"You can see so much when you look at the grid from above"

Among those who, in the time of COVID, never stopped but rather continued to work from home is Fabiana Grasso, 38, who works in the Asset Management - Methods, Equipment, Flight and LLW division of Terna, operator of the Italian electricity transmission grid.

Her team is responsible for processing the data collected during flight inspections over the areas affected by Terna’s power lines, organising them for colleagues in those areas who would then need to identify any interference (from trees or any other wildlife) that could cause inconvenience or faults. Other than location, during quarantine almost nothing changed in her working routine, thanks in part to the tools and processes put in place by the company: “Given that our team analyses data from surveys with dedicated software, from a practical point of view there were no significant changes, other than the “remote” element of working from home. So our analyses continued, as did our database processing and relations with the Italian territories. However, this is work that we have always done on the computer”.

The work done by Fabiana and her team is crucial in monitoring distances between vegetation and electrical conductors, given their pruning activities. “Our team performs crucial annual checks for those who cut and prune the plants, and physically remove such obstacles. Our work happens before this, because the data already processed is used to identify the precise locations in which to work”, she explains. “Other activities are related to working methods, research and innovation, which are peripheral to the main project. Our focus, however, is always on one fundamental aim: the quality and safety of the electricity service”.

As Grasso tells us, the process always starts from an initial meeting with colleagues who are active on the territory: “Our work takes us across all of Italy, so we have to involve those who work and move around the territory. After their feedback, we decide where to intervene and then do the helicopter surveys. The pilots are external, but our operators monitor the flight from inside and collect data using lasers”.

Even before she came to Terna, Fabiana had always dealt with territorial information systems. After getting her degree in Architecture, she chose to specialise in this field, in particular in three-dimensional photogrammetry and satellite remote sensing for mapping areas of land. “I went up in a helicopter once too! Terna provides a test flight to show even those based in the office what a line looks like from above and how the flight works: it’s very useful in order to understand how this process really works”, she says. “It was such a rush! It’s a strange feeling, an unexpected point of view, and even the initial emotion is strong”.

Speaking of new experiences, during the Covid emergency Fabiana also experienced working remotely for the first time. “I have always worked for Terna in Rome. I tried to work from home when I was a freelance, but it’s not the same. There was an initial ‘settle in’ phase, where I had to get used to a new perspective”, she says. “Given that we are at home, the fact that we had to recreate a work environment was a novelty in itself, so the company provided a lot of support”.

“It was also crucial to establish separate spaces”, Grasso observes, because “that same gesture of time stamping the card separates life inside the company from your private life outside it. As this system is no longer in place, we have to find other ways to separate the two spaces. I tried to recreate that with a fixed space”.

The experiment was successful, even with the prospect of a gradual return to the office: “After the health emergency, we may have to pick up at a different pace... For me the ideal would be a mix of both, sometimes working from home and sometimes from the office, so as not to feel too isolated. I’ll be glad to see my colleagues for a chat during a coffee break. It’ll be a bit like when we were kids coming back to school in September. I mean, you’re back at the desks, but with your classmates!”.