How One Utility Group Replaced 10 Years of Technical Debt in 10 Weeks

Apr 1

4 min read

If you're part of a utility organization—whether water, electric, gas, or telecom—you know how critical work order management is to your daily operations. You also probably know how frustrating it can be to rely on outdated, patchwork software systems that were built years ago and have since ballooned into a tangled mess of bugs, band-aids, and business rules no one fully understands.

That was exactly the situation one of our recent clients—a regional utility company—faced when they came to FieldApps.ai.

Their problem wasn’t unique. Their response was.

In just 10 weeks, they went from a decade-old legacy system to a self-maintaining, modern work order platform—purpose-built for their operations, and flexible enough to evolve with them into the future.

Here’s how we helped them do it—and how you can too.

The Hidden Costs of Outdated Work Order Systems

When we first met this utility group, their work order system was made up of:

A 10+ year-old custom desktop app patched over time
A set of brittle integrations with their GIS and asset management tools
Manual exports into Excel for scheduling and reporting
A growing backlog of bugs, data inconsistencies, and feature requests

The system technically worked—but barely.

Here’s what that legacy stack was costing them:

💸 Developer hours spent maintaining instead of building

Their internal IT team was spending upwards of 60% of dev time just keeping the system running. Fixing bugs. Adding one-off business rule tweaks. Trying not to break anything in the process.

⚠️ Errors that led to operational risk

When work orders were missed, duplicated, or misassigned, field crews lost time—and sometimes entire shifts. At scale, those kinds of disruptions weren’t just inconvenient—they were expensive.

🧊 Innovation on pause

Every time they tried to build a new feature—like mobile functionality or automatic crew routing—they’d hit a wall. The old codebase couldn’t handle modern demands, and starting over felt impossible.

This is what technical debt looks like in the real world. And for utilities, where operational efficiency and regulatory compliance matter, the impact is magnified.

The Turning Point: Modernization Without the Rewrite

Their leadership team knew they couldn’t keep going like this. But they were also wary of starting a multi-year, high-risk rewrite from scratch. They’d seen too many of those fail.

That’s when they found FieldApps.ai.

Instead of pitching a traditional software rebuild, we offered something new:

Self-maintaining software built from your exact requirements. No legacy debt. No manual upkeep. Fully adaptable over time.

We call it vibe coding—a radically modern approach to building systems that stay alive, flexible, and aligned with your business.

Week 1: Reimagine, Not Rebuild

We started with a single prompt:

“Build a work order management system for a utility company that: Integrates with GIS and asset data Auto-generates daily work plans Works on mobile, even offline Tracks job status, crew notes, and time logs Sends daily summaries to operations managers”

This was the beginning of a modular, logic-aware platform that required zero lines of hardcoded logic. Every workflow, rule, and integration point was expressed as a living configuration—designed to evolve.

By the end of week one, they had a functioning prototype.

Week 3: Data In, Work Orders Out

We integrated with their existing asset and GIS databases, creating a seamless flow of data that auto-generated work orders based on triggers they defined: overdue inspections, flagged service lines, maintenance cycles, or manual dispatch.

No more spreadsheets. No more manual syncing.

Every crew saw the exact jobs they needed—on mobile devices, with clear location data, photos, and time tracking.

Week 6: Self-Maintenance in Action

One of the turning points came when a business rule changed mid-rollout:Field inspections now required an additional safety confirmation step.

In the old system, this would have taken weeks—if not months—of dev time and testing.

With FieldApps.ai, the operations manager updated the workflow logic using plain language in our interface. The system self-tested the new flow, applied it to relevant jobs, and rolled it out—automatically. Zero downtime. Zero code changes.

This wasn’t just software that could be maintained. It was software that maintained itself.

Week 10: Fully Live. Fully Evolved.

By the 10-week mark, the utility’s new work order platform was:

✅ Fully integrated with GIS, assets, and crew management

✅ Running smoothly across desktop and mobile

✅ Configurable by operations staff, no dev required

✅ Self-validating, self-improving, and 100% free from legacy tech

Even better, the internal dev team—previously stuck maintaining the old system—was now focused on building new capabilities, not fixing old ones.

The Outcome: Real-World Results

Since switching to FieldApps.ai, here’s what they’ve achieved:

Reduced IT maintenance hours by 70%
Eliminated work order errors that led to missed jobs
Added new workflows 4x faster
Improved crew satisfaction with better tools and fewer delays

Their leadership team says it best:

“We used to feel like we were chasing our software. Now it works with us—and gets better on its own.”

What Could You Rebuild in 10 Weeks?

If your utility team is still relying on a decade-old work order platform… we get it. The idea of modernizing can feel overwhelming.

But you don’t have to rewrite everything from scratch. You don’t need to sign a 2-year implementation contract. And you definitely don’t need to carry the weight of technical debt forever.

With FieldApps.ai, we help teams like yours launch fully modern, self-maintaining systems in a matter of weeks—not years.

No patches. No bloat. No burnout.

Just software that evolves with you.