Executive Summary

We recently published our Getting to Net Zero report that highlights the leading contribution the north of Scotland is set to make in delivering the energy transition, which would see our transmission network providing over 15% of the UK’s total carbon reduction required to deliver 2050 net-zero targets.

We are committed to SSEN Transmission’s ambitious ‘Pathway to 2030’ programme, which is being taken forward under Ofgem’s Accelerated Strategic Transmission Investment (ASTI) framework. This involves investing over £20bn to deliver an electricity grid that unlocks Scotland’s potential to be a clean energy powerhouse.  The investment programme consists of new overhead lines, substations, convertor stations and subsea links and is part of a major upgrade of the electricity transmission system across Great Britain. These works are required to meet UK and Scottish Government energy security and climate change targets.

In line with Ofgem’s Future Systems and Network Regulation (FSNR), we are committed to digitalisation that enables transformational system-wide benefits, addresses demand growth, decarbonisation and improves resilience. We are focusing on making it easier for our colleagues, customers and stakeholders to access, request, analyse and gather insights from our data. The Products and Services we are working on during the next quarter will improve interoperability, standards and enhance our data ecosystem, as well as delivering optimal system planning, maintenance and asset health, and enhanced customer experience and value.

We are continuing our journey to become a digitally data driven business, investing in Products and Services that enable:
• Interoperability, data sharing and analytical tools to help us to plan, mobilise and deliver value for our Transmission network, our customers and stakeholders 
• Access to information to improve visibility, transparency, stakeholder engagement and knowledge sharing.
• Delivering faster connection times for customers, thereby increasing customer and stakeholder satisfaction.
• Enhanced data management and data quality, for robust asset management, operational maintenance, reporting and collaboration.
• Making us a great place to work, where colleagues can access and use modern tools, processes and technology  that drive efficiency and performance.

Development and use of a data sharing infrastructure will enable our colleagues, customers and stakeholders to have access to the right information, at the right time, for the right purpose, and of the right quality. Alongside continued development of Data Best Practice Guidance and further data-related legislation, regulation, and codes,  this allows for a transition towards a coherent data sharing ecosystem aligned to Ofgem’s Future Systems and Network Regulation.

Being a digitally data driven business will help us achieve enhanced capabilities, optimised network performance and ultimately greater network capacity to achieve our ‘Pathway to 2030’ aims

The vision behind our products and services

We continue to deliver our Vision, improving our Products and Services to achieve our growth objectives. Our actions prioritise providing value to our customers and stakeholders, by digitally enhancing our data capability, analysis and insight.

What we have achieved in the last six months

Customer and Stakeholder

• Our Stakeholder Management Tool, Tractivity, was implemented at the end of June to improve stakeholder engagement. Rollout on training is nearing completion.
• As part of SSEN Transmission’s ambitious ‘Pathway to 2030’ programme, ASTI projects remains a priority and we are working with our 3rd party provider to create micro-websites for ASTI projects to meet this demand.
• We have continued to capture key requirements and deliver new functionality within our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) pilot, to support customers during the connections process and post-connection.
• We have also integrated a new Open Data Portal (ODP) with our SSEN Transmission website (see Enabling IT p7)

Capital Delivery 

• Our Integrated Project Management (IPM) platform of Oracle Unifier has now been selected and procured together with our Azure Integration platform, our system integrator is onboarded, our Discovery phase has been completed, our 12-month delivery plan has been created with the team now fully mobilised and in development mode using the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) delivery methodology.
• Building Information Modelling (BIM) Stage 2 enablement has been achieved; new processes, standards and templates have been created, our Common Data Environment (CDE) has been implemented and is in use, and pilots are now actively using the BIM framework.
• Discovery on our Consents and Environmental project has now been completed with an agreed scope and the first phase of development has begun.

Network Planning

• Solution Architecture has been identified to deliver early value that complements our strategic roadmap. Three products have been agreed to deliver this - Power Systems Computer Aided Design (PSCAD), Power Quality Monitoring System (PQMS) and Power Factory.
• We have successfully ingested data to Power Factory and provided a Demo of the solution to Senior Stakeholders.
• Our team is now upskilled and working in an Agile manner: using daily stand ups, retrospectives and using Azure DevOps for Agile backlogs and sprint planning. This is providing exceptionally useful and has accelerated the programme.

Asset Management & Operations (IT)

• We have completed the delivery of a Geospatial Systems Development Environment allowing future enhancements and upgrades that proceed at pace following standard application and data promotion principles and de-risk the production environment.
• The mobility project has entered the build phase with the Fingertip application (Maximo for mobile phones) being deployed in the cloud and directly integrated with our Maximo environment in readiness for Total Work Management.
• Our Condition Based Risk Monitoring tool has been enhanced to deploy Invest, a powerful web-based tool for asset management and investment decision support.
• Our Total Work Management project has entered the build phase with a schedule and financial plan driving core delivery and subsequent continuous improvement through to the end of T2 and beyond.

Asset Management & Operations (OT)

• We have successfully completed our PI (operational data historian) separation project from the legacy shared SSE Networks PI system with no user issues.
• Building on the PI system separation, we have initiated work on Smart Monitoring. This project configures standard PI to provide an intuitive asset hierarchy relative to other asset systems as well as summary and detailed PI asset data screens. This work supports embedding Business initiatives with Integrated Condition and Performance Monitoring, and wider Transmission functions.
• We previously completed complex filtering of alarms in the PowerOn system and have been creating a revised full Network model and installing a state-of-the-art multi-input Video Wall within the existing Control Room. This work will further improve situational awareness and deliver enhanced capability for our new Control Centre Disaster Recovery site in Inverness in line with our Control Room Strategy.

Enabling IT 

Open Data Portal - launched 23 November 2023

• Our Data Management team, with support from our Data Owners and Data Stewards, have identified our commonly requested datasets, and ensured they have been through a rigorous triage to be made available on the portal. Alongside this, supporting pages and contact points facilitate additional dataset requests and encourage feedback on the data already published. This feedback enables future common data sets to be made available in future.
• Making our data available to our customers and stakeholders aligns us to Ofgem Data Best Practice Principles. Making our data readily accessible to academics and innovators also makes it easier for them to innovate and encourages competition. The ultimate result is the creation of flexible and optimised solutions to solve the complex challenges for decarbonising energy - further demonstrating our commitment to our Net Zero goals and to our customers and stakeholders.
• Stakeholders will have access to a wider range of licensed and open energy datasets shared via the Energy Data Catalogue, an auto-registration portal, and the Data Sharing Fabric. This enables them to use our data to identify opportunities to generate innovative and commercial data-driven products and services which could accelerate digitalisation of the energy system. This will also support the SSEN Transmission strategic contribution for our net zero commitment, hasten the journey to net zero and maximise stakeholder and consumer benefits.
• An open data portal enables SSEN Transmission to harness collective intelligence. Researchers and data analysts outside the organisation can analyse the data and provide valuable insights. This diverse perspective can inform the energy business’s decision-making processes and lead to more informed strategies.
• Open data encourages collaboration with external organisations, research institutions, and startups. Through data sharing, the energy business can establish partnerships that lead to joint research projects, innovative solutions, and mutually beneficial collaborations.
• Access to comprehensive data facilitates strategic planning. SSEN Transmission can analyse historical data, market trends, and other relevant factors to make long-term strategic decisions.
• This strategic insight helps SSEN Transmission adapt to market changes and stay ahead of competitors.
• SSEN Transmission are able to track and manage data in accordance with legal and industry-specific regulations. Being able to quickly locate relevant data is essential for responding to legal requests and ensuring data security, thereby mitigating risks associated with non-compliance.

Master Data Management

• We have mobilised a specialist project team to support the implementation of Data Catalogue and Data Quality Management tools for our Master Data Management project.
• A review of our detailed Asset Master Data Business Process Documents has commenced, and Key Data Elements identified across the business.

Integrated Data Platform

A successful proof of concept, including the future architectural design was completed on the new Microsoft Fabric Data Platform, meaning we will be building our future data platform on the latest technology. Fabric has now been formally launched and is fully supported. The team have been working with the business to gain access to our asset source systems to enable our newly onboarded data engineering team to identify and start to build a pipeline of data ingestion.

Interoperability

SSEN Transmission continues to actively work with industry peers and through the Energy Networks Association Data and Digitalisation Steering Group on common initiatives to develop and enable interoperability. We are engaged on the ENA Data and Digitalisation Steering Group Standards and Interoperability Subgroup.  The Standards and Interoperability workstream targets the consistent fulfilment of the above DBP Guidance requirements in relation to the development and implementation of consistent energy system data related standards.

Aspects of standardisation included within the scope of this work include data semantics (terminology and meaning), ontologies (structures and relationships), metadata and exchange mechanisms. Interoperability of the energy system is heavily predicated on the application of standardised data related services and practices across sector participants to enable timely, efficient and effective data exchange, integration and utilisation between both humans and machines.

We are engaged on the overarching Interoperability and Standards Sub-Group, The Common Information Model (CIM) Grid Code modification GC0139 working group to support the Common Information Model data exchange for the Grid Code modification GC0139, the Open Data Working Group and The DNO Data Self Help Group. All of these groups are working together in a co-ordinated manner to reduce obstacles relating to the discovery, interpretation and use of energy system data.

Within our digital programme we are investigating the implementation of CIM for specific internal data exchange requirements initially focussed on Network Planning use cases.

The Products and Services that we will be working on

We are investing in digitalisation, interoperability and data sharing to deliver a fit for purpose suite of applications that supports end-to-end business processes. This enables the business to deliver its strategic goal to grow our network, with ASTI projects being a priority. We are focusing on making it easier for our colleagues, customers and stakeholders to access, request, analyse and gather insights from our data. The Products and Services we are working on during the next quarter will improve collaboration, standards and enhance our data ecosystem so we can deliver optimal system planning, maintenance and asset health, and thereby enhance our customer and stakeholder experience.

The plan below sets out key milestones delivered this year and forecast for FY23-24/24-25.

Delivering for stakeholders and wider society

Improving our stakeholder engagement practices with Tractivity

This summer, we successfully launched a new SSEN Transmission-specific instance of Tractivity, our strategic stakeholder management tool. This powerful tool enables our people to securely record, process, store and access GDPR-compliant stakeholder information. The new system provides enhancements that support our leading stakeholder engagement practices. We’ve provided specific training to our teams to support them in utilising and navigating the new system and our roll-out activities continue as our employee base and engagement activities grow. Recognising that different teams will often engage with the same stakeholders, Tractivity helps us coordinate our engagement, preventing stakeholder fatigue.

Upgraded project web page layouts for Accelerated Strategic Transmission Investment (ASTI) projects

In readiness for our next round of public consultations related to the projects that comprise the Accelerated Strategic Transmission Investment (ASTI) framework, we are making significant improvements to our website. Utilising feedback and insights from our stakeholders as well as our internal teams, we’ve detailed around 40 technical improvements that we are now progressing. We’ve prepared visual mock-ups that address our requirements and are now working through the technical detail. These enhancements target the visual layout of infrastructure project information, navigation, aesthetic changes to our interactive map so that potential development routes/locations can be better understood, and back-end data processing improvements, among others.

Our digital team is collaborating with our Community Engagement, Corporate Affairs and Stakeholder Engagement teams to deliver these improvements to ensure stakeholders’ needs are fully met while also taking into account that lots of new stakeholders will be engaging with SSEN Transmission for the very first time. Our new ASTI project web pages should lead to better informed stakeholders, greater accessibility, and increased stakeholder participation in the development and delivery of our projects. The content of our ASTI project web pages will also be refreshed to coincide with this technical work, ready for delivery in early 2024.

Leveraging cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology to help analyse stakeholder feedback

We’re focused on delivering positively for communities in the north of Scotland that will host critical national infrastructure required to provide energy security and enable net zero.

To do that well and at a larger scale, we’ve been developing a new secure artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can analyse stakeholder feedback received through our public consultations and correspondence about our proposals sent to our Community Engagement teams. We’ve been developing this initial ‘proof-of-concept’ to test whether AI can accurately categorise and interpret stakeholder feedback so that we can more efficiently identify and understand stakeholders’ concerns or topics/locations of interest that may require extra focus.

Some examples could include using AI to help us pin-point which specific sections of a proposed new powerline members of the public need more information on or whether there are specific wildlife or environmental concerns for consideration. Our new tool will allow us to deliver quicker analysis and allowing us to take action promptly. Whilst we’re leveraging cutting-edge AI technology to analyse stakeholder feedback, we’re proceeding cautiously given the newness of this technology, ensuring a gradual integration that complements and enhances the efforts of our dedicated teams. This approach allows us to combine the strengths of AI-driven insights with the invaluable expertise and human intelligence of our people. We’d like to reassure stakeholders that all data processed by our new AI tool will be kept within SSEN Transmission.

Delivering for customers

Delivering an enhanced digital experience through our new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system

We are pleased to share that the project to deliver our new pilot CRM system and customerfacing portal successfully progressed from Discovery into Delivery. Over the past few months, we’ve worked relentlessly to deliver 4 projects ‘sprints’ (focused bursts of effort to accomplish a set of tasks) that deliver valuable system functionality to our internal teams and customers. So far, we have focused our efforts on: digitalising the Connection Offer process within the CRM to streamline the management of Applications and Offers; integrating Outlook with the CRM so that our teams have better visibility of communications with customers; setting up new and existing customer data points so that we have more useful information in one place; building internal and external storage capabilities so that customer documents can be accessed by customers and by our teams; and creating new workflows to seamlessly allocate tasks to our people so that customer requests can be progressed and managed efficiently.

Collectively, these new system features will support us in providing a high level of service to customers, improve our responsiveness and provide customers with a dedicated online account management space for the very first time. To ensure our new portal meets the needs of our customers, we will work closely with them in early 2024 to capture their feedback from a user experience perspective. At the same, we’ve continued to collaborate with National Grid Electricity System Operator (NGESO) to progress our joint ambition to integrate both companies’ systems and held our first technical workshop together. We’ve agreed-in-principle to prioritise the importation of Scheme Briefing Note (SBN) data and automate the sharing of competency check and Offer acceptance data, to begin with.

Our technical integrations will progress following successful conclusion of our CRM system pilot. Meanwhile, we are collaborating with our wider digital teams to scope integrating our new CRM system with our new IPM and PowerFactory systems so that information is consistent across our business and to provide improved project updates and data to customers.

Helping customers understand our digital products and keeping them informed

LinkedIn is our most popular social media channel and where we see excellent engagement with our customers. We provide useful progress updates there, in direct customer and stakeholder communications, and on our website. Our recent video highlights improvements made to online journeys and where to find them, the commencement of our CRM project and our collaboration with NGESO. In November, we publicly launched our new Open Data Portal (ODP). We produced product launch communications and social media content to help inform customers and stakeholders of our new ODP, its benefits and how to access it. In only 2 clicks, users can access the ODP from our home page, via Contact Us, or using our website Search. We will continue to produce engaging content like this to keep our customers informed of new digital products as they evolve and as they become available for the first time.

Making further improvements to our online Pre-Application journey

We’ve continued to receive positive feedback from customers via the Quality of Connections Survey in relation to our online pre-application call request journey. Recent feedback suggested that customers would like to receive an automatic confirmation email from us when requesting a pre-application call. This has now been developed and went live in November. This improvement instils confidence in customers that we have received their request and also provides a re-cap of the specific information they have provided in their request. Social media promotion of our latest website improvements is scheduled for December.

Accessing this document and other information

We understand the value of involving diverse groups of people in our work and the importance of being accessible and easy to deal with. As a stakeholder-led organisation that works to Account Ability’s AA1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard, SSEN Transmission is committed to continuously improving its stakeholder engagement practice and processes to make sure we are inclusive and accessible throughout your engagement with us. If you would like a printed copy of this document or require it in an adapted format, such as large print, please get in touch so that we can accommodate your preferences.

Every visitor to our website deserves a first-rate digital experience. People with access needs due to disabilities/impairments must be able to experience web-based services, content, and other digital products with the same successful outcome as those without. We offer the Recite Me assistive toolbar to help provide an accessible website which enables our stakeholders, customers and colleagues to customise their digital experience to suit their own specific needs.

When you visit our website, you can use a variety of support tools within the Recite Me toolbar to read and understand content in a way that works for you. Features include customisable styling features, multiple reading aids, and a translation tool with over 100 languages including 65 text-to-speech. Our website users can launch the Recite Me assistive toolbar by clicking the yellow treble-A icon on our website. We’re proud to support Global Accessibility Awareness Day in May, where we promote the availability of Recite Me to our customers and stakeholders.

Supporting our stakeholders through digital enablement

Most of our stakeholder engagement is carried out in-person and we make use of booklets, posters, post cards and banners to share information about our work, as well as utilising traditional media. As part of our ongoing commitment to support communities, we recently met with an established Scotland-based not-for-profit organisation that works on projects to support third sector organisations with digital. We’re currently exploring a possible partnership with them to provide benefits to communities and the third sector. We’ll provide an update on this initiative in early 2024.

Requesting information

If you are unable to access our website or reach us via email and require information about our Products and Services, please call our External Relations Team on 0345 0760 530 or write to:
SSEN Transmission | Grampian House | 200 Dunkeld Road | Perth | PH1 3G

This SSENT Digital Action Plan (December 2023) represents a full view of planned, ongoing and completed initiatives. There have been no projects deprioritised nor discontinued in the period. For detail on previous achievements under our Digital Action Plan initiatives, please refer to the previous iterations of this plan which are archived on our website. These are also available by post upon request.