From field to boardroom: How gas utilities turn visibility into competitive advantage

In the RIIO-2 era, data-driven decision-making isn’t optional—it’s a competitive necessity. For gas utilities, the pressure to justify investments, demonstrate resilience, and meet evolving regulatory standards has never been higher. Yet a persistent challenge continues to hinder progress: the disconnect between field operations and executive decision-making.

Without real-time, centralised visibility of frontline activity, critical decisions are delayed or misinformed. Projects slow down due to inefficient handoffs, missed risks, and reactive interventions. These inefficiencies stack up, impacting safety outcomes, regulatory readiness, and ultimately, the bottom line.

The traditional gap: Disconnect between field and leadership

Historically, leadership teams have operated without a clear window into the realities of field work. Insights from the ground often remain fragmented—trapped in notebooks, siloed spreadsheets, or inaccessible communication threads. This lack of integration not only slows down strategic planning but also amplifies risk, cost, and compliance exposure.

For regulated gas networks operating under strict scrutiny, these blind spots can undermine confidence with both regulators and stakeholders. The consequence? Misallocated resources, delayed asset upgrades, and missed opportunities for operational resilience.

Bridging the gap with real-time data

Implementing real-time operational visibility offers several strategic benefits: 

• Smarter CAPEX and OPEX planning:   Access to real-time data allows for more accurate forecasting and budgeting, ensuring that capital and operational expenditures are allocated efficiently. 

• Strengthened regulatory submissions and resilience reporting: Comprehensive data collection supports robust reporting to regulators, demonstrating compliance and resilience. 

• Faster identification of network weak points: Continuous monitoring enables the early detection of potential issues, allowing for proactive maintenance and reducing the risk of failures. 

FYLD’s role: Turning data into actionable insights

FYLD’s smart workflows and agentic AI do more than digitise checklists, they transform fragmented observations into enterprise-wide intelligence. Through computer vision, real-time video assessments, and AI-guided reporting, field teams become connected sensors of situational awareness. Supervisors can act on emerging issues in the moment and not after the fact.

FYLD’s system has enabled proactive interventions on over 30% of jobs, preventing incidents, delays, or non-compliance. Meanwhile, over 110,000 AI-powered site assessments have driven timely interventions on more than 70% of field activities, massively expanding spans of control for operational leaders.

Real-world use cases: Predictive performance in action

FYLD’s platform enables more than efficiency, it powers foresight. In environments where safety, compliance, and public trust are intertwined, proactive risk prevention can save millions. For example:

• Regulatory confidence:   With 17,600+ pieces of digital evidence recorded, teams can defend their processes during audits or investigations with clarity and precision.

• Field leadership productivity: Managers have saved 10,400+ hours through simpler video-based risk assessments, compared to traditional paper-based methods.

• Reduced downtime and blockers: FYLD has driven a 50% time reduction to resolve blockers, speeding up projects and improving asset availability.

These capabilities are critical as gas utilities support broader national priorities—from reducing leak rates to enabling future-ready hydrogen infrastructure.

Agentic AI for decision advantage

FYLD’s agentic AI capabilities offer more than just automation, they enable judgment augmentation. This is especially critical in utilities, where frontline complexity often exceeds what can be captured by legacy systems or static dashboards.

FYLD’s AI interprets data from multiple sources—live video, site conditions, safety assessments—and recommends next actions, escalating only the highest-priority risks. This supports field teams in making better decisions autonomously while giving leadership assurance that strategic objectives are being met at the operational edge.

Elevating the workforce with connected tools

Empowering the workforce is another essential element. FYLD doesn’t just replace paper—it augments people. Field engineers and supervisors gain digital tools that make their roles safer, faster, and more accountable. Real-time communication, automated handovers, and visual records give everyone, from fieldworkers to directors, the information they need to succeed.

This also boosts job satisfaction and retention, reducing the burden on overstretched teams and enabling gas networks to better manage the skilled labour gap. In a sector where experience matters, that’s a competitive edge.

A platform aligned with regulatory and industry change

As RIIO-2 continues to evolve, regulators are placing growing emphasis on resilience, customer impact, and efficient investment. Platforms like FYLD are ideally positioned to support this transition. They provide transparent, defensible data and allow organisations to demonstrate performance proactively, not just in reports, but in real-world outcomes.

In addition, the coming shift toward net zero and hydrogen infrastructure will demand greater agility and coordination across utilities. FYLD’s platform is already enabling that future, making complex projects more manageable and risks more predictable.

Embracing data-driven decision making

In today’s regulatory environment, the ability to translate field data into strategic action is no longer a luxury—it’s a business imperative. Gas utilities that fail to modernise decision-making processes risk falling behind in cost, compliance, and customer outcomes.

With FYLD, operational certainty becomes achievable—ensuring the right decisions are made, by the right people, at the right time.

Ready to get started? Get a personalised demonstration today to see how quickly you can transform your gas utility operations.