Choosing a Pole Audit Partner: 7 Evaluation Criteria for Utility Teams

Regular, detailed pole audits aren’t a luxury–they’re a necessity. From recovering lost revenue to ensuring safety to staying on the right side of regulatory oversight, the rewards of high-quality audits are far-ranging and potentially lucrative.

Moreover, pole audits aren’t just a standalone activity–they’re a system input. Audits are the foundation for permitting accuracy, billing integrity, and long-term joint-use governance.

But how can you as a utility know which audit partner is the best? Based on our 40+ years of experience managing millions of poles on behalf of utilities across the country, we’ve assembled the following practical checklist to help you evaluate your options.

Why a Thorough Pole Audit Matters More Than Ever

Utility poles across the country are aging, while at the same time, demand for telecom service is growing. Without thorough audits, overloaded or unsafe pole conditions may go undetected — increasing risks to public safety and regulatory compliance.

Not only can a high-quality audit help you stay compliant with NESC and other standards, it can help you recover significant rent funds from unauthorized attachers.

Moreover, having accurate pole data helps you avoid slowdowns in the permitting process and minimizes rework. Plus there’s the broader impacts on your brand–everyone from regulators to attachers to internal leadership expect and deserve reliable data.

In other words, an audit is more than simply a report–it’s foundational infrastructure work that has ripple effects across your utility’s operations.

1. Proven Field Accuracy and Repeatable Processes

Audits with inconsistent data can expose utilities to risks including safety concerns and compliance gaps. Your vendor should be able to demonstrate high accuracy rates in asset tagging, attachment verification, and measurement data. Also ask them about the level of their staff’s training and what QC steps their process entails.

The Alpine Differentiator: We maintain a full-time field staff comprising dedicated professionals with a track record of generating accurate field reports.

2. Back-Billing and Cost Recovery Support

Data without billing alignment means unrealized ROI. Your pole audit partner should make it easy to go from raw data to actionable intelligence for billing purposes.

Unauthorized attachers should be clearly identified and documented by photo and GPS evidence. Assets that are inactive, duplicated, or have ownership discrepancies–e.g. the pole is billed to the wrong entity–should be flagged as well.

Depending on your billing rules, it may be the attachers’ obligation to cover the cost of the audit, a contract stipulation which your audit partner can help you enforce.

The Alpine Differentiator: We prioritize revenue capture by digitally formatting our data to integrate seamlessly with your billing workflow.

3. Compliance-Driven, Not Just Data-Driven

Can your vendor provide examples of instances where their audit findings helped prevent NESC or wind-loading violations? These types of errors can be missed by auditors without the right tools or training.

Obstructions like tree overgrowth can make it difficult to spot potential violations. A reliable vendor will have field protocols in place to ensure these aren’t missed.

Bottom line: look for vendors with utility-grade engineering insight—not just data collectors.

The Alpine Differentiator: Our crews have a strong compliance focus, including NESC enforcement, along with the training to do the job right.

4. Clear Reporting and Visual Evidence

High-quality photos, GPS-tagged data, and compatible formatting should all be staples of the deliverables you receive from your audit vendor, because they are the keys to turning audits into beneficial action.

Ask any potential vendors to submit a sample report before you make any final decision.

The Alpine Differentiator: We issue only transparent, easy-to-scan audits backed by visuals and integrated permitting follow-up.

5. Integration with Permitting and Joint-Use Systems

Data collected from an audit should be able to flow directly into your joint-use records and update permit status and attachment tracking automatically. This reduces information gaps and enables a closed-loop compliance cycle.

The Alpine Differentiator: We facilitate tight integration between audit and permit workflows; in fact, we house both in the same place–in our cutting-edge Permit Tracker–for easy access at any time.

6. Real Utility References and Case Studies

A practical way to get a sense of an audit provider’s capabilities and fit for your operations is to ask if they’ve worked with a utility of your size and complexity before. Do they have examples of revenue recovered or marked improvement over prior vendors?

You can also ask them to provide testimonials from those clients or even reach out to them yourself to get their opinion of the vendor straight from the horse’s mouth.

The Alpine Differentiator: We’re trusted by major utilities that have put more than 2.5 million poles under our oversight.

7. Transparency and Accountability

As you’re requesting information from potential vendors, do they seem happy to share it or are they giving you pushback? A good audit partner will offer full transparency, not black-box solutions.

In particular, you should be able to learn how they train staff, correct mistakes, and document field work, as they are important factors in mitigating risk and keeping public records.

The Alpine Differentiator: We’re happy to walk you through our training process, explain our rework commitment, show you field work documentation examples, and more.

Choose a Partner, Not Just a Vendor

Good auditors are invested in infrastructure outcomes, and good audits should pay for themselves through revenue capture and compliance.

As an audit partner, Alpine offers end-to-end lifecycle support: auditing, permit cleanup, ongoing joint-use administration, and revenue protection. If your utility is exploring audits, we invite you to request a sample report or schedule a consultation to see how we check the boxes as a premier auditing partner.

Take the Guesswork out of Your Next Pole Audit

Contact us today to find out why Alpine is trusted by utilities with over 2 million poles nationwide and to get started auditing your pole network.