ST. PAUL, Minn., June 25, 2004 — “Our first EaseOut easement took under an hour. With our old technology, a similar project would have taken the better part of a day. We needed a half mile easement release through a wet, recently plowed cornfield. Using older methods, I’m not sure that we could have gotten the wheel through the mud and corn rows. With EaseOut, we just walk and collect GPS points,” said Daryl Hoffman, Minnesota Valley Electric Cooperative’s Engineering Manager. Minnesota Valley runs EaseOut on a Fujitsu Tablet PC, which is shared between their field designers.
“Easements used to take so long that we weren’t collecting as many as we should have been. This technology will let us collect more easements using less manpower. Using GPS makes the easements more accurate too. EaseOut will help protect our cooperative from litigation,” said Hoffman. Minnesota Valley serves seven counties, each with slightly different easement requirements. EaseOut generates a flexible legal description of the property to satisfy each county’s reporting requirements.
Corey Maple, MiniMax Corporation’s President said “Based on Hoffman’s experience collecting easements four to ten times faster and EaseOut’s low initial price, I’m confident that Minnesota Valley will see a return on their investment in under a month. Minnesota Valley has been using StakeOut to streamline their work order process for five years. We are glad to be able to help streamline their easement process now too. “
About MiniMax
MiniMax Corporation of St. Paul, Minnesota provides a wide range of solutions for the utility industry and is the industry leader in work order automation and staking (field design) software. StakeOut(, MiniMax’s flagship software package, automates the entire utility work order process – from field design to work order tracking to close-out. Utilities across North America use StakeOut( to efficiently manage and streamline their entire work order process.
MiniMax’s other solutions include: ScadaCam(, a Web-based security monitoring system for electric facilities; LookOut: ( The Electronic MapBook, which enables enterprise-wide map availability; EaseOut(, a field-based legal easement generator; services including innovative field mapping solutions and GIS implementation plus a host of other automation products and services useful to the utility industry.
