Lidar and data acquisition firm purchases U.S. assets of Powel AS to fortify market leading position in utility vegetation management
HAMILTON, Ontario – Norway’s Powel AS earlier this month sold the assets of its U.S. subsidiary Powel, Inc., to digital mapping, imaging and data acquisition services firm GeoDigital International Inc., according to a press release. GeoDigital feels the deal strengthens the company’s position as “a leading provider of distributed infrastructure management solutions and expands its leading position in the fast growing utility vegetation management and Transmission Line Re-rating marketplace.”
GeoDigital, with offices across the U.S. and Canada, has acquired the mobile work management product line of Powel, Inc., including the WorkStudio application suite for managing utility field design, vegetation maintenance, outage recovery and mapping. All current Powel, Inc., employees, software assets, customers and facilities will form a new software and analytics division GeoDigital Solutions, Inc. The division will be responsible for software development and the integration of complementary technologies into turnkey enterprise solutions for utilities and other asset intensive industries including rail, oil and gas, transportation, and telecommunications.
“WorkStudio, with its market leading stakeout field design and vegetation management capabilities, represents the unifying system technology that our customers have been asking for,” said GeoDigital president and CEO Alastair N. Jenkins, in explaining the rationale for the acquisition as part of a prepared statement. “This acquisition brings us an unrivalled capability and portfolio to cost-effectively transform data collected from our leading edge services into actionable, money saving solutions for our customers. WorkStudio has been designed from the ground up for distributed linear asset environments and utility design and vegetation management functions, but we also see immense opportunity in other industries with heavy asset management and right-of-way maintenance needs.”
The combined organization will employ about 250 people across Canada and the U.S. GeoDigital Solutions will maintain all current facilities, including the St. Paul, Minn., headquarters of Powel. All existing sales and support structures will remain and GeoDigital Solutions will support all existing Powel, Inc., products, customers and long term support commitments.
“This combination is an optimal fit from technical and strategic standpoints,” said Powel, Inc., CEO, Scott Rogers, in a statement. Rogers will join the executive staff of GeoDigital International as senior vice president and head of the GeoDigital Solutions software and analytics division. “The combination provides customers an unmatched maintenance value by giving them greater situational awareness of their assets to increase reliability while minimizing risk. Current and future customers will be excited by the possibilities.”
