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Line inspection: full workflow
Updated May 2026·10 min read
From a LiDAR inspection flight to vegetation and distance reports published for your O&M team. This guide walks through the complete workflow specific to transmission and distribution operators.
Prepare the project
Create a project per corridor or per flight campaign (recommended if you do historical tracking). Add the line route (vector) and inventoried supports as context layers.
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Multi-flight tracking. If you fly the same line every year, use a folder per campaign within the same project: you’ll be able to compare vegetation evolution flight by flight.
Upload the flight
- 1Upload the LAS/LAZ clouds with the Transfer manager (recommended from hundreds of GB).
- 2Associate the flight trajectory if you have it: it improves classification.
- 3Verify the project’s CRS — distance analyses depend on it.
Classify with AI
Run the Utilities classification workflow: it separates ground, vegetation, buildings, towers and conductors. The model flags low-confidence zones for review.
- 1Run the Utilities Classification geoprocess on the flight folder.
- 2Review the flagged zones in the editor and correct classes where needed.
- 3Validate: the layer is versioned and ready for analysis.
Distance and vegetation analysis
- Safety distances: conductor–vegetation and conductor–ground per your standards.
- Growth: compare with previous campaigns to prioritize pruning.
- Inventory: detect supports and verify against your asset base.
Publish and report
Publish a private geoportal for O&M with the classified cloud, distance non-compliances and pruning priorities. Generate the automatic report per section — the same one you used to outsource.
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Result. A typical operator goes from weeks of outsourced reporting to hours of in-house processing, with the data always under their control.
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