UTILIZED SOFTWARE

PLS-CADD

LOCATION

Southern California

ORGANIZATION

Aquawolf

Aquawolf addressed a critical challenge facing electric utilities in Southern California: the urgent need to harden infrastructure against intensifying wildfires and storms while simultaneously controlling costs for ratepayers. The core problem was that traditional structural analysis tools often relied on simplifying assumptions, leading them to conservatively flag structurally sound utility poles as overstressed. These inaccuracies resulted in a costly cycle of unnecessary pole replacements, with costs ranging from $20,000 to $100,000 per pole.

The breakthrough was the implementation of a proprietary digital workflow that integrated rapid, survey-grade photogrammetric 3D data capture (using AI processing for speed) directly with Bentley's full PLS-CADD application. This approach eliminated the historical tradeoff between cost and engineering rigor. By automating the path from field data to model, the solution allowed designers to utilize the most robust analysis environment without increasing total project cost.

The result was a transformation in efficiency and accuracy. Modeling time per structure was reduced from the traditional 3–4 hours to approximately 1 hour (a 60%–75% gain). Crucially, the high-fidelity PLS-CADD models showed greater consistency and revealed that poles previously marked for replacement were, in fact, structurally sound. This insight provides the potential for an annual cost avoidance of over $2.5 million — freeing up capital that can be strategically redirected to genuine grid resilience, fire hardening, and clean energy transition efforts.