Headquartered in Calgary, TC Energy’s team of 7,300 employees is dedicated to safe working environments, innovative energy solutions, and minimal environmental impact. The company has operated pipelines, storage facilities, and power plants throughout North America for over seven decades.
Irth Helps Energy Companies Navigate the Complexities of Land Management
TC Energy maintains over 57,900 miles of natural gas pipelines, as well as a 3,000-mile crude oil pipeline network that supplies markets across the U.S. — which translates to 16,000 lease agreements that they need to juggle. In 2013, they were looking for an upgrade to the land management software they’d been using since 1998, which was difficult to update and wouldn’t be supported anymore. It was also impossible to access without installing the software on a computer with a compatible operating system and then connecting to the company’s internal network.
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Problem
Beyond the logistical considerations of updates and increased accessibility, TC Energy needed a more robust system to help them stay on top of their ever-growing load of new projects.
“Leadership more or less said, ‘Hey, we want a solution to handle everything,’” said Kevin McCoy, a Land Analyst at TC Energy.
For example, they wanted to be able to quickly start a new project by inputting the necessary information directly into the system used by the operations team. Under their old solution, the project team would have to acquire the agreement and then send it to someone else to input into a separate system, which essentially duplicated work. They needed something to streamline the process of inputting and applying the large amounts of data that multiplied across their wide range of land management projects.
They also needed a better way to keep track of crucial historical land data. When an energy company operates as long as TC Energy has been around, the parcels of land that a stretch of pipeline occupies can change a lot. The subdivisions, acquisitions, divestitures, and mergers that occur over decades can greatly complicate long-standing lease agreements.
Finally, they needed a solution that could handle all the nitty-gritty details of 16,000 lease agreements, such as when a payee has 33.333% interest and causes a payout to be calculated as slightly less than the amount legally defined in the agreement.
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Solution
In Irth, TC Energy found the do-it-all platform they were looking for. Their employees can easily access up-to-date information anywhere they need to be. And with new projects always rolling in, they’ve streamlined the ramp-up process across the board. TC Energy uses Irth Land & ROW Management to:
- Access real-time information to collaborate across teams
- Eliminate duplication of work because there’s one system of record
- Work offline when the internet connection is unreliable or to make updates, whether in the office or on the go
- Manage thousands of complex payments each month through the system
- Generate reports and more
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Results
With GIS capabilities fully integrated into Irth’s do-it-all platform, TC Energy has simplified lease agreement management. Their old system required a separate GIS application with separate entries for things like easements, cathodic protection agreements, and impermanence agreements, which meant workers often had to spend extra time sifting through spreadsheets, hunting for the information they needed about a particular parcel of land. With Irth, they can simply select a parcel and view all the agreements attached to it — and then use that information without having to switch to another app.
Irth’s customer outreach module also simplified lease ownership transfers. When TC Energy gets a request for a change in ownership, they can quickly create a ticket,
attach the necessary documentation, and assign it to a land analyst, who can work on the ticket wherever they may be. It’s also easier to search for pending payments in a particular period by the operating company, and any errors (such as missing tax identification numbers) are automatically flagged. The Irth system makes those payments easier by creating a check file and seamlessly sending it through TC Energy’s outward-facing payment system.
As for what happens when a lease is split, Irth has what McCoy calls “the penny feature,” which detects when a total payment is less or more than the payment due and shows an error message that prompts the user to select who gets that extra penny.
Learn More About Our Solutions
If your company needs a better way of handling its own lease agreements, reach out today and request a demo of our multifaceted software solutions.
Irth's market-leading SaaS platform improves resilience and reduces risk in the sustainable delivery of essential services that millions of people and businesses rely on every day. Energy, utility, and telecom companies across the U.S. and Canada trust Irth for damage prevention, training, asset inspections, and land management solutions. Powered by business intelligence, analytics, and geospatial data, our platform helps deliver the 360-degree situational awareness needed to proactively mitigate and manage risk of critical network infrastructure in a changing environment. Irth has been the top provider for 811 (one call) ticket management and utility locating software since 1995.
