Better Data, Better Decisions: How Technology Is Changing Utility Construction
Updated: Sep 3
Power and fiber infrastructure often go unnoticed—until they are not available.
Behind every reliable connection is a network of people, equipment, planning, and field execution. As utility infrastructure projects become larger and more complex, contractors need more than experience alone. They also need timely, accurate information that helps them recognize problems, allocate resources, and make informed decisions before those problems affect the customer.
In a recent episode of The Grid Connection, ElectriCom CEO Andy Leake sat down with Matt Breeden, who leads the company’s financial planning, analysis, and data initiatives. Their conversation explored how ElectriCom has evolved, how data is changing project delivery, and why technology works best when it supports—not replaces—the judgment of experienced people.
A Different Path into Utility Infrastructure
Breeden did not begin his career in utility construction. An attorney by training, he spent years in professional motorsports, including roles with the Champ Car World Series and the IndyCar Series.
After approximately two decades in the industry, Breeden was ready for a change. An opportunity with ElectriCom emerged in 2020, bringing him into a business that was very different from the one he had known.
What surprised him most was how much of modern life quietly depends on utility infrastructure.
Power and fiber support nearly everything people and businesses do, yet much of the work required to build and maintain those systems happens outside public view. He was also struck by how relationship-driven the industry is.
Price matters, but it is rarely the entire decision.
Utilities need contractors they can trust to work safely, communicate honestly, solve problems, and consistently deliver. Those relationships are built through performance over time.
Building on Decades of Operational Experience
Founded in 1960, ElectriCom began by installing copper telephone infrastructure in rural communities. As technology and customer needs changed, the company expanded into power construction, fiber deployment, and additional geographic markets.
The materials and technology have evolved considerably, but the fundamental work remains familiar: building the infrastructure that connects communities, whether it is placed overhead or underground.
When Breeden joined ElectriCom, he found a company with deep operational knowledge, longstanding customer relationships, and years of valuable project information. However, much of that information existed in separate systems and was difficult to analyze collectively.
The opportunity was not simply to collect more data. It was to make the information ElectriCom already had useful to project managers, construction leaders, and field teams. There are a variety of pathways, training and career opportunities at ElectriCom.
That required creating an analytical layer that could turn raw operational and financial information into something people could use to make decisions.
From Monthly Reviews to Earlier Intervention
Historically, project performance was often evaluated during monthly job-cost meetings. Leaders would review the portfolio, discuss what had happened during the previous month, and determine what needed to change.
The problem was timing.
By the time a negative trend became visible in a monthly review, a project might already be significantly off track. Today, ElectriCom can monitor production and job-cost performance much more frequently, allowing managers to respond sooner.
The company tracks measures such as units or feet completed per labor hour, production by project phase, job costs, and equipment utilization. This helps leaders understand:
Whether production is tracking toward the project’s goals
Which crews and work types are operating most efficiently
Where schedules or staffing levels may need to change
Whether internal crews and subcontractors are being deployed effectively
Where equipment is being used, underused, or needed elsewhere
How actual performance should inform future estimates
The goal is not to manage a project from a spreadsheet. It is to give experienced people earlier visibility into conditions that deserve their attention.
As Breeden explained, accurate production information can help the company “see the future”—not by predicting every outcome, but by revealing the direction in which a project is moving while there is still time to act.
Solving Problems Before They Reach the Customer
The value of data is clearest when it helps ElectriCom address a problem before it becomes the customer’s problem.
Breeden described a large project for a new customer in Tennessee. Because the work was more urban than many of ElectriCom’s typical projects, the team anticipated that it could present unfamiliar challenges.
Project managers closely monitored daily production at the phase level from the beginning. When portions of the project started moving off track, the team identified the trend within weeks and made the necessary adjustments.
Waiting for a traditional monthly or multi-month review could have allowed the issue to grow substantially. Instead, the team corrected course early, completed the work near its intended financial target, and earned strong feedback from the customer.
That is the real promise of data-driven project management: not more reports, but fewer surprises.
Connecting Field and Financial Information
ElectriCom uses B2W to capture field information and Vista as its enterprise resource planning system. Because those platforms were not designed to provide a unified analytical view, the company built a Power BI environment over them.
This gives leaders visibility across production, job costs, equipment, financial performance, and selected safety measures.
The development was a significant undertaking and remains an ongoing process. Its value, however, is that managers can examine information across different levels of the company without waiting for disconnected reports to be manually assembled.
A construction manager can quickly determine whether a project is on pace. A project manager can identify where crews may be creating bottlenecks for one another.
Leadership can see how equipment is distributed across regions. Estimators can use actual production history to improve assumptions about future work.
The same information can also improve customer communication by providing clearer, more timely answers about production and schedule performance.
Where AI Fits into the Process
Artificial intelligence is beginning to expand what ElectriCom can do with its operational information.
Breeden sees the most immediate opportunities in planning, forecasting, scenario modeling, and reducing repetitive administrative work. AI can evaluate large or disconnected information sources, identify relationships, and help teams explore questions that would previously have required days or weeks of manual work.
In one recent example, the company needed to extract and interpret information from approximately 300 pages of detailed project drawings. Using AI, the team transformed that material into usable data and produced the required work product in roughly an hour and a half—a process that could otherwise have taken weeks.
The larger opportunity, however, is not simply completing the same task faster.
AI can help project teams model different scenarios, test assumptions, and ask questions that were previously too difficult or time-consuming to explore. That can lead to better planning before work begins and better decisions once crews are in the field.
ElectriCom’s approach remains grounded in human oversight. AI may help surface an insight, but people still need to understand the work, evaluate the information, and decide what action makes sense.
Infrastructure Demand Will Require Both Technology and People
The growth of artificial intelligence is also creating new demand for the infrastructure ElectriCom builds.
Data centers require substantial power generation, transmission capacity, grid investment, and fiber connectivity. Many of these facilities are located in or near rural communities, adding pressure to modernize power systems and expand broadband infrastructure in areas ElectriCom has served for decades.
This creates significant opportunity for the utility construction industry, but it also brings a major constraint: finding and developing enough skilled people to perform the work.
Technology can improve planning and help companies deploy their resources more effectively, but it cannot replace the crews responsible for building infrastructure safely and correctly.
That is why workforce development remains central to ElectriCom’s future. Through its training center and apprenticeship pathways, the company is investing in the next generation of utility construction professionals while helping current employees continue developing their skills.
Let Data Sharpen Judgment—Not Replace It
For Breeden, the most important lesson is straightforward: stay curious and stay close to the work.
Leaders cannot rely entirely on what appears on a dashboard. They need to listen to project managers, construction leaders, and the people working in the field. Data provides another perspective, but it is most valuable when combined with operational experience.
“Let the data sharpen your judgment, but don’t let it replace it,” Breeden said.
That principle captures how ElectriCom approaches technology. Data, analytics, and AI are not substitutes for relationships, field knowledge, or critical thinking. They are tools that help good people recognize issues earlier, ask better questions, and deliver stronger outcomes.
In an industry built on trust and execution, that combination matters. The technology may continue to change, but the objective remains the same: complete the work safely, solve problems responsibly, and deliver for the customer.
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