The electric grid is rapidly changing.  Many of the technologies attaching to the grid are requiring the grid to be operated, maintained and planning in new, innovative ways.  As these operational challenges continue to expand, so must the tools our engineers use to prepare the grid to act as a foundation for clean energy technologies.  With this added complexity, the grid will experience newer and more risks that must be mitigated in order to engineer cost-effective, secure and reliable solutions. These risks result in execution challenges which manifest as extended delays due to permitting and access. ​

In order to mitigate such delays, we created a tool to analyze jurisdictional permitting needs and assess risk to prioritize work efficiently and provide our engineers and execution management with data driven planning and visualization capabilities. The tool uses geographic information systems which allows us to incorporate project data and permitting/jurisdictional data with spatial references to deliver reporting outputs that range from interactive mapping solutions to risk reports.  ComEd coined this tool as Jurisdictional Analysis Risk Mitigation System (JARMS). 

The JARMS tool outputs geospatial data that allows design-phase pre-identification of risks that projects may encounter, including but not limited to railroad crossings, bridge crossings, and adjacency to wetlands, all of which pose unique challenges that impact execution schedules and costs.  Mitigation of these risks can begin in the design phase by allowing our design teams to employee the many engineering solutions at their disposal, including changing proposed routing, and to immediately understand estimated impacts to cost and schedule.