Plan vegetation management programs by designing and evaluating alternative scope scenarios, informed by a clear view of the risk and cost tradeoffs.

Scenarios is how you plan programs in the Overstory Platform. Design multiple vegetation management programs, explore alternate scenarios within each one, and make confident, defensible decisions about what to execute — all before committing resources in the field.

Most planning teams today work with a single plan at a time, making it hard to objectively evaluate tradeoffs or respond quickly when conditions change. With Scenarios, you can now maintain multiple programs simultaneously, explore alternative scopes of work within each, and compare potential outcomes side by side — in terms of reliability risk, workload, and estimated cost.

A Program represents a vegetation management strategy — a defined objective, approach to work, and allocation of resources such as budget or assigned contractors.

Programs are run in parallel to each other. A portfolio of programs might include:

Within each program, you can create multiple scenarios — each one representing a different possible scope of work for that program. A scope of work is defined by where (which exact spans) and when (what year) work gets done.

You can shape a scenario scope via two planning inputs:

As you vary these two inputs defining a scenario scope, you can see how the headline metrics change for a given year.

Every scenario scope results in three summary metrics for a planned year:

Compare these metrics directly, across all the scenarios in your program, for the scope in a given year.

Note: Reliability risk is currently calculated based on Overstory’s Reliability Priority rating for each span. The Reliability P1-P5 categories each carry a weight representing the approximate relative contribution to SAIFI expected. This value reflects the share of total scanned network risk that is in scope for a scenario in a given year. Since not all risk is removed from trimming, this is not intended to indicate a reduction in risk. In H2 2026, we will express risk in absolute terms (e.g. Customer Minutes of Interruption), calibrated to your network outage history.

Scenarios have three possible states: active, alternate, and archive.

All scenarios start as alternates, used to draft, compare, and drive decisions.

Only one scenario per program can be published as “active” at a time. This is the scenario your team is executing. Active scenario scope cannot be edited directly; to make changes, duplicate and update an alternate scenario, then “publish” to designate it as active.

Note: You can maintain program progress details (e.g., dates, contractors) or last work year from the active scenario, which can be viewed across all scenarios.

Scenarios can be archived when you no longer need to reference them.

When you enter a Scenario, the initial screen is view-only. To make changes to span targeting rules or plan year sequencing, enter Edit mode. Exit edit mode when you are done, to protect your plans from accidental changes.

Throughout your program planning process, use Scenarios to create options, make refinements, and get alignment on a final decision. Scenarios can be used for upfront annual planning, or to support small in-year updates, like shifts in budget, weather, crew capacity, or organizational priorities.

Use Scenarios to compare alternative approaches to your regular maintenance cycle, subject to a budget or workload constraint. You can do this by “pulling in” high-risk circuits to the next work year, and “pushing out” low-risk circuits. You can also test whether more targeted trim approaches (e.g., only trimming P1s and P2s) could reduce risk more efficiently than the current strategy.

Set up a dedicated program for a specific use case — such as a hotspot inspection program or a wildfire mitigation trim program — with its own objective, cost structure, and strategy. Estimate how much additional risk can be targeted while keeping within a budget or workload constraint.

Track progress for any of your Programs in Overstory. Within the “Active plan” view, edit the Program’s circuit-level status, start and end dates, contractor assigned, notes, and last work year. These values will be viewable as you edit any scenario.

Scenarios gives planners a structured way to document the alternatives they considered and the logic behind their final decision. The headline metrics related to a particular scenario scope (reliability risk, workload, estimated cost) are designed to translate directly into the language your leadership, regulators and key stakeholders care about.

How many programs can I create? There is no fixed limit. You can maintain as many programs as your organization needs — for example, separate programs for cycle maintenance, hotspot work, and wildfire mitigation running simultaneously.

How many scenarios can exist within a program? You can create multiple scenarios within a single program. There is no hard cap. To keep your list of scenarios manageable, archive or delete those that are no longer useful.

What happens when I select a scenario as active? That scenario becomes the designated plan being executed. It is locked from direct editing. Other scenarios remain accessible and can continue to be developed or referenced.

Can I change the active scenario after it’s been set? The active scenario scope can be unpublished and archived, but not directly edited. To revise it, create or modify a different scenario and publish that one, instead. The last work year and progress fields can be changed from within the active scenario.

How is reliability risk calculated? This percentage represents the predicted share of your scanned network’s encroachment-related SAIFI addressed by a scenario (because we do not make an assumption about varying duration of outages, this is equivalent to SAIDI). The calculation is based on Overstory’s reliability priority rating, P1-P5, and a weight assigned to each based on typical contribution to customer outage instances.

Who can modify programs and scenarios? Currently, any user with Overstory access can edit scenarios when in Edit mode. If you have specific requirements around permissions, please share feedback with your Overstory team.

How do I enter Edit mode? Open the scenario you want to modify and select Edit. Changes you make in Edit mode — to span targeting rules or circuit sequencing — will update the scenario’s headline statistics in real time as you plan.

This section will be updated as new capabilities are added to Scenarios.

April 21, 2026 — Initial release