{"id":402842,"date":"2021-01-26T05:35:30","date_gmt":"2021-01-26T13:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=wherenext&p=402842"},"modified":"2024-05-10T05:49:28","modified_gmt":"2024-05-10T12:49:28","slug":"vail-ski-resort-snowmaking-expansion","status":"publish","type":"wherenext","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/publications\/wherenext\/vail-ski-resort-snowmaking-expansion","title":{"rendered":"A Digital Twin Fuels Record Expansion at Vail Resort"},"author":501,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[381312,791,407892],"tags":[1661,21622,281,381332,473102],"department":[476812,488812],"wherenext-category":[],"industry":[],"class_list":["post-402842","wherenext","type-wherenext","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cxo-priorities","category-digital-transformation","category-field-operations","tag-asset-management","tag-digital-twin","tag-location-intelligence","tag-operational-awareness","tag-operational-efficiency","department-business-growth","department-emerging-technologies"],"acf":{"short_description":"Go behind the scenes of one of the ski industry\u2019s most ambitious snowmaking expansions with the people who made it happen.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"In the fall of 2018, Bill Kennedy was logging 25,000 to 30,000 steps per day on his Fitbit. That\u2019s an impressive tally under any circumstances, but Kennedy was walking most of those miles on a mountain. The director of land development at Vail Ski Resort in Colorado had spent nearly four decades planning chairlifts, trails, and restaurants at North America\u2019s most popular ski resort, but he had never encountered a project of the scope and urgency he was now facing."},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Right","content":"Article snapshot:<\/strong> Determined to deliver early-season openings to thousands of skiers, management at Vail Ski Resort initiated an expansion of its snowmaking capabilities that relied on a digital twin of the mountain\u2019s infrastructure. But even the team working on the expansion wasn\u2019t sure it would happen in time.","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\u201cFor [this] size project, a lot of us were skeptical, including myself,\u201d Kennedy says.\r\n\r\nThe challenge was an epic snowmaking expansion\u2014reportedly the largest in the ski industry. If it had any hope of success, Kennedy and others at Vail would need strong legs, cutting-edge technology, and a close partnership with a mapmaking colleague. But at the outset, no one was sure that would be enough.\r\n

The Business Challenge of Nature\u2019s Whims <\/strong><\/h3>\r\nBy skiing standards, Vail is massive. It\u2019s the second-largest single-mountain operation in the United States, spanning more than 5,300 acres. (For comparison, the Northeast's largest resort <\/a>covers 1,500 acres.) Vail boasts nearly 200 trails, and its 32 lifts can move 63,000 people every hour.\r\n\r\nMuch like Vail Mountain itself, the international business behind it is a vast operation. Vail Resorts owns more ski destinations than any company in the world, and its network includes coveted retreats like Colorado\u2019s Breckenridge, Utah\u2019s Park City, British Columbia\u2019s Whistler, and Vermont\u2019s Okemo. Holders of the company\u2019s Epic Pass can resort-hop their way through winter.\r\n\r\nVail\u2019s Rocky Mountain location is a snowy oasis averaging 350 inches a year. Unfortunately, businesses don\u2019t run on averages, and at Vail as at most ski resorts, accumulations can vary widely year to year. During the 2018\u201319 winter, the mountain saw 281 inches of natural snow<\/a>. Two years earlier it received just 171. The season\u2019s first flakes might fall in October, November, or even December.\r\n\r\nExecutives in any business can appreciate the downside to that variability. For ski resorts that operate only part of the year, a predictable and early opening to the season has direct impacts on the bottom line. Resorts that can open four or five weeks before natural conditions would normally allow it can extend their season by 25 percent or more and gain a commensurate revenue boost."},{"acf_fc_layout":"form","form_type":"aside","form_position":"Right","form_title":"THE ESRI BRIEF","form_desc":"A biweekly email connecting senior executives and business leaders with thought-provoking articles on location intelligence and critical technology trends.","form_button_label":"Sign up now","form_content":"https:\/\/go.pardot.com\/l\/82202\/2017-10-12\/jw1bmb","form_tag":"low-commitment-form\/sign-up-form"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"In 2018, Vail\u2019s management decided to fund a snowmaking expansion to improve their odds of delivering the early-season openings guests crave. Kennedy calls it \u201cone of the largest single-year expansions that any ski area has taken on in the world,\u201d an assessment he heard from the vendors who installed the equipment. On order: 19 miles of pipes for air and water, 25 transformers, 421 snow guns, and more. The timeline: have the new snowmaking operational before the 2019 ski season.\r\n\r\nRecalling the schedule, Kennedy admits, \u201cWe were probably a little bit late getting into the game in the fall of 2018.\u201d\r\n\r\nWhen executives announced the project, the man who had been quietly mapping Vail\u2019s infrastructure was ready.\r\n

An Unexpected Path to the Slopes <\/strong><\/h3>\r\nMike Krois never dreamed of working on a mountain. He spent his childhood in flip-flops in the desert near Sedona, Arizona, and whenever he imagined his future, it looked sunny and warm. But after graduating from Arizona State University with a degree in economics and not much of a plan, he moved to Vail, a town of fewer than 6,000 residents that attracts more than a million visitors each year.\r\n\r\nThere, Krois launched a career in the aviation industry, eventually working in locations around the world as a dispatcher for a charter airline. Wherever he went, maps piqued his attention. He collected ski trail renderings and spent countless hours in planes, puzzling over the terrain below.\r\n\r\nIn 2015, he channeled that interest into a master\u2019s degree in geographic information system (GIS) technology from the University of Denver. Soon after, he took a job at Vail Ski Resort, and found that the concept of location meant different things to different people on the mountain.\r\n\r\n\u201c[Ski] patrol has their own terminology, grooming has their own words, snowmaking [too],\u201d he explains.\r\n\r\nSki patrollers would tell Krois over the radio that they were standing near 2903. His response was always the same. \u201c\u2018You've got to tell me what chairlift you're by, because I don't know where 2903 is. It's the old phone that used to be there 20 years ago.\u2019\u201d\r\n\r\nTo Krois, the situation was clear. Like many businesses that manage physical facilities, Vail\u2019s teams were hamstrung by location folklore, a charming but inefficient way of communicating where assets are and where employees need to be. What they needed was location intelligence<\/a>. Krois set out to create a common language, and put Vail on a new kind of map."},{"acf_fc_layout":"quote","image":402762,"text":"The ski industry has only just begun to see the value in GIS. People just don\u2019t know what they don\u2019t know. But once you show them what can be done, it can open doors.","author_name":"Mike Krois, Vail GIS analyst","author_profession_organization":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

Creating the Mountain\u2019s Digital Twin <\/strong><\/h3>\r\nBeginning in 2016, Krois\u2019s challenge was to map the mountain\u2014in essence, to create a digital twin<\/a> that operational teams and executives could rally around. In part, that meant capturing the knowledge of mountain veterans like Kennedy, who knew the history hidden beneath the snow."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":402892,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Skiers, snowboarders, and mountain bikers rarely think about the hardware buried safely under their feet. But that infrastructure\u2014including the electrical, water, and air lines that power chairlifts and snow guns\u2014is the circulatory system of the business. Historically, it hadn\u2019t been well documented.\r\n\r\n\u201cDecades ago, it was never a thing to track what we did,\u201d Krois explains. \u201cYou'd just bury that pipe and move on. A lot of my job was, \u2018Go talk to the old operator who did that 25 years ago. He probably has an idea of what happened, and we need to document it and map it.\u2019\u201d\r\n\r\nWorking with veterans like Kennedy, Krois created the beginnings of the mountain\u2019s digital twin, capturing asset locations in a database and leveraging the ability of GIS technology to create replicas of both natural and built environments. He then used GIS to generate smart maps for employees. Kate Schifani, who runs Vail\u2019s snowmaking operation, says the maps\u2014and the common language they created\u2014have been a boon to her team.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt really helps with our learning curve for brand-new snowmakers,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause you can send them out there, and they've got the map on their phone, and we can say, \u2018Go down this line.\u2019\"\r\n\r\n\u201cIt sounds simple,\u201d Krois adds, \u201cbut it goes back to efficiencies. It gets these people up to speed really fast.\u201d\r\n\r\nAs Krois\u2019s digital-twin work progressed in the back half of 2018, Vail executives approved the massive snowmaking expansion that they hoped would deliver consistent early openings and longer seasons. It was a major investment, and management wanted it done in record time. With hard work and location intelligence to guide them, Kennedy, Krois, and Schifani had a shot at success.\r\n

A Business Investment in Predictable Openings<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nUnlike ski resorts in the eastern US that must make snow all winter, Vail\u2019s snowmaking season starts early and ends by mid-January, when natural snowfall and cold temperatures take over."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":402822,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"The aim is to open the resort in November\u2014often before Thanksgiving. To make that happen, Schifani\u2019s team operates in two 12-hour shifts from October to January. \u201cWithout snowmaking, we would still have a great ski season,\u201d she says. \u201cBut this year, for example, we would have a great ski season five weeks later than we had thought we would.\u201d\r\n\r\nIn 2018, Vail\u2019s snowmaking capacity was concentrated near the mountain\u2019s midsection, on trails that were subject to sun exposure and lacked beginner runs. Vail executives focused the snowmaking expansion at the top of the mountain\u2014around 11,000 feet, where temperatures can be 8 to 10 degrees colder, holding snow through the winter. (Counterintuitively, the higher elevations also host beginner trails, which meant Vail could accommodate a broader range of guests earlier in the season.)\r\n\r\nThat August, Krois huddled with Vail\u2019s planning and operations teams to map the massive expansion in GIS. With digital maps projected on big screens, they plotted where pipes would run and where snow guns would sit along the trails\u2014creating a system that would return at least 75 percent of the water it used to the local watershed. Kennedy describes the weekly meetings as \u201c20 people talking about what was going on and making adjustments on the fly, with Mike sitting there and making those changes.\u201d Kennedy adds, \u201cI'm not a real technology guy, but when it does the things that I saw it doing, I become a believer.\u201d\r\n\r\nWith the digital plan in place, it was time for a reality check.\r\n

Walking the Mountain as the Clock Winds Down<\/strong><\/h3>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Right","content":"Map Powers a Digital Twin in the Control Room<\/strong>\r\n\r\nWhen Mike Krois captured Vail Ski Resort\u2019s assets and utilities in GIS technology, he essentially created the digital twin for a sophisticated system of automation.\r\n\r\nIn Vail\u2019s control room, a manager constantly monitors that digital twin\u2014a map of the mountain\u2019s compressors, pumps, water and air valves, snow guns, and other hardware involved in the mountain\u2019s maintenance.\r\n\r\nOccasionally the control room manager clicks a mouse to adjust water flows or start snow guns.\r\n\r\n\u201cAnytime we're turning things on from the system, it's basically off the map that Mike gave them,\u201d explains Kate Schifani, Vail\u2019s snowmaking manager. \u201cSo you can graphically see what hydrants are green\u2014lit up\u2014so I know what's running.\u201d\r\n\r\nThroughout the winter, the snowmaking team adds notes to GIS smart maps, creating a road map for maintenance.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe can go through and see, okay, I\u2019ve got a couple ball valves that we're going to replace when it gets warm,\u201d Schifani says. \u201cWe'll save that for the summer, and then we'll go investigate. It's super easy just to be able to see that and see it where it is on the hill.\u201d","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\u201cAs much as I try to make it a science to plot out where we put these fans,\u201d Krois says, \u201cit's equal parts art, because . . . the winds at one area may blow out of the northwest, and then 100 feet up they may blow out of the southwest.\u201d\r\n\r\nDetermined to blend those subtleties with science, the GIS analyst and the Vail veteran walked the mountain together. Krois used a handheld GPS device to identify the snow gun locations they had planned in the office, and Kennedy used his decades of experience to make tweaks that would ensure skier safety and give Schifani\u2019s team the best chance of making the most snow.\r\n\r\nSoon after Krois and Kennedy finished the updates, winter buried Vail Mountain in its splendor. When spring 2019 dawned, the pair began walking the hill again, this time consulting the project\u2019s GIS-based digital twin. Along the way, they drove stakes into the ground to indicate where each new piece of infrastructure should go.\r\n\r\nBy late spring, all that was left to do was install 19 miles of hardware in the ground, capture every piece\u2019s coordinates in GIS, and open the new-and-improved Vail six months later.\r\n\r\nThat phase of the project drew on a trusted slate of outside companies\u2014engineers, construction teams, power specialists, and more. As the contractors poured in that spring and summer, digging trenches, burying hardware, and connecting systems, they were guided by the location intelligence Krois had captured in the project plan. Kennedy says the digital tools made a difference.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe time that we're saving is immense with the technology,\u201d he says.\r\n\r\nAs summer 2019 turned into fall, the fickle Colorado skies dealt Krois and the team one final test. Krois was on the mountain with the contractors, capturing GIS data.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe're literally installing the last pump house,\u201d Krois recalls, \u201cand it is dumping snow. [We\u2019re] down to the wire getting the system put together.\u201d\r\n\r\nWith management on edge and thousands of skiers looking forward to opening day, the stakes were high.\r\n\r\n\u201cEveryone was holding their breath that we're going to do this,\u201d Krois says. \u201cAnd we did.\u201d\r\n\r\nWhen the new system came to life, Kennedy felt a surge of excitement. \u201cThis was really a big step for the company and for Vail Mountain,\u201d he says."},{"acf_fc_layout":"quote","image":402772,"text":"Our goal is to use all this technology and make it ultimately easier for us when we're building [the snowmaking system], but [also] easier for the operator to run and operate and visualize and maintain all this equipment long term.","author_name":"Bill Kennedy, Vail director of land development","author_profession_organization":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

Leave the Snowcat, Take the Shovel <\/strong><\/h3>\r\nThe project paid off handsomely that season, and even more so the next. As November 2020 approached, Vail\u2019s executives and operations managers faced a pandemic and a drought. The expanded snowmaking capacity helped them address both.\r\n\r\nThrough the work of Schifani and her team, Vail opened in November with 200 acres of terrain\u2014more than double its previous early-season capacity. The extra territory was timed well for the era of social distancing, allowing skiers and riders to spread out.\r\n\r\n\u201cNone of that would have happened on natural snowfall this year,\u201d she explains.\r\n\r\nThe mountain\u2019s digital twin has also made everyday operations much more efficient for Schifani\u2019s team. During the first week of January, snowmakers realized air wasn\u2019t reaching a set of snow guns. The team needed to manually open a valve housed inside a vault buried underground beneath six feet of snow.\r\n\r\n\u201cNone of us knew exactly where that vault was,\u201d Schifani says. \u201cIf we didn't have that [mapping] technology, our options basically would have been to get a snowcat and doze out a 30-by-30-foot section of this run.\u201d Then they would have had to painstakingly probe 900 square feet of earth until they struck the vault.\r\n\r\nInstead, they used GIS data to identify the vault\u2019s exact location, and quickly accessed it without disrupting the adjacent trail or wasting hours. \u201cIt's way easier to go, \"Oh, it's right here, get the shovel.\u2019\u201d Schifani explains. \u201cOur technology saved us there.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"quote","image":402782,"text":"Schifani\u2019s take on location intelligence: \u201cWe use it every day. I don't want to think about having to do this job without it.\u201d","author_name":"Kate Schifani, Vail snowmaking manager","author_profession_organization":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

Hard Work and Technology Drive Success <\/strong><\/h3>\r\nEveryone involved in Vail\u2019s snowmaking expansion knew the scope and urgency of the challenge, and worked tirelessly to achieve it. Even so, those closest to the project, including Krois, Kennedy, and Schifani, seem convinced that their effort alone wouldn\u2019t have been enough, if not for the location technology<\/a> supporting them.\r\n\r\nIndeed, it\u2019s hard to imagine asking a contractor to install equipment somewhere near a phone that no longer exists. Communicating through maps informed by a digital twin<\/a> of the mountain helped the Vail team and its partners meet a major business milestone with unprecedented speed.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe wouldn't have been able to make that plan without the map that basically showed us this is what you need to do,\u201d Schifani says. \u201cBut we did, which is great. Because it was an awesome opening.\u201d"}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"\nVail Ski Resort Uses Digital Twin to Speed Snowmaking Expansion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As a team at Vail Ski Resort began one of the biggest snowmaking expansions in the industry, time wasn\u2019t on their side. But technology was.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/publications\/wherenext\/vail-ski-resort-snowmaking-expansion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Digital Twin Fuels Record Expansion at Vail Resort\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As a team at Vail Ski Resort began one of the biggest snowmaking expansions in the industry, time wasn\u2019t on their side. 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