GeoDigital Acquires Powel, Inc.

HAMILTON, Ontario and ST. PAUL, Minn., Dec. 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Norway's Powel AS today sold the assets of its U.S. subsidiary Powel, Inc., to digital mapping, imaging and data acquisition services firm GeoDigital International Inc. The deal strengthens GeoDigital's position as a leading provider of distributed infrastructure management solutions and expands its leading position in the fast growing utility vegetation management and Transmission Line Re-rating marketplace.

GeoDigital, with offices across the U.S. and Canada, has acquired the mobile work management product line of Powel, Inc., including the WorkStudio® application suite for managing utility field design, vegetation maintenance, outage recovery and mapping.  All current Powel, Inc., employees, software assets, customers and facilities will form a new software and analytics division GeoDigital Solutions, Inc.  The division will be responsible for software development and the integration of complementary technologies into turnkey enterprise solutions for utilities and other asset intensive industries including rail, oil and gas, transportation, and telecommunications.

"WorkStudio, with its market leading stakeout field design and vegetation management capabilities, represents the unifying system technology that our customers have been asking for," said GeoDigital president and CEO Alastair N. Jenkins, in explaining the rationale for the acquisition.  "This acquisition brings us an unrivalled capability and portfolio to cost-effectively transform data collected from our leading edge services into actionable, money saving solutions for our customers.  WorkStudio has been designed from the ground up for distributed linear asset environments and utility design and vegetation management functions, but we also see immense opportunity in other industries with heavy asset management and right-of-way maintenance needs."

(See GeoDigital video presentation here)

GeoDigital integrates the world's most advanced imaging and data acquisition technologies to perform airborne and ground mapping services with LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) for applications that include vegetation management and line rating & clearance analysis.  Powel's applications, such as its leading StakeOut® field design and VegWorks® vegetation maintenance tools, are able to quickly format spatial data collected by the GeoDigital systems into highly detailed asset inventories for field maintenance planning, execution and regulatory compliance reporting.

The combined organization will employ about 250 people across Canada and the U.S.  GeoDigital Solutions will maintain all current facilities, including the St. Paul, Minn., headquarters of Powel.  All existing sales and support structures will remain and GeoDigital Solutions will support all existing Powel, Inc., products, customers and long term support commitments.

"This combination is an optimal fit from technical and strategic standpoints," said Powel, Inc., CEO, Scott Rogers, who will join the executive staff of GeoDigital International as senior vice president and head of the GeoDigital Solutions software and analytics division. "The combination provides customers an unmatched maintenance value by giving them greater situational awareness of their assets to increase reliability while minimizing risk.  Current and future customers will be excited by the possibilities."

About Powel, Inc.

Powel, Inc., (www.powelinc.com) headquartered in St. Paul, MN, delivers software solutions that realize our mission of "Helping Utilities Work Smarter."  Powel WorkStudio is a Mobile Work Management platform with office-based analysis that helps utilities work smarter through the entire asset lifecycle, from design to construction to service, including right-of-way clearance, maintenance and storm assessment.  WorkStudio incorporates Powel's industry leading StakeOut field design application.

About GeoDigital International Inc.

GeoDigital International Inc. and its predecessor companies have a 20-year history in airborne mapping for the utility industry, providing leading-edge solutions for mapping, vegetation inspection and line rating and clearance analysis services to customers across around the world. With offices located throughout Canada and the United States, GeoDigital has mapped more than 480,000 km (nearly 300,000 miles) and more than 1,800,000 structures worldwide making GeoDigital the leader for corridor mapping in North America. For more information please visit www.geodigital.com.

SOURCE Powel, Inc.