A Hub energizing collaboration

Bill Parker and Travis Peterson, both GIS Supervisors with Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), share how they are driving collaboration across teams, departments and lines of business with GIS.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
♪

(00:05):
From Esri, this is Engagement Matters,
a show about people whose work depends on engaging with stakeholders
to make meaningful change.
No matter how you define your community,
you can learn from the experts we talked to
as they share their stories about motivating groups of people
to care about issues and take action.

(00:26):
On today's show, we'll hear from Travis Peterson and Bill Parker
from Pacific Gas and Electric
as they share the secrets behind their team's collaboration.
So before we get into talking about the collaboration
that you guys have formed within PG&E
and have continued to feed over time,
can you talk a little bit about how both of you got into GIS

(00:49):
and how the collaboration started?
Yeah, for sure.
So I like to think that I was discovered by GIS
while I was in the United States Marine Corps.
You know, it kind of starts out when you're in boot camp,
you take some tests,
and I was shown to have an aptitude
for topographic intelligence.

(01:10):
And that turned out to be land survey, cartography, analysis,
and just at that time, generally,
geographic information systems.
And that's where I started my career.
I went to the school that's now known
as the Geospatial Intelligence Agency,
and I worked as a land surveyor, a GPS surveyor,
cartographer, spatial analyst,

(01:33):
and then transitioned to the private sector afterwards.
I earned my Bachelor's of Science
in Environmental Studies.
I did a Master's of GIS at Penn State,
and I've worked at Environmental Services
in the city of Portland.
I've worked for Tele Atlas North America
for route navigation systems.

(01:54):
I worked for some solar startups
and eventually found my way to utilities at PG&E in 2009.
Now I lead a team of GIS specialists
that manage the gas side of GIS at PG&E.
Very cool. And, Bill, how did you get into GIS?
So I studied archaeology in college,
and I actually got my degree in archaeology.

(02:15):
The first summer after I graduated,
I found a job with the U.S. Forest Service
doing, you know, survey work in the field,
and a lot of that survey work involved mapping with GPS units.
After that sort of ended, I kind of just realized
that the archaeology gig wasn't for me
because of the constant job churn.
I went back to school, got a certificate in GIS,

(02:37):
and then went to graduate school
and took a bunch of coursework there in GIS.
From there, I got some work doing LIDAR classification
and using GIS and ended up working in environmental consulting,
doing lots of different GIS for large,
mostly transportation projects on the West Coast,
including some high-speed rail, and that's really also
where I started working with a bunch of different people

(02:58):
within the environmental world as sort of doing GIS
for all sorts of different environmental science projects.
From there, I had a little over a year and a half
at an electric car charging startup,
and when that didn't look like it was going to pan out
for very long, I ended up over at PG&E on the electric side,
and I supervised a team of GIS analysts
whose job is to do a lot of different analytical work

(03:20):
along with maintain data sets
and produce different visual outputs,
whether they be hard copy or web applications.
It's super interesting to see how people get into GIS,
but there seems to be for the two of you guys,
you kind of approach GIS in very different ways
from two different directions, but there's a lot of overlap.

(03:41):
You know, you both have experienced the private sector,
public sector, and kind of everything in between,
so I wonder how did those experiences
across such a broad range of different types of organizations,
how did they shape your approach
to how you collaborate with each other
and then also how you drive that collaboration within PG&E?

(04:05):
Yeah, so I've seen GIS through a few lenses
and just have different perspectives on GIS.
Experienced a large range of operations in the field.
Also in the office, done quite a bit of scripting
and even helped plan the infrastructure through GIS.
So collaboration's always been a piece

(04:27):
of all of my jobs that I've had,
but PG&E is so large that I quickly realized
that there were huge opportunities for partnering
and just deeper collaboration,
and that's just because there's so many folks here
doing so much great work through GIS.
There's this incredible opportunity to partner
and to share and gain effectiveness and efficiency.

(04:47):
So primarily, it's just about eliminating data silos
or even content silos,
trying to increase this ability to share and collaborate
and support each other across functions
and lines of business.
I see this as trying to maximize the effectiveness
and efficiency we have in performing our work
in the field and in the office.

(05:08):
And so I think the wide range of experiences I've had
have helped me lead to this and understanding the pain
that many go through when they're trying to collaborate.
Yeah, I think, you know, working as a consultant
in environmental for a long period there,
you really see sort of the difference
in what you're doing every day.
One day you might be working with biologists,
another day with an archeologist,

(05:29):
another day with your transportation experts,
but they all need data and automations
to really move things along.
And those overlapping needs,
where there's opportunity to get some collaboration
and efficiencies in there
and some of the processes they're running.
You know, for example,
you can have a transportation project
where part of the biology team is working in an area
and the culture team is working in an area.
And, you know, if they don't know

(05:50):
that they're working on the same project,
they might not even know that maybe they could go out
and share resources in some ways when they're out there.
So you, as sometimes the GIS person,
you're seeing almost a bigger picture
of these larger projects
because you have different people
coming from different areas
talking to you about these things.
Yeah, and, you know, being that I'm a little newer
to PG&E than Travis,
he's helping me sort of understand this landscape
a lot faster and sort of the data sharing as well.

(06:13):
And, you know, we both have internal customers
that will come to us for things.
Sometimes there's overlap.
You know, a lot of times my team deals with electric,
Travis' team deals with gas,
but certain people in the company,
like environmental won't necessarily,
they want to know what's going on.
Like environmental generally,
they just want to know that there is an activity.
You know, they do care what type of activity,
but they might need from both for an activity

(06:34):
they're going to go out to do.
So they need to talk to both electric and gas.
And if Travis and I don't talk to each other,
don't communicate, you know,
we could be replicating work for them.
We could be replicating data gathering.
Like they could know that they need this data gathered
and we'll give it to Travis and somebody else
could come up and Travis doesn't know I have it,
or I don't know he has it.
And we sort of lose this or we're replicating work
and, you know, creating waste out there
by not communicating with each other

(06:56):
and with everybody out in the business
that we're working with.
So it really helps to get those lines of communication
open throughout the business and across the businesses
to make sure that we are supporting everybody
that we need to support.
So kind of an example of that is this goal
to share more than just data, you know,
it's knowledge and experience.
So going back to what Bill was saying,
gas and electric assets, of course,

(07:16):
are incredibly different.
It's hard data is very different
and their use cases are very similar,
you know, in trying to support operations.
So we share the core information that we both use,
but there's also institutional knowledge that we share.
We need to know what is available from electric
and we need to know enough to realize

(07:37):
when it's time to push a request for support
over to electric or vice versa.
We also have these web apps
to help people look up answers for themselves,
but really anything more than a basic level
of analysis or query means you have to find
the right person to coordinate with,

(07:57):
the right expert in either gas or electric.
It's really true.
Like we do a good job, I think, of allowing people
to self-service, we're trying to do that,
but we also, as you pointed out,
like you have to make sure that you're only allowing
so much self-service when it comes to some things
that can be so detailed and direct
that you need somebody as an expert.
And even on, I think, our teams too sometimes,

(08:17):
with the difference between the amount of data
with transmission and distribution data,
sometimes we have to go to experts within ours
to be like, what does this data actually mean?
So like we do want to collaborate and share data,
but we also need to make sure that we are careful
in the way we collaborate and share data
and that we're not allowing people
to have too much information
that they don't have the necessary knowledge

(08:38):
to utilize properly.
Yeah, it's interesting that you guys
are taking that approach because when you talk it through
like that, it makes total sense.
I think most people tend to think when you say,
hey, we need to start collaborating,
they tend to think, oh, okay, the end goal is,
I know everything that you know and vice versa.
And what you're telling me and what is it

(08:59):
is intuitive is that that's impossible.
There's no way that I can be an expert
in both gas and electric, or even in all the different
things that go into electric or gas.
So I think that that's an interesting thing
to tease out there.
It's really difficult to gain functional expertise
in geographic information systems, right?

(09:21):
There's so many pieces to that.
And it's even more difficult to gain functional expertise
with geographic information systems
within each line of business that we have.
And so to Bill's point, it's important to collaborate.
We collaborate as much as we can,
but we do have to find a way to rely on each other.
While, we do actually rely on each other to help

(09:42):
and in many instances in which requests are complicated
or there's just like uncertainty around data
or other kinds of content.
It's important not to be siloed, as you said, Travis.
Like we will have conversations all the time
about like whether or not our data that is in time
siloed in gas and electric,
whether or not we can do anything cross-functional
with them sometimes.
And sometimes the answer is no,

(10:02):
because the data is in a certain way,
but you need the experts, us to tell people that,
I mean, we can give them the data,
but they might go out there and make a decision
about that data.
So I think that is important to,
while we are providing data for people to utilize,
we also give that expertise to say,
you probably shouldn't do the data this way,
or you should probably come to us
for these actual questions,

(10:23):
your answer to these analytical questions,
at least for your visualization work.
It's really good for some basic analysis,
but if you really want to dive deep,
you know, here we are as a team to,
as Travis said, take so much effort to learn,
to become a GIS expert as we are,
and then you've got to be data experts as well.
So that makes total sense to me
that you guys have kind of defined

(10:43):
these two different paths that intersect
when they need to and don't in other times.
So I guess for the people that are not as far
into collaborating internally like you are,
how did this whole thing start?
Where did you start?
And maybe that will help other people understand
how to start things off in their organization.

(11:05):
Yeah, so I see myself as continuing on work
that others have started or had envisioned many years ago.
I worked with Elizabeth Proctor and also Steve Weaver,
electric and gas respectively.
And, you know, they had been at PG&E for a long time
and they saw this capability as ArcGIS Online was emerging.

(11:29):
And I think they really started this
and they had this first idea of using an ArcGIS Hub
to facilitate the collaboration
between these lines of businesses
and lay the groundwork early on.
And so over time, we've just been able to gain
more traction from executives and the rank and file
as we've had examples of this platform

(11:51):
being useful to the business.
Interesting.
Yeah, Bill, could you elaborate a little bit
on how the Hub kind of from your perspective functions
to help collaboration?
Yeah, I see the Hub as it has sort of the two parts
that functions really as that central source of data,
base data, sometimes what we consider non-asset data
or data that we as a gas or electric team collected

(12:13):
sort of want to publish out.
It helps to showcase what can be done with those datasets,
highlights some applications that we developed
to help people along,
and also some sort of start here with some data layers
from apps that are like ArcGIS Online,
but really it also provides that single source,
the truth for some sorts of datasets
and streamlines data collection.
There's no need to have the land group go out

(12:35):
and buy parcel data, gas, electric,
all of us go out, buy data that we all need
or collect data that we all need.
There's no reason for that.
So it sort of streamlines, it helps reduce those costs
by having that there and having sort of somebody
that needs to maintain it though.
And that collaboration also starts off with IT.
Our IT department set us up to be successful
by having the correct infrastructure behind us.
And that's another collaboration

(12:56):
Travis and I haven't even touched on much here.
We're talking about our two business,
but we also need to collaborate a lot with IT
to get their support to go through
and help us maintain everything
and help us publish everything and get what we need
in order to maintain a Hub site that publish the data out
and also helps us showcase what can be done.
So that again, as we've mentioned,

(13:17):
we're publishing data and saying, okay, here's data to use,
but here's applications we've developed.
So don't even go and develop this application,
you need it in some respects.
Like, you know, we're also sharing things
that we've developed for us or for other clients.
Yeah.
So it's getting more complex, the deeper we dig into this.
I think, and that's kind of turning a light bulb on
in my mind that it's not just gas and electric.

(13:38):
I think you mentioned land and then IT
and all these other stakeholders and other groups.
It's lots of people and teams,
but it's also people beyond that
with so many different stakeholders
and so many different teams
that you're trying to collaborate across.
How do you guys prioritize who needs what
and how do you communicate what's important to people?

(14:00):
Because obviously you can't get 60 people
in a meeting room every day
and figure out who needs what.
How do you guys approach that prioritization of need
and communicating what's on your roadmap
to everybody that's involved?
Yeah, so I kind of see this as an idea
that's been, I guess, like building up in me for a while.

(14:23):
And really I want to make GIS more ubiquitous,
just more accessible and more understood
by everyone where I work
and more usable by everyone where I work.
And I think the way to get started in my perspective,
it's really about building good metadata
that helps identify what these data are.
Searching to understand what we have

(14:45):
and what some of the appropriate use cases are
and probably more importantly,
what use cases this shouldn't be used for.
And I guess the other is providing more access points.
So where can we actually find this information
and can we help people actually use it
within this platform that we have?
So just help people use the data,

(15:06):
make sure they understand it
and make sure it's easy to access
and leverage within something like ArcGIS Online
or ArcGIS or inside of ArcPro.
And so I kind of see this as like
maybe lowering the barrier for entry.
And that's what I'd like to do.
Along with that, I'm kind of thinking
that we also need monitoring.

(15:27):
So all of this content that we have,
like how do we monitor it?
How do we understand if it's being utilized?
How do we establish a governance group and framework
to evaluate the content?
I see like we need to work within the lines of business
to identify what needs to be brought in,
what people actually need,

(15:47):
what needs to be retired, things along those lines.
And then there's the needs of the business
and new tools and capabilities.
So I think that those will like help drive the roadmap.
So what does actual business need?
What does operations need?
What do these folks need sitting at a desk with GIS
and then what's actually capable?

(16:07):
And so that's gonna help drive the roadmap there.
But then there's always these evolving needs.
So it's like getting away from paper as much as possible.
That's been like a constant theme in my career.
So now we have that capability with AGOL
in this platform.
And then how do we help others use GIS
by lowering that entry point,
making it more accessible, understood and useful.

(16:29):
So just generally trying to like push forward,
demystify some of the GIS
and then help people get into using it
so they can self-serve on their own.
Yeah, I really wanna like go back
and sort of really accentuate Travis
talking about making things more accessible, understood
and how that can really help drive the business as well.
And also get away from paper maps,

(16:49):
like really having leadership start to see
that GIS isn't somebody that just produces paper maps
and maintains some data,
but really makes data out there accessible, usable,
can help provide web applications to make quick decisions
and make things more visible
in a much easier to consume way.
But then also giving people the ability on other teams

(17:12):
to sort of make some of those applications themselves,
but also sort of constraining some of that access
and analysis depending on what the data is,
because some analysis that will be able to be done
by everyone, as Travis said earlier
about the amount of knowledge it takes
to gain knowledge GIS capabilities,
but even the knowledge about the data.
You have team members been here for over a decade on my team

(17:33):
and they have a tremendously large amount of knowledge
about the data behind the data really.
And that could be so useful.
And that's something that you just can't replicate
just by putting data out there.
But what you can do is make sure
that people know about that team as well.
You know, that's part of putting the hub out there
is just in some ways advertising your GIS department
so that it can do more things

(17:53):
and sort of help guide and educate people
about what GIS can do within the company
and what your team can do and what you can do on your own.
And you know, one of the challenges we do have
with our Hub site is it really open
because all of that data can be protected.
Some of the data we have is sensitive.
Some of the non-asset data is sensitive as well.
You know, we have people out there
doing cultural resource collections,

(18:13):
certain biology resource collections,
and data analysis,
so that you don't want to be public even within the company
because you don't want everybody to see it
because there are access constraints on that.
And understanding that and making sure that, you know,
we are sort of funneling that feedback
to people that want us to publish data
or want access to data that, you know,
we're helping to curate the content here for them,
but also helping to curate applications

(18:35):
that we can help them sort of produce
to make everybody's life a little bit easier
and sort of reduce some of the waste that we see
and simplify as much as we can for people.
Yeah, and just to kind of add on to that,
you know, this Hub site,
it's like the entry point to useful tools.
So our teams have built applications

(18:57):
and they're available to the parties
that had requested them to be built,
but they could also be useful for others.
And so an example of that would be just like, you know,
where are our gas projects?
Where are things going to be built?
And so I might build this viewer for just one group, right?
However, it's like a pretty general use tool.

(19:17):
It's pretty easy to operate
and it's pretty straightforward to use and understand.
So having that available on the Hub site,
having people in the Hub site see it
and sort of understand how to use it,
it could solve a lot of their requests for support as well
at like a general level.
So we're excited to do those kinds of things
through the Hub site.

(19:39):
But then also we're able to extend
some of our collaboration with municipalities
and other utilities.
And we're kind of just at the beginning of this,
but it's like, you know,
can we establish this goal to help schedule work
during similar times so we don't disrupt the public?
So can our company and can a city or a county partner,

(20:01):
and we're actually doing some of that right now
by sharing project work with certain entities
that have signed NDAs
and want to participate through ArcGIS Online.
We're getting early reports back
that there's a lot of cost savings, time savings,
and then a lot of goodwill being shown between the parties

(20:21):
because they're more effective now
and definitely more efficient through tools like that.
I was excited, I think as Travis said in there,
the more outreach you do,
the more utilization of the data tools
and Hub site get.
So even if the tool you built
doesn't necessarily work for this other team,
they might see and be like,
well, I see this, I need to do this.
And they might think it's a big lift.

(20:42):
And there's sometimes where, you know,
as you get where you have such high quality GIS experts here
that they'll be like,
well, that's actually not a big lift.
We can create your other tool for that.
And at the end of the day,
all these requests will go into a queue for us to work.
So that is, I think, to a certain extent
where we're even bottlenecking a little bit right now
with the success building on itself
is people are seeing how useful it is
to have a Hub site of this authoritative data

(21:04):
to help build their own products,
to have biologists, to have a little bit of ArcGIS Online
to build their own quick viewer.
They can spin up to view just the biology data, right?
Just the data they've collected
against maybe habitat data they need to see and visualize
and not even really do any analysis on,
just some visualizations.
And, you know, we have to find time
to really sort of continue to build that data up

(21:26):
and go back to those teams that want that data.
And be like, okay, let's put your data in a queue.
Let's prioritize those things as well.
And, you know, be deliberate about how we staff that
with our team and how we make sure
that we are then publicizing that to our executives as well
about these are the things that we're building.
This is the data that we're using.
I know, for example, a lot of times the GeoHub data now

(21:47):
for my team, when they're creating web apps
on ArcGIS Online, it is the first data set they go to.
If it's not in GeoHub, we will start thinking about,
why is it there?
It shouldn't be there.
Let's publish it.
And let's make sure that people are utilizing those data sets
and let's not make copies of these data.
And well, let's not pass these around.
Let's do the outreach to go ahead
and show these tools that we built

(22:08):
and show the Hub site and do more and more of that
so that we can really get even more buy-in
and get more people that want to use the data
and realize how important it is to have
this authoritative data with identified subject matter
experts behind it that you know you can go talk to
about where this data comes from, who it is,
who owns it, and then how to use it.

(22:28):
I see this Hub site and this collaboration
that we're helping build at PG&E.
I'm really excited about it because in most of my career,
everywhere that I've worked, we've had like one viewer
or one editor to like rule them all, right?
And so there's always these like large editors
and large viewers that have very specific capabilities

(22:49):
primarily around production,
getting data into our production system.
However, there's like all of these other user groups
that need something more.
And I think that's what Bill and I are seeing a lot of
when using ArcGIS Online and supporting the business.
But what I see is that we need to help enable
these critical business processes to have a GIS

(23:14):
that facilitates their work
rather than trying to get their work done
with editors and viewers that are built
for a more general purpose.
I think I see it too, Travis, people that are trying to go out
and do their own viewing and it's this habit
to get the thing and then they come to us
and you can build them something
that's really specific to them.

(23:34):
And it really sort of the light bulb goes on
about how this is gonna save them time and money
and then the word goes out, you know,
and that's still sort of a, to a certain extent,
where we are as a group.
And I think we're about being GeoHub and sort of,
setting up GeoHub and sort of pushing this out
and be able to publish these things.
I think it's really gonna help us sort of grow that
and make sort of that centralized GIS

(23:57):
that is a very high end solution
to solve problems here at the company.
So, you know, it's like a really exciting time for me.
I really like where we're going with the future of GIS
at this company, PG&E.
I was thinking about this as we're going
through our discussion here and, you know,
like we're in the business of managing risk.

(24:17):
GIS and this Hub site is going to allow us
to review risk through space, time,
and relation to our evolving environment.
And I like the idea of expanding this capability
to others besides, you know,
just like the standard GIS professional.
And I believe the Hub site's gonna help us do that.
That was Bill Parker and Travis Peterson

(24:40):
from Pacific Gas and Electric,
sharing their collaboration efforts and tips and tricks.
If you enjoyed this episode,
please share it with a colleague
and don't forget to check out the other podcasts
available from Esri,
including Field Notes and Reinventing Planning.
Learn more at Esri.com.