For distribution networks
Sovereign by design. Auditable by default.
A shared connection layer is adoptable only if it leaves authority exactly where the National Electricity Rules put it. Gridmark is built on that condition, not around it.
What the network keeps
Why participate
Not revenue. Efficiency.
Standard control services sit under a revenue control, so connecting customers faster does not by itself earn a network more. What the framework does reward is expenditure efficiency. Connection assessment is engineering labour, and engineering labour is recurrent operating expenditure.
Under the Efficiency Benefit Sharing Scheme a network retains the benefit of a genuine recurrent opex efficiency for a period before it passes through to consumers at the next determination. Deploy, realise the efficiency, retain the transitional benefit, let the lower efficient cost become revealed cost. That is the behaviour incentive regulation exists to produce, and it is the behaviour Gridmark is designed to make measurable.
Which is why the proposition to a network is a measurement, not a software purchase. A pilot establishes labour-hours per application, cycle time, rework rate and decision quality: the evidence a network would need to make a defensible efficiency case. Finding out whether a recurrent efficiency exists is a small, ordinary decision.
Software of this kind is fundable as opex; the AER's current determinations include substantial SaaS implementation expenditure. The test is prudency and measured benefit, and the pilot produces exactly that evidence.
What a demonstration involves
| Phase | What happens |
|---|---|
| Mobilisation | Co-design formalised. Your rules workshopped and encoded with your connections engineers, each rule carrying its source, clause, version and effective date. A named product owner on your side approves every threshold. |
| Shadow mode | Real cases flow through Gridmark in parallel with your existing process. Nothing changes for applicants or assessors. The comparison establishes rule accuracy and the baseline. |
| Controlled live use | Selected cases assessed with Gridmark in the loop, your engineer deciding, every evaluation and decision audit-logged. Independent time-and-motion measurement. |
| Knowledge sharing | An implementation playbook, the open Common Connection Data Standard, and a national connection-process benchmark, so the networks that follow do not repeat your integration work. |
Contributions can be structured as a paid pilot with separately tracked in-kind staff time, credited against a first commercial subscription. First movers shape the open standard rather than inheriting one.
Talk to us before you decide anything
A briefing is forty minutes: what it is, what it is not, what a demonstration would ask of your team, and what it would measure.