Talented women and men in utility arboriculture - and allied professions – talk together about career paths, challenges and success stories. Hear about finding and capitalizing on opportunities and the preparations to be ready when these doors appear!

A diverse mix of habitat enthusiasts and partners from across the energy and transportation sectors join to learn, collaborate, and advance pollinator habitat on working lands.

Leaders of the Utility Arborist Association and the Arbor Day Foundation kick off the conference.

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An overview on renewable market trends, emerging issues and the impact on the power system, specifically as they relate to Duke Energy’s renewable business.

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Start the conference off with a fun and engaging magical message about the “why” and “how” of working safely and the benefits of bringing that same safety mindset home. John shares how to take personal responsibility for your own safety and provides proven techniques to make people feel empowered to approach others with their safety concerns.

Climate change is affecting a number of ecological parameters, including species ranges and migration, spread of invasive species, and length of growing season. These impacts are a threat to overall biodiversity and to that of ROWs. However, ROWs can play a role in ecological community resilience through adapted vegetation management practices. This presentation will include an overview of nature-based solutions to create climate resilient ROWs, including what adaption means for ROWs, the potential impacts, and practical implementation strategies for vegetation managers.

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Due to the unpredictable nature of severe weather events, emergency storm planning is a particularly challenging problem. The resulting damage to electric networks may prompt a multi-day restoration effort. Learn how National Grid is taking a much more data driven approach to preparing for and responding to such events by understanding expected impact on power distribution assets.

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OG&E is taking innovative approaches to promote habitat and sustainable vegetation management on their rights-of-way and other lands. Not all of the approaches began as “green efforts,” yet they are having positive, ancillary benefits on habitat and sustainable vegetation practices. A key element of this presentation will be how OG&E and partner vendors have unexpectedly become better positioned to advance stewardship despite focusing on other key issues during contract revisions that were seemingly unrelated.

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There are many potential causes of tree failure in a transmission ROW, ranging from individual tree health to regional conditions to weather events. When applied forces such as wind gusts or sustained wind events occur, even healthy trees are susceptible to uproot or overturn, potentially coming into contact with a transmission line. Formation’s high-resolution Weather Research & Forecasting (WRF) modeling framework quantifies characteristics of historical high wind events to identify trees within corridors that frequently experience high wind events or extreme events that are infrequent, but hazardous. This presentation will provide an overview of the wind modeling parameters, results of tree level analysis, and how the analysis results assist with prioritization of vegetation management activities along electric transmission corridors in high fire threat areas.

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A series of projects established IVM as the least-costly and most beneficial ROW vegetation management strategy from a longer-term perspective of sustainability. Learn about the findings that lead to this conclusion.

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Figures don't lie, but liars figure. How do you figure? Learn about the collection, interpretation and usage of outage history data and ComEd.

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Utility rights-of-way are essential parts of the terrestrial ecosystems that sustain humans and the life around us. An important component of productive ecosystems is a diverse and abundant community of pollinators. Much has been written about honeybees, but we have ignored thousands of species of native bee, moth and butterfly pollinators in our landscapes. UAA’s latest video “LifeLines,” will be premiered and Dr. Doug Tallamy will address these species’ important ecological roles and the plants required to support their populations. Q&A session will follow.

FirstEnergy has recently enhanced its vegetation management practices to provide better customer service by implementing forward thinking accounting practices to maximize operation maintenance and capital funds for vegetation management. An overview of the program, examples of field implementation and the approaches many benefits will be shared.

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This presentation will summarize the Endangered Species Act and tools to promote conservation of species of concern, such as pollinators, while also providing regulatory predictability for landowners. These tools include Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances, Safe Harbor Agreements, and Conference Reports. Specific examples will be provided.

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Vegetation managers are on the front lines of customer service, interacting often with customers and communities, but it’s not your only job. While tree distribution and planting programs can improve the image and performance of a utility, delivering those programs successfully may depend on internal and external partners—experts in marketing, funding, or event management. Find out how to engage these partners to help you implement a successful program—and make your life easier!

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With the green revolution continuing to gain momentum, energy companies and rights-of-way (ROW) managers are seeing the ecological and socio-economic value of their ROW. Traditional Integrated Vegetation Management has been helping energy companies to keep their ROWs in compliance; however, there is more that can be done to increase the benefits of the ROW for native plants, animals, and humans. The presentation will go over steps to be taken to develop, implement, and monitor a successful Integrated Habitat Management (IHM) program.

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Learn about Duke Energy’s Transmission Vegetation Management program which is implementing remote sensing, optimization, machine learning and other technologies to transform the program into a data-driven, condition-based program.

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Prescribed burning and intensive rotational grazing practices are attracting more attention recently as viable best practices for ROW vegetation management. The newly updated ANSI A300 Integrated Vegetation Management Standard Part 7 now includes prescribed burning as a best management practice, and a number of utilities have successfully implemented prescribed burns on their ROWs to enhance native prairie habitat. This presentation will cover lessons learned establishing native prairie landscapes through prescribed burning and utilizing grazing in areas where herbicides are limited or restricted, mowing practices are undesirable and hand clearing is too labor intensive.

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Learn about the background and motivation behind bringing LiDAR capture for UVM in house. Discussion points will include the principle technology innovations, joint collaboration needed to achieve the necessary solution, how the data was integrated within the FPL workflows, project successes and key learning points.

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An overview of plant and invertebrate analyses observed in integrated vegetation management (IVM) programs in rights-of-way (ROW’s) across North America. The data suggests that along with seasonality, native bee population dynamics varies with habitat quality, site characteristics and length of time following conversion to IVM as well as adjacent and off corridor land use. Butterfly population dynamics however, while also variable, was generally lower overall in ROW compared to other sites.

Effective safety training should be interactive, easily digestible, and presented in a way that directly relates to your team. This presentation will dissect the very real safety lessons found within several popular culture film scenes and provide a humorous slant to avoid complacency. This examination provides a safety training that is appealing to the audience and can engage even the most unenthusiastic worker’s mind about safety training.

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The Utility Vegetation Managers Summit held in May 2019 focused on the issue of workforce retention, the impact of utility actions, and ideas for improving recruitment and retention in the industry. This presentation will cover high level results from the UVM Summit vendor survey, key points discussed at the Vegetation Managers Summit, and UAA next steps.

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Join industry professionals for a collaborative conversation on contributing factors that influence the industry’s labor shortage and the solutions that can be implemented to mitigate them. Explore how internal structure, contract strategy and cultural engagement contribute towards workforce retention which delivers results to the utility.

Learn about the nuts and bolts of how Vegetation Management (VM) Programs are currently implemented and why they are failing to achieve desired result. This presentation will make the case for a different mindset to VM and areas that utilities should focus on to improve and professionalize their programs.

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Hear from industry leaders on how trees and forests can advance corporate goals for sustainability and social responsibility. Learn how key metrics and measures drive projects, including carbon offsets, employee engagement, and homeowner energy efficiency.

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ROW Vegetation as an Asset: Considerations for ESG Sustainability Indices Panel

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