Case Study: Owen Electric Cooperative achieves faster pole inspections and 98% less setup time with Fulcrum

Accelerating pole inspection workflows with Fulcrum

Owen Electric Cooperative, which manages about 70,000 utility poles in northern Kentucky, was overwhelmed by a surge in pole attachment requests driven by broadband expansion. Its manual, inconsistent inspection process relied on paper, spreadsheets, and multiple apps, making it hard to keep up with federal 30–45 day timelines and forcing engineers to spend too much time on setup and clerical work. Fulcrum helped Owen Electric replace that fragmented workflow with a single, customizable mobile inspection app.

With Fulcrum, Owen Electric standardized field inspections, used interactive maps and streamlined forms, and cut setup time by 98% from 10–12 hours to 10–15 minutes. Per-pole inspection time dropped 75% from about three minutes to 30–45 seconds, and total job cycle time fell from up to a month to less than a week, with some fieldwork completed in about four hours. Fulcrum also enabled a 10–17x increase in inspection throughput without adding staff and significantly reduced back-office burden.

Owen Electric Cooperative

Greg Humphries

Engineering Project Supervisor