Role summary:

This role is the on-ground anchor for a large-scale grid digitization and modernization project running inside a large state electricity distribution utility. The Manager owns the day-to-day relationship with the utility, keeps technical deployment on track, and clears the operational and bureaucratic friction that typically stalls this kind of project inside a government-linked organization.

Key responsibilities:

i. Stakeholder and relationship management:

- Serve as the primary day-to-day point of contact between the project and utility officials across all operating circles, building working relationships from field engineers up to circle-level and senior leadership.

- Represent the project in periodic reviews with utility leadership; prepare clear, concise progress briefings that sustain buy-in and pre-empt pushback.

- Read internal utility politics accurately, knowing which approvals need which sign-off and which relationships to invest in to keep the project moving without escalation.

ii. Project delivery:

- Coordinate on-ground deployment of digital grid-monitoring and asset-mapping tools, including geo-tagging of physical infrastructure (poles, transformers, substations, feeders).

- Track installation and rollout progress against agreed milestones; identify slippage early and escalate before it compounds into a larger delay.

- Facilitate and manage the formal approvals required to keep deployment moving, such as MoUs, data-sharing agreements, and site access permissions, chasing these proactively rather than waiting on the utility's own timelines.

- Support planning and execution of new technical pilots as the project expands into additional circles or new asset categories.

iii. Training and adoption:

- Design and run structured training sessions for utility field staff and engineers on new digital tools and processes.

- Track actual adoption and usage of deployed tools post-training, not just attendance; flag where staff have reverted to old methods and address the root cause.

- Build simple, repeatable training materials that can be reused as the project scales to new teams or circles.

iv. Data and problem-solving:

- Monitor asset-tagging and data-quality progress against project targets; identify and escalate systemic data gaps to technical leads.

- Identify recurring operational bottlenecks, such as approval delays, staff turnover, resistance to new tools, or inconsistent data practices, and propose practical, utility-specific workarounds rather than generic fixes.