Top Innovators
Scott Alford represents the Innovations in Predictive Maintenance team at Arizona Public Service.
PUF's Lori Burkhart: Scott, talk about the innovation that led to your winning the Nancy Fitzroy Top Innovator Award for Environment and Safety and its benefits to Arizona Public Service.
Scott Alford: Our Predictive Maintenance strategy includes twenty-six team members who are trained and certified in numerous inspection technologies, including a Boston Dynamics Spot the dog robot, a Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR)/Firstlook Tank, hot stick mounted cameras, and drones to ensure highly effective and safe non-contact inspections.
We're one of the only Transmission & Distribution groups doing predictive maintenance with advanced robotics, which allows us to do added work more effectively and efficiently, and it creates a safer environment for our workforce.
The Predictive Maintenance team no longer uses a single person to inspect substation ground grid integrity, network transformers, and critical underground infrastructures, which can be dangerous and hazardous sites. Instead, the team now deploys a two-person crew consisting of one qualified electrical worker and one Predictive Maintenance technician to oversee the inspection executed by one of their robotic tools.