General Electric pretty much does everything, from making water heaters to designing nuclear reactors (very big water heaters) and the electric grids that snake out from them. And while you want GE giving your pressurized water reactor its annual tune-up, when it comes to digital maps – as Apple found out the hard way – it’s Google you want on the job.

GE just announced a partnership with Google to license Google maps for use in its geographic information system (GIS) dubbed Smallworld. Smallworld is a set of software tools used by engineers to help design and manage things like electric grids, pipelines, telecom networks and other large, critical systems of stuff that guys in trucks tend to keep an eye on. Ironically, Smallworld is about to get a lot bigger as it opens its walled garden up to Google Maps. But Google Maps could start to evolve too as the mapping needs of this new set of industrial users starts banging away on it.

Just as office-bound folks started to bring their tablets, smartphones and other consumer tech to work because it just worked better, GE landed on Google Maps for its accuracy and familiarity, says Bryan Friehauf, the product line leader of software solutions for GE’s Digital Energy business. “Everyone has such high expectations around the quality of these kinds of tools because of their own consumer experience,” Friehauf says. “Those expectations and how we use technology is now going into the industrial realm. We can roll out Google Maps, and I don’t have to have a manual for it, millions of people are already familiar with it.”

While GE hasn’t announced pricing yet, for an annual fee associated with Smallworld, engineers will have unlimited access to Google maps as an additional layer of information. So, say someone is designing the routing of a fiber optic network, they will be able to couple their design with a street view from Google to adjust the course of the fiber to avoid running across a parking lot or through a house. That same view will be accessible from the field on Android-powered smartphones and tablets, allowing revisions to be made on the fly—and ideally before the expensive business of sending trucks and digging holes commences.

Those simple features, available for some time to consumers, will be a great leap forward in the industrial sector, Friehauf says, and he imagines how Google could help push it even further for this new set of users. “What about 3-D visualizations, so instead of Street View, we started getting below the street and above it?” he says. The next industrial version of Google Maps could display all the electric lines and pipe systems running below ground and then show how they branch out and terminate inside houses and buildings.

Friehauf also imagines how that extra detail could get pushed back out to consumers. For example, an electric utility could combine a schematic of its electric grid with an outage map. During an outage people sitting in the dark could call up Google maps (assuming their phone or tablets have a charge) and zoom in on their neighborhood. Utilities could color code specific houses or blocks with the estimated time it will take for the lights to come on. “You’ll know whether to sit tight, or to start looking for a hotel to spend the night,” Friehauf says.

The version of Google Maps that is being licensed to GE has the ads stripped out, but it won’t be all work all the time. “If you’re out in the field you’ll still be able to see the location of coffee shops and restaurants while you’re laying out your electric grid,” Friehauf says. Engineers gotta eat too.