One of North America’s largest combined utilities faced increased scrutiny of its vegetation management program following significant wildfire events. A review of existing practices uncovered inefficient work processes, safety incidents, and performance challenges across the contractor workforce responsible for inspecting, trimming, and removing vegetation near powerlines. With more than 5,000 contract workers operating across the system, the utility recognized the need for a more consistent, defensible approach to workforce qualification and oversight.
Create a standardized, risk-based assessment and onboarding program that improves safety, consistency, and workforce readiness while aligning vegetation management practices with business and regulatory objectives.
Because the utility did not directly train the contractor workforce performing vegetation management work, there was limited consistency in how workers were prepared, assessed, and qualified for critical job tasks. Existing assessments lacked standardization, making it difficult to ensure workers possessed the skills required to safely perform high-risk work and to demonstrate compliance with regulatory expectations. At the same time, the utility needed to rapidly scale the program to support thousands of contractors while rebuilding community trust and reducing wildfire risk.
Mosaic partnered with the utility to evaluate its existing assessment program and develop a comprehensive roadmap for workforce qualification, onboarding, procedural governance, and program oversight. Working closely with utility leaders, Mosaic redesigned competency-based assessments for critical vegetation management roles, establishing standardized evaluation criteria and objective performance measures. To better prepare workers for success, Mosaic also developed bilingual microlearning content covering safety regulations and company policies, helping strengthen onboarding and improve field readiness.
Beyond assessments and training, Mosaic helped create a sustainable framework for procedure development, qualification tracking, and governance. This included strategies for maintaining defensible work practices, clarifying roles and responsibilities, supporting real-time qualification visibility through ITS cards, and scaling the program to assess more than 5,000 contractors. Mosaic also helped align the utility's assessment program with union-led training efforts, creating a coordinated approach to workforce development and qualification.
The utility now has a scalable and defensible vegetation management workforce program that improves safety, strengthens operational consistency, reduces wildfire risk, and provides a foundation for long-term workforce readiness and regulatory compliance.
