Aspen Awarded Multi-Year GIS Contract with Western Area Power Administration

Aspen has been awarded a multi-year Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Support Services contract with Western Area Power Administration, Sierra Nevada Region, which is a Power Marketing Agency (PMA) and is part of US Department of Energy. We are providing staffing at Western’s Folsom, CA facility to assist the agency with all GIS-related tasks. These include field data collection using mapping-grade GPS equipment of system infrastructure, Rights-of-way biological and cultural resources, and ancillary data in the immediate vicinity of Western’s transmission corridor easements; creating and updating all cartographic products for internal and external agency use; maintaining the GIS infrastructure database and all ancillary datasets that are used for analysis and production; providing spatial analysis to engineering, operation and maintenance, environmental, power marketing, and other departments; coordinating GIS/GPS meetings and training across agency departments; maintaining the agency intranet Map Gallery of all cartographic products; assisting with updating the agency-wide web-based MapServer application; developing technical standards for the GIS program at Western and coordinating these standards with the federal GIS Lead at the agency’s corporate office in Lakewood, CO; and assisting the agency with identifying specs for GIS/GPS hardware, software and other systems.

In addition, Aspen is assisting Western with photogrammetric, aerial video and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data acquisition and analysis of its entire SN Region transmission and distribution corridor easements. The GIS staff is reviewing all contract flown data for accuracy, advising the agency on quality of the product flown, and providing technical feedback on spatial analysis, plan and profile updates, wood pole analysis, Integrated Vegetation Management (IVM) and Access Road maintenance using the high-resolution remote sensed data deliverables. As Western begins to implement a One-Western initiative where all four agency Regions work within a single Operation and Maintenance process and procedures, Aspen is assisting the agency in developing a standardized GIS-based Transmission Inspection System for its lineman field crews. This application and GIS database will allow the agency to track the health of its infrastructure uniformly across the entire agency and provide consistent analysis and reporting to its management for internal and regulatory requirement use.