Working for You

Keeping you up to date on what’s
happening in your neighborhood

Nebraskans who notice an OPPD project in their neighborhood have a new, easy-to-use online resource to learn more about what’s happening.

The new Projects in your Neighborhood webpage offers a clickable, searchable map of work throughout OPPD’s service territory.

OPPD created the page to provide one centralized location for projects, said Laura Giboo, GIS business analyst. Before, project information was scattered throughout different areas of OPPD’s website and could be challenging to find if you didn’t know where to look.

“We wanted to find a way to make the data a little more easily available to customers,” Giboo said. “We just started running with it and building.”

The map includes a search bar where visitors can type an address to see nearby work.

Or they can scroll around on the map itself. Click on a colored line or shaded area, and a window opens with details including a project’s location, start date, timeline, progress made, contractors that are involved, and a link to even more information.

Each color represents a specific type of work: Dark green for vegetation and tree trimming. Dark orange for underground cable replacement. Purple for power quality improvement projects. Visitors can click the layers button in the upper right corner to see a map legend.

“This is a great way to consolidate a lot of the projects happening at OPPD into one place,” said Sarah Lake, OPPD’s outreach coordinator. “We want it to be a source of truth that our customers will go to if they want to know what’s happening in their neighborhood.”

Timely and transparent

The map is useful for OPPD employees as well, said Lisa Bowen, the utility’s customer care coordinator. In OPPD’s customer contact center, for instance, workers regularly get questions about local projects and have to find information quickly. The map can help.

“This tool allows us to put better, more robust and timely information out there,” Bowen said. “It’s just part of being transparent and letting people know what we’re working on. There’s definitely a lot going on and lot to keep track of.”

The new map provides information in a cleaner and clearer format, said Lindsey Liekhus, OPPD’s digital media strategist, who maintains and oversees the utility’s website. Previously, OPPD shared project information on PDFs spread over multiple webpages.

Uploading project information is now easier for OPPD employees. The map ensures that all the information is presented in a uniform style, in one place.

“It’s way less time consuming and more interactive,” Liekhus said. “All the information is right there, and it’s just a much better experience for the customer.”

The map is an ongoing project, she said. Other improvements may come, and the team that brought it to life is exploring new potential uses.

Easy access to a variety of information

Right now, the map focuses primarily on medium- and longer-term projects rather than smaller, short-term work, Liekhus said. Most of the listed projects are at least three-month commitments.

The map comes as OPPD sees unprecedented growth in demand for electricity and larger planning-reserve margin requirements from the Southwest Power Pool to ensure reliable power throughout the region. That requires new generation, transmission and distribution lines and other infrastructure. Clearing vegetation is critical as well to help minimize future storm outages.

Lake said the Projects in your Neighborhood map will connect users to other information including OPPDCommunityConnect, which highlights major projects under way, and The Wire, OPPD’s news website.

“Most people just want to know what’s happening in their backyard,” she said. “We want to make that easier for them.”

The new page also supplements OPPD’s ongoing public communication efforts, which include OPPD’s main website, social media, public events, news releases, ads, The Wire and Outlets, the utility’s customer-bill newsletter.

OPPD regularly uses letters and door hangers to notify residents about upcoming neighborhood projects that could affect them. Now, those documents include a QR code that leads to the new map.

“If we get a bunch of calls about a certain project, we can go out there and add a note about what’s happening or what people can expect,” Bowen said. “It allows us that flexibility to do real-time updates about specific projects.”