Orion Managed Services is pleased to announce our new offices and yard in Fairfield, CA. These facilities are ideally located to serve our Bay Area and North Coast field operations.

Ryan Suttle (Orion Managed Services, UMass Amherst Department of Environmental Conservation) and Nasko Apostolov (UMass Amherst, Department of Civil Engineering) presented a collaborative research initiative titled “Artificial Intelligence for Tree Risk Prediction” at the 2021 Annual International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) Virtual Conference on December 14th.  This pilot study represents an exciting new use of technology in arboriculture, and highlights the power of interdisciplinary cooperation towards innovation in the industry. Over 1100 people tuned into this presentation to learn about this motivating research initiative. Ryan assisted in conducting this study while pursuing a Master’s degree in Arboriculture and Urban Forestry at UMass.

Through research, technology, and education, ISA fosters a worldwide awareness of the benefits of trees and promotes the professional practice of arboriculture. This conference is their largest of the year, bringing in industry leading practitioners and researchers from around the globe to present their work, host educational workshops, and network with fellow professionals in the arboricultural field. Presenting at it is a true honor.

Ryan’s presentation introduced a pilot study into the potential for use of artificial intelligence networks to identify high risk trees in proximity to overhead electrical lines with the idea that an effective model could reduce inspection costs, increase inspection efficiency, and increase reliability of electricity distribution. Vegetation management is typically one of a utility’s largest budget items, and even small utilities spend millions of dollars annually to mitigate tree-caused outages. Across the United States, outages also cost billions of dollars in lost business revenue. Presently, identification of high-risk trees near utility lines is labor intensive, time consuming, and costly. This presentation described a machine learning approach which trained a novel convolutional neural network (CNN) to automatically classify trees, using only a single photograph and with a high degree of accuracy, into likelihood of failure categories. The CNN’s high degree of accuracy demonstrated the potential of artificial intelligence to automate risk assessment and consequently to reduce costs. Preliminary results were extremely promising for future study and improvement, particularly through training better models with more data, and mapping visual cues learned by the CNN to physical defects in tree structure.

Mr. Robert Knutson has 25 years of experience in research, utility operations and maintenance, and environmental planning and permitting and is the Vice President of Environmental Services for Orion Managed Services, LLC. Mr. Knutson is primarily responsible for continuing development of environmental consulting services, applying his many years of experience as a utility industry consultant and business owner.

Mr. Knutson has earned a B.S. degree in Biological Sciences from California Polytechnic State University and a M.S. in Entomology from the University of Missouri. He currently lives in Coeur D Alene, ID where he enjoys keeping bees, running chainsaws, and shoveling snow.

Orion is pleased to announce that we have recently completed a risk assessment on behalf of one of the nation’s largest private equity firms. Orion was engaged to assess risks posed by wildfire and seismic events for a portfolio of large commercial properties in Napa County, California. Orion’s risk assessors identified specific mitigations to alleviate the identified risks, facilitating a sound asset acquisition.

Orion’s staff of consulting utility foresters, master arborists, tree risk assessors, management consultants, and seismic engineers continue to apply their real-world experience to advise boardrooms of business risk and to identify practical, cost-effective risk mitigation measures. We are honored to be part of our client’s due diligence team and to advise their board of directors on sound investments.

Orion brings solutions and enables sound decision making: We Drive Better Results.

Mr. Shevchenko brings over 15 years of experience in corporate finance within the professional services industry, mostly centered around FP&A/M&A activities, as well as Commercial Strategy and Pricing. In the role of Manager of Finance, Mr. Shevchenko is responsible for overseeing all financial aspects of the business and assisting the executive leadership in driving the company’s financial strategy and planning. Mr. Shevchenko is also assessing the financial performance of the company as well as possible risks and investments.

Orion Managed Services is pleased to announce our new offices and equipment yard in Rancho Cordova, CA. These facilities provide Orion a centralized distribution hub for our field operations within our Northern California service territory. Orion is in the process of adding additional yards, so stay tuned for future announcements.

We share our sincere appreciation to our colleagues and our clients as we reflect on milestones that we have achieved this past year:

Orion is pleased to announce that Kristin Schmalried has recently joined us as Orion’s Human Resources Manager.

Kristin holds a bachelor’s degree from California State University, Long Beach. With over 7 years of diverse experience in all HR functional areas, her key competencies include recruitment, benefit and leave administration, payroll, compliance, safety, training, and employee engagement.

Kristin currently manages all administrative aspects of the Human Resources Department. Before joining the Orion Team, Ms. Schmalried supported employees in retail, education, fitness, customer service, and animal welfare. She has a passion for developing and engaging staff.

​Kristin resides in Southern California and enjoys traveling, interior design, painting, and going to the beach with her yellow Labrador, Riley.

Seeking trusted advisor status must be any Professional Practice and Advisory Services firm's ultimate goal. We should be partnering with subs, vendors and suppliers that have the same mentality. Sometimes the ‘space’ is different and cultures don’t align. Contractors are not consultants and I’ve been on both sides – plenty of eye rolls at my consultants when I was the guy with the dirty boots and yellow iron behind me. Maybe that’s what makes us different, being able to translate the space in which the different groups live so that we all speak the same language. As business leaders, we fundamentally have the same goals; deliver world-class service at a fair margin, build a place for careers, have some fun doing it, endeavor to make our clients happy and build long-term trust-based relationships with them. We are the clients to our project partners, and our client is the ultimate buyer. The path seems completely congruent. Breaking through the perceived trust barrier is key. Some of our favorite conversations are when our clients ask, ‘what would you advise?’ My favorite question of my project partners is, ‘Here’s how we thought to deliver this complex project. But, what would you do differently?’

We can show you where our spend with project partners is based on trust. The numbers are exponentially different. You can tell which client projects were stellar and which were good but had some challenges. If you’re good at delivery and client relationships, the client may not have ever known of them – the challenges. But, if you’re reading this, you are probably reflecting on the internal conversations [away from the client] that sound like, ‘I think we should have picked a different contractor, sub, supplier, vendor, etc.’  Communication of expectations, sound design aligned with those goals, and having the dream team of project partners deliver them isn’t always achievable. But we can change the dynamic through communication, partnering, sharing the pain, and the high-fives. Turn the outcomes into, ‘WE did it’, and not ‘we could have done it better, but for…’ That takes humility, and willingness to invest time (and money).

​Alex Cates
Orion Managed Services, LLC.​

Over the years of having subcontractors, vendors, and suppliers, whether I was working as General Contractor, Professional Construction Management Firm as Owner’s Representative, or a Subcontractor myself, treating the teams involved in the successful delivery of our projects as project partners has been key in our success.