Vegetation management has traditionally been judged by effort: miles patrolled, trees trimmed, crews deployed. But effort alone doesn’t guarantee reliability, cost control, or long-term progress.
For the City of Westerville Electric Division, that realization sparked a fundamental rethink of how vegetation management should operate.
Faced with rising complexity, contractor constraints, and increasing expectations from leadership, the team needed a way to deliver better outcomes per dollar spent, not just more activity.
By adopting AI-powered, satellite-based vegetation intelligence, Westerville shifted from managing work volume to managing impact. Instead of asking “Are we keeping up?”, the team could ask better questions:
- Which work actually reduces future risk?
- Where does effort eliminate repeat visits?
- How do today’s decisions affect costs three or four years from now?
The result has been a vegetation management program that delivers fewer outages, materially lower unit costs, and significantly higher productivity, while improving confidence in planning, budgeting, and reporting.
Join us for a live masterclass to explore how Westerville restructured vegetation management into a high-performance operational program, and how utilities can apply the same principles to improve reliability, efficiency, and long-term financial control.
This session features Joe DeLong, Utility Forester at the City of Westerville, and Ryan Williams, Solution Engineer at LiveEO, and focuses on what changes when vegetation management decisions are driven by risk, outcomes, and long-term value.
Details
📅 Tuesday, February 10, 2026
🕙 09:00 AM EST
Who Should Attend
- Utility foresters and vegetation managers
- Grid operators and public works engineers
- TSO, DSO, and municipal utility leaders
- Field service and operations managers
- Infrastructure planners and technology strategists
What You’ll Learn
- How Westerville reduced tree-related outages by 55% and stabilized vegetation-related incidents at just 13% of total outages
- How they more than doubled pruning productivity through better prioritization, planning, and crew allocation
- How they cut unit costs for pruning and removals by ~20–25% with smarter workload distribution and operational efficiency
- How a strategic increase in removals lowered long-term maintenance costs and reduced repeat work
- How they shifted vegetation management toward risk reduction and future cost avoidance, not short-term annual cycles
- How a more structured program strengthened budget discussions, improved goal tracking, and increased leadership confidence
- A live demonstration of Treeline by LiveEO, showing how satellite intelligence supports smarter operational decisions
Meet the speakers
- Joe DeLong, Utility Forester, City of Westerville Electric Division
Joe DeLong is a seasoned professional in the field of vegetation management. As an ISA Certified Arborist and ISA Utility Specialist, Joe has dedicated over a decade to the industry, beginning his journey in 2010. His career trajectory has seen him evolve from a grounds person to a skilled tree climber. Joe is currently serving as a Utility Forester for the City of Westerville Electric Division, Joe manages a team of Utility Arborists and oversees vegetation contractors. - Ryan Williams, Solution Engineer, LiveEO
Ryan Taylor Williams is a Solutions Engineer at LiveEO with more than a decade of experience in remote sensing and geospatial strategy. His career spans roles at NASA, the USDA, Planet Labs, and National Geographic. Today, he helps clients bridge the gap between satellite analytics and real-world operations, turning advanced geospatial insights into measurable cost savings and operational value.
Why Join This Session
Utilities are under increasing pressure to deliver stronger reliability outcomes with tighter operational and financial constraints. Vegetation management programs that focus only on activity levels struggle to keep pace.
This session shows how a shift toward outcome-driven, risk-prioritized vegetation management can unlock:
- Sustained reliability improvements
- Higher productivity from existing crews and contractors
- Lower cost per unit of work
- Stronger long-term cost control
- Clearer accountability and program governance
Register Now
Join this session to learn how vegetation management can move beyond keeping up, and start delivering compounding operational and financial value. Register today:
