Engineered Intelligence Inc.: Smarter solutions for aging utility assets
Whether it be serving the community with gas, electricity, or water, companies in the utilities sector are essential to keep households and businesses running. When they fail, entire towns and cities can be affected, impacting hundreds of thousands of peoples’ livelihoods. That’s why utility companies are keen to pursue advancements in technology to prevent future failures.
Enter Ted Zalucki, co-founder of the ‘mighty small’ Engineered Intelligence Inc. (EII), seeded by METSCO Holdings. A Calgary-based power infrastructure technology startup with the aim of helping utility companies manage their assets and avoid potential failure. Zalucki and his team developed ENGIN, an automated, data-driven platform that evaluates an asset’s age, its remaining lifespan, and when it might need to be repaired, refurbished, or replaced so utilities can plan accordingly.
Utilities face a list of challenges to ensure smooth operations, with effective asset management near the top of the list. From upgrading aging infrastructure and keeping up with changing laws and regulations, to integrating Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), there’s a lot that can impact how successfully a utility operates. Combine that list with ever-mounting pressure from customers to reduce rates, and you’ve got yourself a challenge.
Embracing and handling uncertainty head-on is a must in the industry. To plan for future and sustainable work, utility providers must conduct thorough investment planning and outcome forecasting that includes detailed plans for managing their assets. These plans take time, investment, and deep historical knowledge given many systems were installed in the sixties and seventies and aren’t getting any younger.
STATE OF THE ART SOFTWARE
Zalucki and the ENGIN team want to see their software become the single source of truth for utilities in Canada, North America, and beyond.
Ted Zalucki, Co-founder, Engineered Intelligence Inc.
Akin to a financial portfolio manager managing visible stocks and assets, ENGIN is the financial portfolio manager of the high voltage network, according to Zalucki. “Our software completes millions of calculations in under a minute to produce financial risk results. Decision makers can then make investment decisions as to what’s best for customers to improve reliability, reduce safety risks, and help their business.”
In layman’s terms, ENGIN looks at a utility’s asset data with a risk-based lens and alerts them to incoming trouble, and then helps them decide where to put their cash to mitigate said trouble.
With the team’s collective experience working as engineers, the EII team witnessed companies spending millions of unnecessary dollars rectifying the symptoms of a problem, instead of unearthing the root cause. Zalucki compares it to fixing a leak in a pipe, only for another leak to start dripping on the other end. ENGIN’s automated process gives utilities ultimate transparency on their asset health – the interface is somewhat of a playbook with a winning combination of data reports, objective risk analysis, and plans for improvement.
At its core, ENGIN ensures that users get consistent, measurable and repeatable results – and quickly gives feedback on forecasts to ensure they’re data-driven and auditable so utilities can not only make better decisions but make them faster.
“The energy and utilities sector are primed for better decision making and we’re here to help utilities make those better decisions.”
POWERED BY FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE
Before making his way to Calgary, Zalucki started working with utilities as an engineering project analyst for Toronto Hydro and then moved into consulting, working for multiple utilities across Canada. Along his journey, Zalucki gained perspective by working for customers, as well as working as the customer himself. From this, he built up an appreciation for the entire utility value chain and the everyday nuances that affect the sector.
ENGIN OPTIMIZER
Because of this, ENGIN isn’t about producing cryptic data reports and leaving clients to make sense of them – the team knows that would result in a dusty file of recommendations not being implemented. Zalucki and his team have made it their goal to provide a platform that enables continuous improvement, gives meaningful feedback to clients on what’s working and what isn’t, and can be tailored to suit the utility’s specific needs. No one-size-fits-all approach here.
“With automation right now and the penetration of more data on the grid, my focus is on taking the opportunity to use that data to produce novel insights and knowledge to help improve utility investment decision making,” Zalucki said.
In Alberta, there are only a handful of utility providers, and the Alberta Utilities Commission have put asset management and investment decision science at the forefront. With that has come more introspection as to how utilities plan, where they are spending their money, and if they are efficiently spending that money.
While much of EII’s work is in helping utilities understand the health and risks of their assets, the startup also helps power companies with their regular rate application cycles. When going through this process, utilities must validate their renewal investments and demonstrate how they benefit their customers – ENGIN provides data-driven insights to back this up. Furthermore, ENGIN will also implement forecasting and tracking tools to help evaluate and report on future performance.
CHOOSING CALGARY TO LIVE, WORK AND PLAY
Entrenching themselves in Calgary’s burgeoning tech ecosystem was a no-brainer for the EII team – plenty of opportunities for growing the business and skiing on the weekends was a winning combination for the small but mighty team.
“It’s such a personable environment here. People are easy to approach, interested in making connections and offer up collaboration opportunities. ”
“People are willing to be social in the business world here,” Zalucki said, also noting affordable rates for facilities, as well as Calgary-specific innovation funds, helping support the ecosystem and creating jobs for Calgarians.
“There are many people here looking to repurpose their skills, and they come with extremely valuable critical thinking skills too. I believe we can draw insights from these people to help businesses.”
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Calgarians have shown the ability to rise when facing a challenge, which caught Zalucki’s eye. “It’s one thing to be faced with that challenge. It’s another to face it time and time again. Calgarians are extremely resilient, and you know that in the long-term, we will excel,” he said.
Even with Zalucki’s past experiences in different cities, he chose to come here for one of the same reasons that many other tech companies choose to set up shop in this pocket of Western Canada – Calgary’s proximity to the Rocky Mountains and Bragg Creek fit in seamlessly with Zalucki’s lifestyle, as he regularly ventures west for mountain excursions.
Another reason, Zalucki said, is affordability and cost of living.
“With all the amenities Calgary has to offer, I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t consider Calgary as a hub for their tech company.”
But, let’s get back to electricity.
ENGIN DEMONSTRATION
WHAT’S NEXT
“Our vision is to be at the forefront of our sector’s infrastructure intelligence technologies. Our goal is to make ENGIN a platform where you can collaborate with your peers and where the utilities have access to data that they can show to their customers,” Zalucki said. By enabling more transparency, socializing asset intelligence across the organization is something Zalucki believes will create a strong asset management habit.
With good habits in place, ENGIN can help service providers make calculated business decisions. “We currently have three licensed users on the platform and are hoping to have close to 15 licensed users and utilities by the end of the year, as well as doubling our team.”
Onward to 2022 and 2023, EII has even bigger aspirations, investing in deep learning technologies and transforming EII into a major global infrastructure intelligence technology provider. Deep learning is a function of AI that imitates the workings of the human brain in processing data, creating patterns for use in decision making.
“Utilities providers have been under cost-cutting pressures for a long time. The amount of work they would like to be doing isn’t necessarily what they can achieve,” Zalucki said. AI can help by automating processes and work, for example, with high resolution imagery and inspecting transmission lines, which can take hours for a person to complete. ENGIN is looking at partnerships centered on computer vision technology that can filter down tens of thousands of images to a few hundred.
But Zalucki says the number one way to attain such lofty goals is through people. “We believe having diverse ways of thinking will help us moving forward. We are also partnering with field service companies and consultants in Calgary, and opening market channels through those collaborations.”
It’s clear the ENGIN team has a few different ideas in their hats and are signaling change with an eye on the future not typically seen within the utilities sector. “The days of do-it-yourself are over. Right now, collaboration is a much more valuable route to take.”
Are you ready to make moves in Calgary’s tech scene, working with forward-thinking companies like EII? Head to our Live Tech Love Life careers page and see what opportunities might be out there for you.