DISTRIBUTECH 2026: Osmose CEO Mike Adams Interviews Robert Brook of Neara and Eric Easton of Centerpoint Energy
Mike Adams, CEO Osmose Utility Services
Robert Brook, SVP and Managing director Neara
Eric Easton, VP Grid Transformation & Investment Strategy CenterPoint Energy
Mike Adams: I am here at DistribuTech 2026 today with Eric Easton from Centerpoint Energy, one of our valuable customers, and Robert Brook from Neara. I wanted to talk about the partnership we have both with Neara and Centerpoint. Osmose as a services company is always trying to help a customer to buy down their risk every time we roll a truck. Eric, Centerpoint, from our perspective, has best in class programs for your distribution network, your wood poles and your underground network with your cable life extension program. We are always trying to make it better.
What is unique for us right now in our industry is how we are pivoting to use data to provide an even smarter service going forward. We want to make sure every time we roll a truck to a piece of equipment for you that we are indeed deploying capital efficiently and buying down risk. I am curious to get your perspective on where we are with the use of data, AI, and the work you have been doing with Neara, using some of the condition assessment data we provide. I’m also curious where you see the next frontiers in terms of better use of data to enable smarter service.
The Osmose condition data and the Neara platform enable us to find the riskiest place and hardest to replace location on our system, then assess the health of that asset, and wisely replace them.
Eric Easton
The relationship is fantastic between the three organizations. It feels like we benefit from what everyone else is doing, and ultimately it helps you operate better as an organization, which is our goal.
Robert Brook
Eric Easton: I think you touched on a lot of the key points. Poles and cable assessments are both things that are top of mind for us. We recently had our system resiliency plan approved. You talk about data and analytics; it takes a lot of data and analytics to get a plan through the regulatory process. We really needed to show our regulators that we are wisely using the dollars that needed to be spent. Part of that is the collaboration that we have with Neara, enabling us to do that at scale. We have a long-standing relationship with Osmose and really value the work that you all are doing for us. What we see the Neara platform doing is helping to accelerate that work so that we can identify the highest areas of in our network and ensure our investments make the biggest impact to our customers. Using the digital twin allows us to analyze our almost 30,000 miles of overhead transmission in a way that is much faster and much more efficient. We are starting to integrate into that some of the pole loading analysis and see how we can identify the highest and most risky poles to be replaced.
Another key way we are using data to improve service is focusing on the most inaccessible parts of our network. Accessibility is one of the things that slows down restoration. When our folks have to go into backyards and they have to replace poles, that is where we can really combine the two outputs from each one of your companies. The Osmose condition data and the Neara platform enable us to find the riskiest place and hardest to replace location on our system, then assess the health of that asset, and wisely replace them. Robert, that is something that we have been very focused on, and your team has been helping us to do that. I would be interested to hear how you feel we are doing in terms of the adoption and the scaling of the technology.
Robert Brook: It is a good question. I think every organization is different in the way they consume and use the technology. Getting value from it is the most important part. We are motivated by how effectively an organization is able to answer the problems that they have in front of them. The thing I love about your organization is we are able to take rich asset information that we get from companies like Osmose and we are able to put it into a living system that gives you the information that you need to make educated decisions. What we saw five years ago was something that was missing inside of the industry, and that is, a living representation of your equipment. This kind of platform enables you to make simulations, and use the output to understand questions like: did the work we do actually address the problem we were trying to solve? How do we use that information to guide what we do into the future? The relationship is fantastic between the three organizations. It feels like we benefit from what everyone else is doing, and ultimately it helps you operate better as an organization, which is our goal.
The faster we are able to produce and artifact that can be used in the benefit of customers and safety, the more we can improve our ability to define and mitigate the impacts of storms and other types of resiliency events.
Robert Brook
Digital twin of combined T&D pole condition, line sag, and vegetation risk indicatedResidential digital twin of distribution line with pole condition, line sag, wind, and vegetation risk indicated
Eric: It absolutely does. You touched on another key point around understanding the assets from the Osmose perspective, but then also being able to see the world around our assets and how they are going to interact with, trees, other vegetation, or even buildings near our assets. The combination of both an asset condition focused approach plus LiDAR giving us the wide-angle view, feeding into machine learning and other AI technologies is helping us to be efficient with our efforts to increase reliability and resiliency.
Mike: Eric, it seems to me the customers actually do not want service, they want the outcome from the service. I think utilities like yourself are awash with data and the real value is what you do with the data and what insights you create. We look at Centerpoint and see an example of what every utility should be doing, but here you are still trying to improve on it! What I see from Neara is that speed of getting to the insight is increasing because the model shows you what changed from the last condition assessment and then you are able to target which piece of equipment to work on next. From our perspective you are accelerating the speed of targeting the right piece of equipment, so you buy down your risk every time you roll a truck. Is that the way you see the Neara helping you?
Eric: Absolutely. We have talked about in the past that if we had to do visual field inspections of a lot of the locations, we are talking years in order to accomplish that, versus minutes of running model simulations and being able to identify similar high risk opportunities on the network. The other piece of how this collaboration is benefiting us is the ability to report that back to the public. It helps with speed and communication. There is speed in doing the work, but we also need to be able to quickly translate what we’ve completed into something that the public can understand. Now more than ever before, the public understands where we are working, why we are working there, and what they should expect. On the opposite side, and this is one of the things that we are really focused on right now, is completing that life cycle. We want to be able to hold the people accountable that are doing the work on our behalf. The LiDAR and the installation post inspections give us that opportunity. Not only are we using it to trend data Osmose have given us over the years, but we can bake it into machine learning models and leveraged it for larger data sets.
Now we are also looking at how to do QA/QC after we’ve implemented mitigations on the network. That is where the customer value piece comes in because it is one thing for us to identify the right locations, but even once we identify the right locations, the work still has to be done correctly for the customers to get the value! That is where we can close that gap and then work with Osmose and Neara to ensure that we are getting the quality that our customers deserve.
Mike: Again, I personally want to applaud Centerpoint, who we would say already has a best-in-class program and is still to trying to make the program even better. Mid last year, we were onboarding a new VP of sales. Typically, we bring people out in the field and show them what we do. We were in your district, and we were going on a line of poles trying to find a reject. These were 50-year old poles that were all virtually at 100% strength still after 50 years of life! That is a testament to the life extension work you have been doing historically. With the advent of what you are doing now with Neara , you are going to have an even better program. I think the people living in your district should feel good about your stewardship and the fact that you are continuing to advance, I want to applaud you for that.
Eric: Really appreciate that. I appreciate the partnership as well.
Robert: Thank you.
Mike: Maybe one last comment from you, Robert. When you think about all the technology that is coming down the pipe, drones and AI and what we are doing together and with progressive customers like Centerpoint, what do you see as the next technology evolution for this idea of smarter service or targeted service to where every time we roll a truck, we are substantially improving the value of that investment?
Robert: I think it is more in the automation about how we can remove steps in that process. One of the things I would like to highlight that Eric said is the speed to an answer. I have heard great metrics from you, Eric, about how we have been able to reduce the time to get from point A to point B, but I do not think we will ever be finished with that process. The faster we are able to produce an artifact that can be used in the benefit of customers and safety, the more we can improve our ability to define and mitigate the impacts of storms and other types of resiliency events. A great example of that is automated design. The more you can take an engineer’s time and move it from the collection of information and put it into the area of analyzing it, the more they can look at what the outcomes. For example, what is the impact of a storm or the impact of wildfire? When you are just doing design, you are almost trying to get to a checkbox at the end indicating you have completed that process.
If you can automate the first portion of the process, you get to a point where the engineer can spend time trying to determine what is the best fit for the organization. That really mitigates the downstream problems that we face after things are constructed. I am keen to see what kind of automation is going to come out in the industry over the next few years. I think it is something we can work on collaboratively.
Mike: Thanks for taking the time. I am personally fascinated by the advancement of technology. What we have seen in the last few years is immense and I think it is only going to accelerate from here. Really appreciate you taking the time today to share your views.
Eric/Robert: Thanks for having us.
This article was originally published in the June 2026 issue of the Grid Modernization and Flexibility magazine.
