From the Desk to the Field: How Lansing Board of Water and Light Modernized Risk Management

Discover how a leading municipal utility moved from a 20-year-old legacy database to a cloud-based RMIS, freeing their risk team to focus on safety rather than data entry.

The Challenge: The Legacy Log Jam

For over a decade, the Lansing Board of Water and Light (LBWL)—which provides electricity, water, and steam to Central Michigan—relied on a Microsoft Access database built in the 1990s. As the organization grew, this legacy system created critical operational risks:

• The "IT Brain Drain": As senior IT staff retired, the institutional knowledge required to maintain the complex Access database left with them, forcing the Risk team to act as their own IT support.
• Data Silos: With 20 years of files trapped in an on-premise server, analyzing loss trends across the utility’s infrastructure was manual and time-consuming.
• Cyber & Compliance Risk: An organizational push to move expiring systems to the cloud highlighted the vulnerability of their aging infrastructure.

As Josh Oleszczak, Enterprise Risk Management at LBWL, explains: "We had a huge log jam of files... and as IT folks began to retire, we became very limited with who could maintain that system."

The Solution: A "Right-Sized" Cloud Partner

LBWL needed a solution that was robust enough for a municipal utility but agile enough for a lean team. They chose Aclaimant to migrate their data to the cloud and automate their workflow.

Why LBWL Chose Aclaimant

• SaaS Reliability: By moving to Aclaimant, LBWL eliminated the need for internal IT maintenance. Updates, security, and uptime are managed entirely by the Aclaimant team.
• Actionable Analytics: New dashboards provide immediate visibility into loss trends—from vehicle accidents to utility pole damage—allowing the team to report to leadership without spending hours scrubbing data.
• Field-First Focus: The ultimate goal of the migration was to reduce desk time. With automated reporting, Josh and his team can spend more time in the field with crews, proactively managing risk.
  
  

The Future: AI & Automation

Looking toward 2026, LBWL is partnering with Aclaimant to integrate AI-driven automation. The goal? To further reduce manual data entry and allow the risk department to focus entirely on operational safety and loss prevention.

Ready to Get Out From Behind Your Desk?

Stop managing spreadsheets and start managing risk. See how Aclaimant can modernize your claims process and give you back the time to focus on your people.

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