Regulating Quality Assurance and Metering Standards for a Major Canadian Electric Utility
A regulated distribution utility had built its quality program on paper — inspection forms, compliance records, and technical standards that lived in binders and inboxes. It worked, until it didn’t.
Starting in 2024, Tricon brought project management, change management, and hands-on application development together to digitize the entire operation: moving compliance tracking into Microsoft Power Apps, automating workflows through PowerAutomate, and surfacing performance data in Power BI — while simultaneously modernizing the standards that developers and electricians rely on every day.
client SnapshotThe organization is a regulated electric distribution utility responsible for delivering and metering electricity across a major Canadian metropolitan service area, operating under national metrology standards and the country’s electrical code.
Its Quality Assurance and Metering Standards team holds two parallel mandates: keeping internal operations audit-ready and maintaining the technical rulebook external developers and electricians follow when energizing sites.
The challengeTwo pressures converged on the same team:
Internally, the Quality Program ran on paper records and disconnected spreadsheets. Audit prep was slow. Traceability was inconsistent. Quality-health visibility was reactive at best.
Externally, the metering standard governing third-party connections had not kept pace — not with modern installations, and not with the surge in distributed energy resources: rooftop solar, battery storage, EV infrastructure.
Both had to be modernized. Neither could disrupt operations or compliance.
The ApproachTwo streams of work. One leadership team. One principle: rewrite the foundation before — and alongside — any new tooling.
System Manual first, then digitization. Internal modernization and technical manual and processes, paired with an external standard refresh.
The SolutionsDigitizing the Quality Program
Rewrote the Quality System Manual with simpler language, sharper audit alignment, and clearer accountabilities; updates to the Quality Technical Manual are ongoing as automation and process improvements are implemented.
Building five Power Apps to replace paper capture across test board verification, minor and major non-conformance reporting, training records and assessments, and meter seal management.
Built Power BI dashboards to centralize automated testing data, providing real-time visibility into what’s due, what’s out of compliance, and where risk is trending.
Integrated with the enterprise asset management system so data flows once and reaches every report — including engineer approval workflows.
Modernizing the Metering Standard
Restructured the standard around how the work actually gets done: general information, distributed energy resources, service types, utility metering.
Aligned definitions and terminology with the national electric code and current industry practice.
Added a dedicated distributed energy resources section, with updated approval workflows, signage, and isolation requirements.
Strengthened safety and access requirements: standardized meter heights, ladder access, expanded clearance specifications.
Added pre-energization readiness guides and visual checklists for field use.
Ran change management across internal teams and external developers and electricians.
The OutcomesAudit evidence retrievable in minutes, not days.
Real-time visibility into compliance health, replacing reactive reporting cycles.
Less reliance on individual knowledge and manual workarounds.
A modernized public-facing standard that makes requirements easier for developers and electricians to interpret and apply correctly the first time, reducing rework and improving the overall customer experience.
Stronger readiness for distributed energy resources.
ReflectionUtilities across Canada face the same dual pressure: tighter audit expectations on one side, accelerating grid modernization on the other.
The pattern that worked here — foundation documents and digital tooling built as one program, internal teams and external partners moving in step.
FAcing the same dual pressure?Reach out to Tricon Solutions to scope a quality program digitization, standards modernization, or combined program for your utility.
This is Project Victory. This is the Tricon way.
