use the portals to request items they need, file incident reports, or resolve other issues specific to their contracts. “When you’re in the field, you don’t have service everywhere,” McMillion shares.

“Before, our field workers would write things down in a paper notebook and then enter them into the computer. Now, the mobile offline function saves their submission and it goes into the process once they’re back in the grid.”

Pruning inefficient workflows

Manual notetaking, data collection, and validation were also slowing down preparations for Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) audits. “OSHA requires a full personal protective equipment (PPE) inspection of all of our teams. This involved emailing out an Excel sheet with all questions to each field team and chasing them to fill it out,” explains McMillion.

Once all sheets were collected, three people would spend three weeks going through them line by line to make sure everyone was working safely. “Dealing with safety, you don't want to wait too long. If you have defective safety equipment, it's not great to wait 30 days to get your replacement,” shares McMillion. 
Implementing Smartsheet Forms has allowed ArborMetrics to speed up the process. “Now, each time when we have an audit, we set up a new smart sheet and a smart form to go with it,” says McMillion. “Once the sheet is populated, the reviewer can use conditional formatting to highlight the areas that they need to look at.”

Besides making data gathering a breeze, the automation increases data accuracy. “The field person that submitted the form gets an automated email asking them to review their responses,” McMillion says.

“This helps eliminate errors. So now, manual data verification takes 15 minutes and is done by one person.”

Smartsheet Forms also helps save time by compiling customized documents based on selected sheet data. “You create a fillable PDF form and map fields or columns to where exactly you want those to go,” McMillion explains. “Every time there's a new form submission, Smartsheet will automatically map those into the document.”

Since data is validated before it’s submitted, the review takes radically less time than before. “Using other tools, I couldn’t guarantee the user wouldn’t fat-finger a number and input incorrect data format,” McMillion says.

“Smartsheet applies data validation, which helps us save at least 16 hours a week on reviewing data for the generated documents.”

Constantly advancing

ArborMetrics continues to find new ways of applying Forms’ data validation, conditional logic, API integrations, and other features to collaborate virtually, scale document management, and save time.

“Smartsheet is mostly about efficiency for us. It has significantly reduced the number of emails and Excel spreadsheets involved in our processes,” sums up McMillion. “Considering our growth and size, thanks to Forms, I can sleep at night.”