Case study
Geospatial workflow & outage management platform
New field tools for dispatch, outage response, and customer ETAs
National Grid
- 0-1
- Geospatial
- Field operations
- Platform
Summary
Role
Principal Product Manager
Timeline
Nov 2022 – Present
Team
Field crews, supervisors, product, engineering, and enterprise vendors.
Domain
Geospatial operations, outage management, MOD mobile app, modernizing asset inspection.
Metrics moved
Faster restoration and more accurate ETAs in emergencies; thousands of field workers on modern tools.
Key constraints
Multi-region rollout; integration change windows; storm-season reliability.
Systems involved
Hardware, GIS, OMS/ADMS; MOD as a field web app with native features; customer outage ETA surfaces.
Stack
Tech stack
MOD: resilient crew PWA on modern web, integrated with utility ops and customer outage signals.
Client & delivery
Shared codebase across tablet and phone with native hooks where storms demand them.
- PWA
- Capacitor (iPad / iPhone)
- Shared monorepo
- TypeScript
Geospatial & operations integrations
Same job objects in list, card, and map views, synchronized with control-center truth.
- GIS
- ADMS / OMS
- Location-based dispatch
- Structured outage / closeout payloads
Field coordination
Fast loop from assignment to acknowledgement when radio is the fallback.
- Twilio SMS
- Deep links into tickets
- Approved truck routing (embedded deep links)
Reliability
Storm-grade expectations for an operationally critical surface.
- Offline-tolerant flows
- High-availability targets
- Cutover paths for degraded backends
How MOD closes the loop on an outage
Structured field capture → ADMS/OMS → customer ETA/ETR.
Assignment surfaces in one queue
List, card, and map share the same job objects—no parallel scratchpads.
Crew commits structured state
ETA, arrival, verify, cause, restoration, field-complete use constrained inputs OMS can trust under audit.
Deep links to sanctioned routing
Approved truck routing embedded in outage detail—no ad hoc personal-map workarounds.
SMS deep link for fast ack
Twilio texts open the ticket directly—no hunting reference numbers in storms.
Customer channels inherit the same clock
Restoration timestamps feed customer tools—fewer contradictory ETAs vs radio paraphrase.
List & map
Same assignments as sortable queue vs regional map—density vs geography.
Field Outage Management (MOD): assignments through closeout
MOD: queue and map views, structured status and verification, restoration wired to ADMS/OMS. PWA + Capacitor for crew devices.
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Overview
Product lead for geospatial workflow, outage capabilities, and MOD—a field app so supervisors, control rooms, and crews share one picture in routine work and storms. Structured updates flow to OMS/ADMS so restoration data and ETAs match what customers see.
Business context
Programs sit across GIS, OMS/ADMS, enterprise records, and truck hardware. Radio-heavy coordination produced slow or fuzzy OMS updates and weak customer ETAs during long events.
Problem
Dispatch lacked trustworthy real-time job state from the field; supervisors and crews did not share the same map and timeline. Radio closeout meant rework and slower restoration—especially for critical loads. Major events amplified every gap.
Constraints
Vendor calendars, dead zones, strict OMS change windows. MOD is operationally critical: high uptime targets, short maintenance windows, cutover paths if backends degrade. UI had to work with gloves, glare, and partial connectivity.
Role & ownership
Owned MVP scope for geospatial dispatch and outage surfaces, legacy asset-inspection discovery, and cross-system requirements with vendors—storm readiness drove what we prioritized.
Goals & metrics
Restoration interval in emergencies, less supervisor rework, adoption of location-based dispatch vs radio-only, ETA/ETR quality to customer outage experiences.
Approach
Field-first: shadowed dispatch and crews, paper prototypes in depots, locked data models before map polish. Deferred nice-to-have layers until OMS job state replicated reliably.
Decisions & tradeoffs
Heavier integration upfront vs a thin shell that would fail under storm load. Resiliency as part of “done.” Supervisor review gates added seconds per job but cut mis-assignments and rework.
Cross-functional leadership
Joint design reviews with explicit interface contracts; vendor + internal cutover weekends; same discipline for AI-in-workflow and PO mentoring post-launch.
Execution
Shipped geospatial workflow with dispatch, tracking, and supervisor review tied to enterprise systems. MOD: list/card/map queues; outage detail with circuit/device context, hazards, critical facilities, deep links to approved truck routing. Structured modals (ETA, arrival, device verify, cause, restoration, field-complete) sync bi-directionally through ADMS/OMS. Twilio SMS deep-links into tickets for fast ack. PWA from shared monorepo + Capacitor on iPad/iPhone; storm playbooks before live rollout.
Outcomes
Crews and control reported clearer MOD flows; structured field data replaced radio summaries so customer ETAs updated faster with fewer contradictions. Resiliency targets and cutover paths were explicit delivery goals—not afterthoughts.
What changed
Field stack became GIS + systems + structured jobs—not “GIS + radio + hope.” Dispatch, trucks, control rooms, and customer channels share job objects and timestamps.
Lessons learned
Getting the map right is expected; the win is clearer authority and communication than prettier tiles. Storm rehearsals surfaced more issues than scripted QA.