Empower Users Group (EUG) 2025

This year’s Empower Users Group (EUG) brought together practitioners, tool builders, and agency leaders around a clear theme: make your data useful. From a look back at EVM’s original intent to hands-on lessons in scaling Empower, the conversations focused on better analysis, cleaner data, and workflows that serve decision-makers, not just compliance.

Key Highlights and Takeaways

Empower Product Updates You’ll Feel Day-to-Day

Encore shipped 11 releases since last EUG, including dashboard sharing across databases, bulk “export all open windows,” frozen headers in standard reports, separate positive/negative VAR thresholds, and richer SEM Assisted Intelligence reports. Import/export got faster and smarter (XML pre-parsing, DOE JSON support), with stronger security controls and optional rootless Docker images.

AI Moves From Hype to Help

Two tracks emerged: DOE’s Walt 2.0 (an agentic AI chatbot for PARS data) and Empower’s LLM integrations for tasks like VAR summarization, prompts-driven custom reports, and EAC scenario narratives—useful accelerators that still require human review.

Enterprise Adoption Lessons

Lockheed, General Atomics, Bechtel, and others shared practical playbooks: start with quick wins, standardize dashboards, build internal champions, regression-test new builds, and keep nonspecialists in the loop to avoid “tool-only” failure modes.

Data Protection and Sharing

File “sanitize” features help strip CUI/proprietary elements for troubleshooting and support; organizations are moving from ShareFile to more secure enclaves and tightening script permissions.

Scale, Stability, and IT Fit

Dockerized deployments, publish-level controls, shared calendars/portfolios, and access logging support large, multi-program environments with clearer gates for when data is “ready.”

Building Connections

Beyond features, the most valuable exchanges were about cadence and culture: how teams coordinate cost/schedule updates, make VARs more consistent, and create repeatable review rhythms that stand up to audits and real-world pressure.

Why This Matters to Us—and You

Our clients need reliable, explainable performance insight. EUG 2025 reinforced that the path there is practical: cleaner inputs, shared dashboards, guardrails for data handling, and targeted AI that saves time without removing judgment. If you’re looking to make the complex simple, let’s talk!

Stay tuned as we apply these lessons across active programs—and if you’re evaluating Empower, enterprise scheduling, or EVMS process refinements, we’re happy to compare notes.