Transpower owns and operates the National Grid – the high-voltage network connecting towns and cities across New Zealand with power.

Discover

Engaging multiple players in a planning process

Have you ever wondered how they maintain the power network while keeping the lights on?

The answer is planned outages, and it’s a process that involves careful planning and a lot of players. Transpower asked us to create a visual solution highlighting what it takes for a successful outage.

Design

Animation and metaphor.

After workshopping the process with Transpower, we introduced the visual metaphor of a foundry creating giant puzzle pieces – illustrating that if things aren’t planned correctly, the final product won’t fit, resulting in delays and rework.

The final animation works through the ideal journey of an outage, then rewinds to highlight what can happen when different issues come up along the way.

To support the animation, we also created a quick reference guide looking at key elements of the process, including the what, who, and why.

Deliver

Increased awareness.

The animation and guide were released on the intranet, helping engage the wider business in understanding the process and how they could help make or break it.

By providing the big picture in an easily accessible way (and reducing the reliance on heavy technical documentation), Transpower can be confident that the key players know the importance of the right steps at the right times.