A Healthy Joint Use Blueprint Part 1: Conquering Regulations, Rules, Rentals, and Records

Because we tend to trust the things we can see and understand, a lack of transparency tends to breed suspicion, or at the very least frustration. Finding a workflow and software that helps you increase visibility while decreasing the friction for your team improves the quality of life for your staff, cultivates trust with clients, and lays the groundwork for a better industry. 

We’ve seen this in practice as teams use Katapult Pro Workflow Management to manage a variety of projects, including joint use. Pole owners have eight major concerns, and third-party attachments are just one piece of the joint use puzzle. 

Here are four of the eight ways Katapult Pro can help your team address pole owners’ top priorities to build a healthy, thriving joint use program. 

Regulations

The FCC and PUC govern the pole attachment process for utilities, making sure that new attachments are built within a required timeline so communities have access to high-speed internet and services. Part of running a healthy, compliant program demands data on project lifecycles and compliance with governing standards. 

Compliance and reporting dashboards within Katapult Pro automatically track project timelines, status changes, and updates. Using those dashboards, you can compare their programs to the national standards for third-party attachments. 

Codes, Specs, and Standards

You can’t talk about pole attachments without talking about the NESC and pole owners’ safety standards. These, combined with state and municipal requirements, provide a critical framework for safe broadband deployment based on the geographical and regional demands of the area. 

Communicating these standards can be a pain, but without good communication, utilities find themselves sorting through incomplete applications and missing data. When applications get rejected over and over, it creates tension with attachers and adds to the burden that standards department faces. 

By importing and managing standards within Katapult Pro, pole owners can automatically require fields and data in applications, vet applications for completeness, and standardize the application process. Automatic QA/QC reduces the demand on teams without lowering the standard for safety. 

Pole Attachment License Agreements

All attachments require some form of legal agreement with specified rates, auditing standards, terms, liability, and more. Because of the variety of contracts and rental agreements, it’s hard to manage those legal documents and incredibly painful to make changes, since every agreement needs to be revised.

We don’t have a solution to the pain of change management (yet), but pole owners can store, reference, and manage their agreements within Katapult Pro. Admins can upload the agreements using the model editor and keep track of all those contracts in one location.

Upload and manage agreements within the admin section.

Rental Billing

Part of those contracts outlines the rental agreement and rates between pole owners and their attachers. Typically, this is a per-pole fee with invoicing cycles, and it relies upon good record keeping and regular attachment audits to make sure records are accurate. 

Katapult Pro helps to maintain rental billing records from the administrative side and the data side. 

Administrative Maintenance

Admins can manage their billing and rental rates for each attacher from inside Katapult Pro. Attachers receive automatic invoices for payment based on those rental agreements and the controls admins set. 

Data Upkeep

Attachment audits require a little data on a lot of assets to answer questions about who’s attached where. Oftentimes, height measurements aren’t necessary for an attachment audit; teams just need to capture each pole and attacher within the area being audited. 

Using photo data collection, teams can gather data on hundreds of assets each day by foot (or a few thousand by car if just focused on aerial networks). 

Then, using photo annotations, the back office crew can trace attachments to build an accurate, up-to-date record of each attacher. This kind of verified data gives teams confidence in attachment agreements and helps smooth out some of the kinks within the rental billing process.

The administrative, regulatory side of joint use doesn’t get the attention that the make ready process or double wood does (and we’ll dig into that more in our next Up to Speed issue). But compliance and record-keeping are of huge concern for pole owners, even if they’re not in the public eye. 

Pole attachments are just part of the grid, and they don’t occur in a vacuum. We’re seeing microgrids, EVs, DERs, reclosers, etc grow in commonality. Getting data we can trust and maintaining accurate information continues to grow in importance for pole owners, not just for national compliance and the permitting process but for grid reliability and maintenance for years to come. 

In our next Up to Speed, we’ll dig into the final four concerns and how Katapult Pro can help you support pole owners across their entire joint use department. Thanks for reading! 

You have the ability to build a healthy, thriving program for pole owners across the country. Leverage tools that reduce pain for your team and increase value for your clients. Get started today.