ATC Incident Case Study

Creating a single source of truth for corrective actions and safety insights

OVERVIEW

American Transmission Company (ATC) owns and operates high-voltage electric transmission systems that transport electricity from where it is generated to where it is needed. Serving Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and parts of Illinois and Minnesota, ATC is responsible for planning, maintaining, and strengthening critical transmission infrastructure across the region.

As ATC’s safety and human performance programs expanded prior to 2020, the organization recognized that its corrective action and observation processes were becoming increasingly fragmented. Information lived in spreadsheets on network drives with limited access. Some departments were using SharePoint, while others leveraged early Onspring workflows. This created duplicate systems, inconsistent formats, and limited visibility across the business.

By fully centralizing corrective actions, observations, and operational insights in Onspring, ATC created a single, consistent source of truth that supports transparency, accountability, and better organizational awareness of safety-related risks.

Challenge

Disconnected Systems and Limited Visibility into Corrective Actions

Before adopting Onspring fully, ATC tracked safety-related corrective actions using spreadsheets stored on network drives. Only certain individuals could access them, which made it difficult for teams and leadership to understand outstanding work, priorities, or risk exposure.

Corinne Westrich, ATC’s Asset Intelligence Program Manager, described the situation clearly, “Before we had Onspring, we did a lot with spreadsheets that were located in network drives that were only accessible to certain individuals.”

As digital tools were introduced, different groups took different paths. Governance, risk and compliance teams began using Onspring for corrective actions, while Safety and Human Performance teams implemented SharePoint for similar purposes. This resulted in the same types of information being stored in multiple places, often in different formats.

“Having the same information in two different places and two different formats was just not a good way forward.”

Beyond tool fragmentation, ATC faced a deeper challenge: different groups were identifying, addressing, and accepting risk in different ways. Without a consistent issues management process, the organization lacked clear visibility into which risks were being addressed, which were being accepted, and why.

Solution

Centralizing Corrective Actions and Observations in Onspring

ATC began implementing Onspring around 2020. Although SharePoint was used initially by some groups, the organization ultimately chose to consolidate all corrective actions and related safety information into Onspring to create a single, unified system.

Moving the entire organization to a consistent issues management process is really what allowed visibility to the risk the organization was willing to take on. By standardizing how issues were captured and managed, ATC aligned the organization around a shared understanding of risk.

Under this approach, issues originate from defined sources such as audits or situational learning. These sources produce observations that represent potential risk. Each observation is then either addressed through a corrective action or formally accepted, with the justification for that risk clearly documented.

This centralization allowed ATC to:

• Organize and categorize corrective actions consistently
• Provide broad transparency across departments
• Give leadership real visibility into outstanding responsibilities
• Ensure everyone sees the same information in the same format
• Mature their safety and human performance programs by incorporating observations and risk insights

Corinne summarized the impact of this shift,

• “It was a huge change being able to bring that transparency and accessibility to the organization.”

  Corinne Westrich

  – Asset Intelligence Program Manager

  ATC

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ATC now continues to mature its use of Onspring by adding observation data, enabling richer analysis of where risks exist, where they originate, and where they are being addressed.

“We can really capture risk and identify where that risk is being assumed and then where it is being addressed.”

Results

Clear Visibility, Stronger Accountability, and a Meaningful Impact on Safety

With all corrective actions and observations centralized, ATC now has a consistent process and clear view of risk across the organization. Managers can understand what their teams are responsible for, leadership can see trends, and teams no longer rely on inaccessible spreadsheets.

The benefits extend beyond process improvement. In ATC’s safety-driven culture, the ultimate impact is human.

Corinne shared the most important outcome:

“At the end of the day, the benefit is making sure the contractors we work with get home to their families, their friends, and their loved ones.”

This centralization supports:

• Clearer visibility into risks and outstanding work
• Stronger accountability at the department level
• More consistent safety practices across the organization
• Better preparation for long-term planning and goal-setting
• Greater organizational learning from past events

As the company continues to mature the solution, Onspring serves as the foundation for data-driven safety insights.

Looking Ahead

Using AI to Uncover Patterns and Support Human Judgment

ATC is preparing a pilot of Onspring’s portal features and is enthusiastic about Onspring AI. The team sees potential for identifying patterns in observations, situational learning events, and corrective actions that would be difficult to surface manually.

Corinne shared her anticipation for AI-assisted analysis, “I am really excited about the AI tools and how I can use them to look across our events and observations to see where we have patterns.”

She also emphasized that AI is not a replacement for human expertise, but an accelerator.

Advice for other organizations

Corinne provided clear guidance for teams considering Onspring:

“Consider your licensing carefully.”

ATC initially relied heavily on surveys for users without licenses. This created a “black box” experience for people submitting information but unable to see the results. As soon as ATC expanded licensing and increased direct access, adoption grew, and teams began identifying new use cases on their own.

Relationship with Onspring

Corinne summarized ATC’s relationship with Onspring as foundational to consistency:

“Onspring really gives ATC that central source of truth for individuals to go and look at that source of record and know where that information is coming from.”