Retiring Meter Reading with People Front and Centre: Workforce Transition for an AMI Rollout
When a regulated Alberta electric utility set out to replace more than 600,000 meters across three deployment phases, the operational complexity was only half the story. The other half was the people — employees whose roles were changing, processes were shifting, and who needed more than a memo to keep pace.
Tricon helped lead the internal change management and workforce transition effort, mapping new processes and equipping people to work differently from day one.
Client SnapshotA major Canadian electricity distribution utility is replacing existing customer meters with Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) meters and upgrading technology and network communications. In an increasingly complex and bidirectional grid, AMI is crucial to ensuring distribution services are reliable, safe and affordable for customers. The program deployed roughly 608,000 smart meters across a three-phase program through 2025, with remaining meters now exchanged through standard operations.
The technology change is large. The workforce change is harder: an entire job function — meter reading — has to be retired while keeping people front and center, protecting institutional knowledge, and preserving the trust built up over years. Where roles could not be redeployed, transitions were supported through attrition, internal moves, and structured packages.
ContextSmart metering improves customer service: improved outage reporting and response times, reduced need for property access to complete meter reading, reduced risk of meter tampering or electricity theft, and the data foundation for future energy programs and capabilities such as remote connects and disconnects. It also dissolves a long-standing role and reshapes the back-office Meter Data Management team that supports it.
With unionized employees, dozens of internal stakeholder groups, and an external customer base to keep informed, the utility treated workforce transition as a planning discipline of its own — built into the program from the start, not added at the end of each release.
The challengeFive pressures overlapped:
A multi-year, three-phase deployment, with timelines that shifted based on network performance and meter exchange progress.
A role being phased out in waves, alongside new roles standing up to take its place.
A back-office team being restructured mid-flight while still running day-to-day operations.
Communications spanning executives, front-line employees, retailers, vendors, and customers — each needing tailored messaging.
An operations team running two parallel processes throughout the rollout — one for meters already exchanged to AMI, and the legacy process for non-AMI meters still in the field.
Guiding PrinciplesFive guiding principles for the change shaped every decision — spanning the workforce, the operations team, and customer-facing communications:
Retain talent and keep critical knowledge inside the organization.
Build capability through upskilling and structured transition pathways.
Plan collaboratively across the business, aligned with collective agreements.
Communicate openly with customers and give them a clear opt-out option.
Operate continuously through the transition, without disruption to billing or service.
The ApproachThree workstreams ran in parallel, each reinforcing the others: internal change management, customer outreach, and process mapping.
Internal change management
Internal change covered three connected pieces: the workforce plan for affected employees, process implementation across the operations team, and an awareness campaign that kept the broader organization informed. Stakeholder groups were segmented by impact level — high, medium, and broader audiences — and matched to communication channels and cadences that fit how each group worked. A change readiness model tracked employees through five stages: awareness, understanding, acceptance, commitment, action. Surveys were timed to deployment milestones so leadership could see, in real time, whether the workforce was keeping pace with the technology.
Inside that workforce plan, manual meter reading wound down in waves tied to AMI deployment, with affected team members supported into other roles within the organization. Transitions began ahead of AMI deployment and continued as the program ramped up. Twelve job descriptions were rewritten across team lead, manager, and team member roles. The future-state operating model for the data management team was designed, with interim and end-state structures and four new positions created — AMI Operator, AMI Process Specialist, AMI Network & Communications Analyst, AMI Data Analyst — and existing employees offered structured pathways. Upskilling included apprenticeships, technical training, interview workshops, peer coaching, and vendor-led on-the-job training. Real options, not a notice period.
Customer outreach
Customer outreach started early and stayed steady: advance notification to customers ahead of each phase, awareness sessions for community associations, and a dedicated website with program information and frequently asked questions. The main customer safety concern was radio frequency from the new meters; the program addressed it directly through education, and an opt-out option gave customers who still preferred not to have an AMI meter as a clear alternative. The objective was simple — customers should know AMI was coming, know where to go for more information, and know they had a choice.
Process mapping
A capability map and process structure were built out for the impacted business areas. Process owners, priority processes, and the stakeholder groups each one touched were identified up front. Interim processes were designed for the rollout itself — bridging the gap while two operating models ran side by side — and future-state processes captured the new capabilities AMI made possible. The to-be state defined the scope of change for each impacted group and became the foundation for training materials and job design, so new roles matched the work people would actually be doing.
What Made This WorkThe most important outcomes are not new training catalogues or refreshed documents. They are about how people in the organization talk, listen, and decide.
A culture shift from blame to learning: Errors are treated as information about the system, not as character failures — reflected in a significant increase in near-miss and hazard reporting as psychological safety takes hold.
Increase in near-miss and hazard reporting: Psychological safety is established for reporting, enabling the organization to address systemic issues proactively - before a serious incident happens.
Increased employee engagement: Treating workers as partners in the solution and giving frontline crews the power to shape safety controls has boosted morale, demonstrated by significant increase in engagement scores.
Improved corrective actions (control improvements): The teams go beyond superficial fixes (ex. Re-train) to solutions that are feasible and practical.
Safer work, designed with the workers: The HRT program has produced concrete control improvements on the tasks most likely to cause harm, with frontline crews shaping the solutions.
OutcomesThe program is now operational, with roughly 485,000 meters exchanged and the remaining ~123,000 being completed through standard operations. A redesigned future-state team is in place.
Twelve job descriptions are aligned to future operations. Structured upskilling pathways are open to affected employees, and critical operational knowledge has stayed inside the organization. The to-be processes have been mapped and rolled out, and end users are trained on the new ways of working.
On the customer side, the broader base is aware of AMI, knows where to find program information, and has had the option to opt out of an AMI meter where they preferred.
RefelctionModernization is usually told as a technology story. This one was a workforce story too — sequenced, principled, and planned alongside the deployment rather than cleaned up after it. That is the part worth carrying into the next program.
Planning a workforce transition alongside a technology rollout?Reach out to Tricon Solutions to scope change management, workforce transition, or process mapping work for your next modernization program.
This is Project Victory. This is the Tricon way.
