Work order backlog management that shows the date the backlog clears, and every compliance deadline at risk before it is missed
Know the date the backlog clears, and what moves it, before a deadline is missed.
See one case, screen by screen ↓A region's open work is a mix: condemned poles that must be replaced inside a licence deadline, priority defects from line patrols, substation and pump-station maintenance, new connections with a date promised in the customer's offer, valve exercising, hydrant work, main repairs and reinstatements. In the work management system it is thousands of rows, each with a status code that rarely says what the job is really waiting for — a pole on a late purchase order, an outage window nobody requested, a road-opening permit, a design pack.
So the backlog is counted, not sized. Managers know how many jobs they have, not how many crew-weeks they hold or when they will be done. Ready and blocked work sit in one list, schedulers send crews to jobs that turn out to be waiting for materials, and a compliance programme is found to be behind at month end, when it is too late to add a crew. A storm takes weeks of capacity, and the recovery date is the question nobody can answer without a planner building a spreadsheet.
Estimated split of one week's backlog review for a region, in hours, by hand and with the solution.
Six agents size, check, date and forecast every open job each night; the manager tries the levers and the operations director approves.
Lumina Utilities' Northern Region runs electricity and water work from three depots — Kestrel, Ashby Marsh and Calder Fold — with 14 crews. On Tuesday Oct 13, 2026, it has 1,940 open work orders. Here is what happens next, screen by screen, in the working solution.
Rhea owns the region's open work. Her backlog is 8,640 labour hours — 8.3 crew-weeks against a target of 6.0. Thirteen work types are drawn as tiles sized by hours and coloured by median age; Pole replacements is the biggest red tile, 1,420 h in 58 jobs, median 141 days, 23 at risk. Below it the burn-down shows 12 weeks of history, the Aug 21 storm and the forecast at current capacity.
Backlog back to target: Mon Mar 1, 2027 — at 1,040 h a week of planned work, 20 weeks, backlog falls 120 h a week
The Backlog sizer read 1,940 open work orders and sized them at 8,640 labour hours in 13 work types. The Readiness checker checked six prerequisites per job: 3,180 h ready, 4,020 h blocked — each with its PO line, permit or calendar entry — and 1,440 h in planning. The Due-date watcher applied 13 deadline rules: 90 jobs past their date, 31 compliance jobs at risk before Dec 31.
“412 had no estimate: hours filled from 3 years of completed jobs, marked as estimates”
Opening the tile shows the work type's age profile, its readiness — 380 h ready, 820 h blocked, 220 h in planning — and its deadline rule: a condemned pole replaced within 180 days of the inspection, licence condition 14. The jobs table lists the 23 condemned poles due by Dec 31 first. Two on Holloway Road have 12 days left and are ready; two on Fenwick Lane are blocked on an outage window.
“Compliance work: it can never be deferred in a scenario.”
Replace condemned pole P-18832, Fenwick Lane, feeder AM-07 section 3 — 26 h, estimated from 41 similar replacements. Inspection INS-26-11873 found 38% section loss at ground line. Four prerequisites are proven, each with its record: the inspection, design pack DP-NR-7731, the pole reserved at Kestrel depot bay 4 and traffic plan TMP-2291. The outage window was never requested; 214 customers are on that section, 3 of them on the priority services list.
“20 days left · 160 of 180 days used” — request the outage window by Fri Oct 16 to get a window before Nov 2
The Blocker chaser has already drafted the request to Felix Arendt, the Network Control outage planner: six condemned poles on feeders AM-07, AM-11 and KS-05, with each pole's licence date, Fenwick Lane first on Fri Oct 30, 09:00–13:00 for Overhead line crew 2. The note says the poles, traffic plans and job packs are in place. Rhea edits it and presses send herself.
“Releases 14 jobs · 486 h · 6 compliance jobs”
Eight blockers, each with a named owner. Blocked hours by cause: materials 1,610 h, permits and outages 1,140 h, design 690 h, customer access 580 h. Second on the list is PO 4500-77120 — Ridgeback Timber Poles moved the delivery of 24 poles from Oct 14 to Oct 28, and nine condemned poles and 12 line defects wait for it. Imani Okoro in stores gets a drafted follow-up: ask Ridgeback for a part delivery of 9 poles by Oct 21.
“Resolving a blocker moves its hours to ready; the date, risk and map update.”
Licence, permit and customer dates for the next 12 weeks, against what the crews can reach: 23 condemned poles, 6 priority B line defects and 2 reservoir inspections at risk. The first deadlines are Holloway Road, Oct 25 — ready, but no crew time before then. Valve exercising already has 38 jobs past their date, customer connections 11.
“Week of Dec 21 is light: the depots work a Christmas roster.”
Rhea switches on a 7-person line crew from Harrow & Vale Line Services, 336 h a week at $118 an hour, from Oct 19. The backlog now falls 456 h a week and reaches target on Mon Nov 23, 2026 — 14 weeks earlier — for $198,240. Compliance jobs at risk fall from 31 to 6, and ready work stays at 3.1 crew-weeks, inside the 2–4 week band.
“Spend over $150K needs the Director of Operations.”
The scenarios compare the date, the cost and the compliance risk: A, current capacity, Mar 1, 2027; B, the contractor crew, Nov 23, $198,240; C, deferring 640 h of low-risk work to Q1, Jan 25, 2027 at no cost but 29 jobs still at risk; D, both, Nov 16 for $158,592. Rhea sends B to Adaeze Fournier, with what the crew cannot fix stated plainly.
“Even with the crew, 6 compliance jobs stay at risk until their blockers clear — six poles need outage windows.”
Adaeze sees the date, the cost and what is still at risk, and approves scenario B at 08:14. Imani Okoro raises the contractor order. The approval is recorded with its name and time, and the week 42 backlog report, drafted at 06:24 with every figure linked to its screen, now reads “Scenario B is approved.”
“Approved by Adaeze Fournier · 08:14 · recorded in the audit trail”
The same backlog, seen by the five people who clear it — what their week looked like, and what it looks like now.
Six agents size, check, date and forecast every open job each night; the manager tries the levers and the operations director approves.
Reads every open work order each night, takes the planner's labour-hour estimate — or, where it is missing, estimates from completed jobs of the same work type, asset class and crew type in the last 3 years — classifies the work type and reports hours, jobs and crew-weeks.
Checks each job's prerequisites — design, materials, outage window, permits, traffic plan, customer access — against the job pack, stock reservations and purchase orders, the outage calendar and permits, and marks it ready or blocked with proof.
Applies each work type's deadline rule — condemned pole 180 days from the inspection, priority B defect 90 days, reservoir inspection 12 months, connection by the date promised — and flags jobs the forecast cannot reach before their date.
Groups blocked work by its blocker, ranks the causes by compliance jobs released first, then hours, and drafts a short, specific follow-up to each owner with the jobs, the dates and what is needed.
Forecasts week by week when the backlog reaches target from 12 weeks of intake and the crews' productive hours less the storm reserve, and runs what-if scenarios with contractor hours, overtime and deferrals — reporting the date, the cost and the compliance jobs still at risk.
Drafts the weekly backlog report for the Director of Operations — size and trend, ready and blocked, deadlines at risk, blockers, the forecast and any scenario waiting for approval — linking every figure to its screen.
Approves contractor spend. The agents propose; a named person decides.
Ask about the backlog, a blocker or a deadline — or try a change to capacity. Every answer points to the screen behind it.
Why does the backlog only reach target in March?
Because it falls by only 120 hours a week. New planned work arrives at about 920 h a week; the 14 crews give 1,333 productive hours, and 22% is held for storms and emergencies, which leaves 1,040 h. The backlog is 8,640 h against a 6,240 h target, so 2,400 h ÷ 120 h = 20 weeks: Mon Mar 1, 2027. The Aug 21 storm added about 1,100 h that has not been worked off.
Which compliance jobs could miss their deadline?
31 jobs are at risk before Dec 31: 23 condemned poles, 6 priority B line defects and 2 reservoir inspections. Of the poles, 9 wait on PO 4500-77120, now due Oct 28; 6 have no outage window requested; 8 are ready but not scheduled — two of those, on Holloway Road, reach their limit on Oct 25.
Add a contractor crew from Oct 19
Done in the simulation. A 7-person crew from Harrow & Vale Line Services adds 336 h a week at $118 an hour. The backlog then falls by 456 h a week and reaches target on Mon Nov 23, 14 weeks earlier, for $198,240 over 5 weeks. Compliance jobs at risk fall from 31 to 6: the six poles waiting on outage windows. Spend over $150K needs Adaeze Fournier's approval.
Request the outage windows for the six condemned poles
Drafted for Felix Arendt in Network Control: six windows on feeders AM-07, AM-11 and KS-05, about 4 hours each. The first, P-18832 on Fenwick Lane, is due by Nov 2 and needs 10 working days' notice, so it must go by Fri Oct 16. Review it and press send.
13 screens from the working solution, on its sample data. Pick one to see it large.
The backlog target, the reserve, the deadline rules and who approves what are settings, chosen by the region.
| Setting | Default | Choose from |
|---|---|---|
| Backlog target | 6.0 crew-weeks | The total backlog the region aims to hold — set by the Director of Operations |
| Ready-work band | 2–4 crew-weeks | Planned work with every prerequisite proven |
| Storm and emergency reserve | 22% | 15% · 18% · 22% · 26% — held back from planned work |
| Forecast basis | 12 weeks | The weeks of new work the forecast averages |
| Contractor spend over $150K | Adaeze Fournier | Approved by the Director of Operations |
| Deferral of planned work over 400 h | Rhea Castellano | Approved by the Work Management Manager |
| Deferral of compliance work | Never | Locked by rule |
| Deadline rules | Per work type | Condemned pole within 180 days of the inspection (licence condition 14) · priority B defect within 90 days of the patrol · every network valve exercised once in 12 months · service reservoir inspected inside 12 months · connection by the date in the customer's offer · lantern repaired within 7 days |
Every figure is labelled: a target the solution is built to, an estimate, a typical published result, or a proven one.
“demo” = seen in the working solution, on its sample region data · “target” = the design goal, measured in the live solution · “estimated” = our arithmetic: $1.0M = 48,000 field hours a year at $95 loaded, the reactive share cut from 41% to 30% moving 5,280 h to planned work, reactive work taken at 3× planned (below the published 4–6×): 5,280 × $95 × 2 ≈ $1.0M; the backlog-week split is also our estimate · “typical” = published figures: California PUC citations for safety code violations (Nov 2021); NBC Bay Area on a 170,000-repair maintenance backlog; FacilitiesNet (reactive work 4–6× the cost of planned); SMRP via Efficient Plant and ClickMaint (2–4 weeks of ready backlog, secondhand). People, the utility, its depots, crews, suppliers, contractors and work orders named on this page are fictional — characters and sample data in the working solution.
Software that sizes, ages and prioritises a utility's open work — not just how many jobs there are, but how many labour hours and crew-weeks they hold, which are ready and which are blocked, which deadlines are at risk and when the backlog will clear. Work Order Backlog Management does this for electricity and water work in one view, with six agents and a manager and director who decide.
It divides the backlog's labour hours by the hours crews can give to planned work. In the working solution, 14 crews give 1,333 productive hours a week after travel and briefings; 22% is held as storm and emergency reserve, leaving 1,040 h — so 8,640 h of backlog is 8.3 crew-weeks against a 6.0 target.
The Readiness checker checks six prerequisites for every job — design, materials, outage window, permits, traffic plan and customer access — against the job pack, stores and purchase orders, the outage calendar and permits. A job is ready only when each one has proof; otherwise the blocker is named and goes into a queue ranked by the deadlines it releases.
It shows which ones are at risk while there is still time to act. The Due-date watcher dates every job against its rule — a condemned pole within 180 days of the inspection, a priority B defect within 90 days, a reservoir inspection inside 12 months — and flags those the forecast cannot reach. Compliance work can never be deferred in a scenario, and no agent can extend a deadline.
The Burn-down forecaster projects the backlog week by week from 12 weeks of new work and the crews' capacity less the reserve, and marks the date it reaches target. The manager can add a contractor crew, overtime, a deferral of low-risk work or a different storm reserve and see the date, the extra cost and the compliance jobs at risk recalculate.
No. The agents are read-only on the work management system and never change a job's priority, status or deadline; readiness is written to the backlog view, not to the system of record. Follow-ups to stores, network control, councils and suppliers are drafts until a person sends them.
Yes. Scenarios are proposals. Contractor spend over $150K needs the Director of Operations, deferral of planned work over 400 h needs the Work Management Manager, and every approval is recorded with its name and time. No agent books a contractor or commits spend.
The Agentic Solution Engine builds and deploys it from your requirements and documents — your work order export, crew rosters, deadline rules and approval limits — and it goes live once every quality gate has passed. We will walk you through it on your own open work orders first.
Clean asset history from every closed job, with the parts in the photos booked.
1-min demoAs-Built Redline ProcessingFrom paper redline to GIS edit in days, not months, every edit traced to the pen.
1-min demoWork Package PreparationCrews arrive with everything they need.
1-min demoWe'll run Work Order Backlog Management on an export of your own open work orders.