Ontonagon County REA knew that they had a lot of catching up to do; like many
other utilities, too much of their asset data was stored in the heads of their field
crews, not recorded, mapped and stored in a secure system. In fact, in early
2008, the only maps they had, paper maps drawn in the 1950’s, were humorously
referred to as “The Dead Sea Scrolls”. An up to date, map-based Asset and
Outage Management System seemed like light years away.