Project Highlights:
- Dominion Energy VA
- Headquartered in Richmond, VA
- 6,800 mi electric transmission
- 58,000 mi electric distribution
Dominion Energy Virginia delivers electric service to approximately 2.7 million customers and manages over 58,000 miles of overhead and underground electric distribution infrastructure, as well as electric transmission, substations, and military privatization electric and gas systems. Five enterprise Geographic Information System (GIS) geodatabases support these operations and serve thousands of internal users and numerous downstream business systems.
Business Challenge
As Dominion Energy approached GIS transformation and the implementation of ArcGIS Utility Network, they wanted to do so without disrupting day-to-day operations across the organization.
The existing GIS environment supported more than 90 enterprise integrations and numerous mission-critical systems, including outage management, advanced distribution management, work management, and SAP Customer Care. The organization also relied on legacy ArcMap editing workflows and custom applications that would need to be redesigned for a modern ArcGIS Pro and Utility Network model environment.
Dominion Energy aimed not only to migrate data but also to develop a scalable enterprise GIS platform. This platform would enhance data quality, streamline future upgrades, support mobile workflows, and improve network analysis for operations, engineering, and field teams. Additionally, Dominion sought to ensure that all teams embraced the transition smoothly. To help get stakeholders on board, stability, quick platform responsiveness, and overall general performance were top priorities.
The Solution
Following a comprehensive Utility Network data assessment engagement, Dominion Energy selected UDC to lead the design, implementation, and migration of its enterprise GIS to ArcGIS Utility Network. The multi-year transformation spans five enterprise geodatabases supporting electric distribution, substations, and military privatization operations for electric and gas.
Working in close collaboration with Dominion Energy and Esri, UDC designed a modern enterprise architecture that meets current business needs and positions the organization for future growth. The team also evaluated opportunities to consolidate geodatabases, streamline workflows, and reduce long-term maintenance costs, creating a more efficient and sustainable GIS environment.
The project included application modernization, Utility Network implementation, enterprise data migration, integration updates, testing, training, and phased production deployments. Together, these efforts enabled a smooth transition to a modern GIS platform, minimized disruption to daily operations, and provided a scalable foundation for future business initiatives.
Designing for Long-Term Success
Rather than treating the initiative as a data conversion project, Dominion Energy viewed it as an opportunity to modernize its entire enterprise GIS ecosystem. The organization began by assessing its readiness and determining the level of effort required to migrate electric distribution data to the Utility Network model. In addition, Dominion Energy began leveraging migration and automation tools to reduce manual effort and to build a pilot environment to assess requirements, technology, and data readiness.
Working closely with UDC, Dominion Energy developed a comprehensive modernization strategy that went well beyond migrating data to the ArcGIS Utility Network. The effort included designing a modern enterprise architecture, assessing workflows and applications, developing Utility Network data models, configuring ArcGIS Pro, modernizing web and mobile applications, updating enterprise integrations, and planning and executing enterprise data migrations.
Throughout the implementation, Dominion Energy collaborated with UDC on testing, training, release management, and post-production support to help ensure a successful transition. This collaboration supported the creation of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and user champions across each department. The Dominion Energy test environment was modeled to reflect the final production environment, ensuring that user acceptance testing (UAT) would provide a realistic experience for end users. This, in turn, helped secure stakeholder buy-in and provided a smoother transition for the Dominion Energy team. Engaged power users have become change champions for the organization, even commenting, “I’m really liking this,” during a UAT feedback session.
The team’s holistic approach is establishing a scalable, future-ready GIS platform that minimizes operational risk and supports Dominion Energy’s evolving business needs and long-term digital transformation goals.
Accelerating Complex Utility Network Migrations
To optimize one of the most extensive Utility Network implementations in the industry, UDC employed a range of proprietary tools and established methodologies.
UDC’s HEIDE (High-fidelity Export Import Data Exchange) assessed the quality of source data and supported migration planning for each geodatabase. UDC’s tools automated subnetwork controller creation, terminal setup, and association management, reducing manual effort and increasing consistency.
To allow Dominion Energy to continue business operations during the transition, UDC also implemented a Geometric Network-to-Utility Network synchronization process, enabling edits to proceed while enterprise integrations are modernized. Changes to the GN sync to the UN at certain points, so no data is lost. While this approach comes with risk, the rewards include limited downtime for Dominion’s systems, including operational systems that depend on GIS data and are also undergoing transformation.
Modernizing the Enterprise GIS Ecosystem
In addition to implementing ArcGIS Utility Network, UDC is helping Dominion Energy modernize the applications, services, and workflows that support its day-to-day operations. The transformation extends beyond the core GIS platform to include new ArcGIS Pro editing environments, Field Maps mobile applications, web-based data viewers, dashboards, reporting and publication databases, and modernized enterprise integrations.
UDC is also facilitating offline mobile workflows and automating deployment and release processes to enhance system reliability, simplify maintenance, and provide better support to enterprise users.
Performance, a primary concern for Dominion Energy, was addressed by making the QA and production environments the same size, rather than minimizing the dev and test environments and scaling production later. This, along with maintaining in-house custom development, ensures that if something inevitably breaks, the Dominion team is ready to fix the issue quickly. The desire to closely replicate mature editing workflows has led Dominion to choose custom development as the solution of choice to provide flexibility in the timeline and maintain established tools.
Together, these enhancements are creating a more scalable and resilient enterprise GIS that provides a flexible foundation for future business initiatives, improves operational efficiency, and supports continued digital transformation.
Delivering Business Value
As the phased implementation progresses, Dominion Energy is adopting a modern GIS platform designed for long-term sustainability.
Expected business benefits include:
- Modern enterprise GIS built on the ArcGIS Utility Network
- Improved editing workflows in ArcGIS Pro
- Better support for field mobility and offline operations
- Enhanced network tracing and analytical capabilities
- Improved system performance on a fully supported platform
- Lower security and operational risk
- Simplified upgrades and long-term maintenance
- Improved data quality for operations, engineering, and field users
Looking Ahead
Dominion Energy’s Utility Network transformation lays the groundwork for the utility’s next-generation GIS capabilities. By modernizing five enterprise geodatabases, upgrading critical business applications, and implementing a phased migration strategy, UDC is helping Dominion Energy build a resilient enterprise GIS to support operations, engineering, asset management, and future digital transformation initiatives for years to come.