O’Fallon is a thriving community of about 30,000 residents located in the southwestern corner of Illinois. City professionals are committed to maintaining O’Fallon’s beauty and fostering a safe environment for its residents. As part of this commitment, the city has taken a proactive approach to managing and maintaining residential rental properties.

The O’Fallon Crime-Free Housing Program is a partnership between the Community Development Department, the Police Department, residential property owners, and renters. The purpose of the program is to reduce misdemeanors in and around rental properties by taking a proactive approach against crime.

In order to obtain a residential rental license within the city, property owners must comply with the requirements of the O’Fallon crime-free rental housing ordinance. This includes:

• Participating in crime-free training seminars
• Conducting residential inspections
• Renewing annual licenses
• Including crime-free addendums in rental leases with accompanying signatures

This combination of education, inspections, and licensing has proven essential to the success of the program, but keeping track of the data and paperwork can be a daunting task. City employees found themselves bogged down with the complexities of tracking the ordinance requirements, and they needed a way to better manage and simplify its processes.

The City of O’Fallon is a longtime user of Cityworks AMS, and they decided to expand to Cityworks PLL (permits, licensing, and land) in 2017. Today, the crime-free housing program is just one of many community development initiatives managed within Cityworks PLL.

Read: 7 Tips for a Successful Data Migration

“Cityworks expanded upon our previous capabilities,” said Jessica Short, community development coordinator at O’Fallon. “Record keeping in general with Cityworks is much easier than what we had before, and it allows us to retrieve accurate data quickly and easily. Our transition to Cityworks PLL has been nearly seamless.”

Collaborating Across Departments

One of the critical components of the crime-free housing program is the collaboration between the Community Development Department and the Police Department. They needed a way to share real-time ordinance information across departments.

The Community Development Department handles the administration of the program in Cityworks, including issuing licenses, collecting fees, sending renewal notices, scheduling inspections, registering licenses for training seminars, and more.

Meanwhile, the Police Department hosts crime free training seminars for property owners, responds to calls for service, and ensures property owners and managers are made aware of calls. They help identify rental properties that are not registered in the program and confirm whether a property is vacant and no longer requires a license.

The two departments share information through Cityworks and use the streamlined workflows to view the status of licenses, inspections, and seminar attendance.

Communicating with the Public

The success of the program also relies on a reliable record of communication with the public. Currently, the city uses Cityworks PLL to track nearly 3,000 licenses, representing more than 3,800 rental units. The community development department sends regular notices to each licensee regarding upcoming deadlines for fees, inspections, and seminars attendance. Copies of these communications are attached to each case so they can be easily pulled without having to locate a separate file.

“Having access to this communication history is especially helpful if we ever need to go to court,” explains Short. “We can also link cases in PLL so we can easily navigate from one to the next and keep all related information together.”

Visualizing Trends on a Map

In addition to having the data in one central location, Short says the team is now enjoying the benefits of having a program that ties into GIS. This is especially helpful for city inspectors who track their work on iPads in the field.

“The mapping component gives us a visual look at the rental properties and concentrations within neighborhoods,” Short said. “We have been using workflows and maximizing that functionality, and the inspection and reporting capabilities have been very useful.”

When it comes to return on investment, Short feels the success they’ve experienced so far speaks for itself.

“Although we haven’t performed specific measurements yet, we can absolutely see it saving us time, money, and physical resources. Cityworks has enabled us to do a lot of things electronically we couldn’t before.”

In the future, the city plans to implement additional efficiencies within the workflows to save time, paper, and money. They also hope to implement online solutions that enable the public to submit permits, pay fees, and renew licenses. With each process improvement, the Community Development Department improves the level of service they provide to their residents—ultimately enhancing quality of life citywide.

Lindsay Ferguson is a contributing writer for Cityworks.

There may be no city in America that loves trees more than Philadelphia. More than 10 percent of Philadelphia’s land area—16 square miles—is home to the largest managed urban park system in the world. With more than 1.63 million park and street trees, Philadelphia’s living assets outnumber people.

Under the care of the Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation (PP&R), the city’s trees thrive and grow not only in size but also in number. The city and its residents have planted more than 300,000 trees since 2010, when a corporate-sponsored program called Tree Philly set a goal of establishing a 30 percent urban tree canopy by 2025.

About the same time Tree Philly kicked off, PP&R embarked on a three-phase implementation of Cityworks and Esri solutions with POWER Engineers and EBA Engineering. The initial phase of the project established multiple requirements for this vast number of highly dynamic assets that, unlike pipes and poles, appreciate in value and consistently change as they grow and age.

The discovery work established 439 functional and non-functional requirements for the future system. On the operational side, PP&R needed an asset registry for risk management of disease- or storm-damaged trees, plus data for capital planning.

On the ecological side, they needed to store information to support proactive management of tree diversity and environmental impact modeling for stormwater management, canopy cooling, and carbon dioxide sequestration. This data would not only benefit PP&R, but also inform the Green Infrastructure Initiative, an ambitious plan spearheaded by the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) to improve quality of life for all Philadelphians.

In terms of technology performance, PP&R required reliable remote data capture to record the dynamic information about each tree—including diameter, condition, height, and changing canopy coverage. They needed to easily document customer requests, as well as individual tree and planting site conditions. They needed to efficiently assign work to contracted vendors. And, they requested effective data management and work assignments for field crews using iPads who respond to about 22,000 public service requests per year. Reliability of these mobile applications was crucial to ensure that collected data wouldn’t be lost if the connection was interrupted.

The compatibility of Esri’s ArcGIS Online, applications, and add-ons, as well as the foundation of Cityworks 15.3 technology and mobile native apps, allowed for configuration of a “right fit” solution for office, field, and mobile applications.

As the project moved closer to the pilot and testing phases, further refinements emerged as the team aligned with International Asset Management (IAM) and International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) best practices.

To reduce hardware expense and system maintenance, the POWER and EBA team designed a fully scalable cloud architecture for Cityworks 15.3 deployment in Amazon Web Services. This step required the help of the Philadelphia Office of Innovation and Technology in meeting city standards and service level agreements. The project used the cloud environment to test the integrated field use of Cityworks mobile and Esri’s Collector applications.

Because most of the planting, pruning, and tree removal work is contracted, PP&R also requested a simplified contract process, which PP&R, Cityworks, and POWER will continue to refine for end users and managers. To capture visual asset data, the team leveraged Cyclomedia Cycloramas to record and extract spatial features with street view photography for reference in the field. PP&R interns gathered accurate tree condition information from Cycloramas and added standardized height measurements from field inspections to fully populate existing tree and planting site data fields. This information can be logged with public service requests so that PP&R staff can assess a tree’s condition, height, and location before they arrive on the scene.

As the comprehensive discovery, pilot, and testing phases near completion, deployment of the full “right fit” pilot is scheduled for later this year. John Piller, PP&R project manager is already eager for go-live. “We look forward to managing our street and park trees as true assets and leveraging the Cityworks and Esri platforms to enhance our business processes with the goal of greater efficiency and customer service to the citizens of the City of Philadelphia,” said Piller.

This emerging coordination between departments and other stakeholders, made possible by technology, will enable the City of Philadelphia to take a holistic and data-driven approach to managing these living assets. In turn, the city’s dynamic urban canopy will continue to enrich environmental health and quality of life for generations to come.

Want more info like this? Explore other City of Philadelphia customer success stories.

Peter Godfrey is a senior consultant who has been working with parks and urban forestry for over 20 years, and Chris Kulchak is a marketing coordinator at POWER Engineers. Contact them at peter.godfrey@powereng.com and chris.kulchak@powereng.com.

“Closed means closed.”

It was a phrase frequently heard within the City of Baltimore’s two largest agencies, the Department of Public Works (DPW) and Department of Transportation (DOT). The phrase was typically used by managers when emphasizing a service request should not be closed until the entire job was completed. On the operations side, parent work orders were often closed before other associated work orders were created. Sometimes, child work orders were not used at all.

On the public-facing 311 side, this led to confusion and frustration. Members of the public often called to say the issues they reported were not addressed or, if they were, not to their satisfaction. In such situations, they would call the city again, this time more frustrated and less confident in the municipality. To make matters worse, the city’s 311 call takers couldn’t provide relevant information to explain what associated work might still be in progress.

Like most municipal governments, the City of Baltimore values quality service, reliability, affordability, and courtesy—yet the reality fell far short of those goals. It was clear that change was needed.

Finding the Fix

Baltimore has been using Cityworks since 2005. It was originally implemented as a work management system for DPW and DOT and has grown to include Recreation and Parks.

To rectify the public information gap and streamline operations, the city realized calls to 311 need to seamlessly flow into Cityworks as service requests. From there, they could be triaged and assigned as work orders for maintenance crews.

Perhaps most importantly, cases in the 311 system need updates from Cityworks to keep both call-takers and customers apprised of the status of the request and of associated repairs.

Cityworks and the 311 system were originally co-hosted by a third party. In order to support the expansion of the system across the enterprise and enhance internal administration of the software, the city engaged KCI to help them migrate Cityworks to a local data center.

It was paramount that Baltimore had a reliable interface between Cityworks and the external 311 system. In 2015, the city worked with KCI to integrate the 311 system and Cityworks. By 2017, the city was readying a transition to a Salesforce cloud-based 311 system. Over the course of 12 months, KCI worked collaboratively with city staff and Incapsulate—the Salesforce implementer—to provide a seamless integration with Cityworks.

Building the Framework

The project began with detailed template mapping to match every Salesforce case to a Cityworks service request, including every possible combination of associated fields and questions. The mapping process ensured that all the information captured in Salesforce could be accurately mapped to a Cityworks service request.

KCI implemented a polling interface to check for new 311 cases every minute, ensuring timely flow of information into Cityworks. In addition, the interface provided Salesforce with status and comments from all logical chained work orders, such as grandchild or multiple work orders.

Implementers used stable, mature, open-source frameworks and message brokers in the systems interface. This approach allowed for minimal code development, streamlined implementation, and easier long-term maintenance.

Enterprise integration patterns treat data as messages, allowing a loose coupling of the Cityworks and Salesforce APIs. Guaranteed delivery mechanisms mean systems interruptions on either end—or loss of network connectivity, even for periods of days—would not lead to data loss. Self-recovery ensures all 311 cases make it into Cityworks and updates return to 311.

Go-Live

Once the configuration was complete, the team performed rigorous testing in a fully functional test site. This included a full practice run for every possible scenario, testing the transfer of messages between systems with pass/fail results, as well as information notification combinations and mapping. A coordinated go-live during evening and weekend hours minimized disruption to the public.

Baltimore City went live with Salesforce 311 and the latest interface in fall 2018. The automated workflow—transferring service requests to work orders and back to customer notification—has heightened call takers’ ability to communicate with the public. In addition, maintenance crews receive timely work orders and have the details of the service request and work orders available to them through the Cityworks mobile application.

The public can also access information about their initial inquiries and all follow-up work. Now when a customer is told the service request is closed, it really means the service request and all of the associated work orders are closed. Callers no longer have to call multiple times to find out the status of their requests.

Equally important, the halls of DPW and DOT are a little quieter. Managers and staff no longer hear the chant “closed means closed,” because they know the people of Baltimore are receiving the best available information.

Prajwol Bhattarai is a Cityworks administrator at Baltimore City DPW. At KCI Technologies, Madeleine Driscoll is an asset management consultant and Jim Somerville is a solutions architect. Contact them at assetmanagement@kci.com.

Local government, public works, and utility organizations rely on many critical business systems to support their operations. From work management and customer service to finance and human resources, municipal staff are often required to access multiple software platforms to determine proper courses of action.

By connecting third-party systems and outside data sources to Cityworks and ArcGIS, you can configure processes that trigger actions directly within Cityworks and vice versa. Implementation beyond the core Cityworks product can dramatically streamline workflows by eliminating the need to retrieve information from several independent systems. Not only does this save valuable staff time—it also improves data integrity and decision-making.

We’ve compiled a list of the seven business functions most commonly integrated with Cityworks. While this is not an exhaustive list, it provides a good overview of the options available to your organization as you look for new opportunities to streamline your operations.

Finance Systems

One of the most common Cityworks integrations involves connecting a finance system, like JD Edwards, that contains the organization’s employee and vendor information. Employees, team assignments, and labor rates can be stored in the finance system and used to calculate both the cost of work orders and employee paychecks—keeping a consistent rate between the two. When employees and vendors are added, updated, and deactivated in the finance system, the changes would automatically be reflected within Cityworks. Email notifications can be sent to Cityworks administrators for review as appropriate.

Additional equipment, labor, and material information can also be fed to Cityworks from the finance system. As work orders are completed, costing information can be sent back to the finance system in order to update the remaining project budgets. Work order status can also be updated and synced between both systems.

Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV)

Cityworks integrates with several CCTV pipe inspection management systems, including WinCan and ITpipes. The valuable data collected by these systems can help organizations automate the creation and prioritization of work orders based on condition criteria. Some integrations allow users to include hyperlinks to specific pipe segment videos in the GIS data, enabling engineers to view GIS data and media files in one environment.

Customer Information Systems (CIS)

Customer information and billing systems are valuable repositories of customer-related data. As customer service representatives recording incoming requests for new utility service, for example, a corresponding inspection or service request could be automatically generated in Cityworks. Attachments or comments from one system can easily be accessed through the other, making information more transparent.

Some communities use customer relationship management tools like Salesforce or a 311 application to track incoming service requests across the entire organization. When applied on an enterprise level and integrated with Cityworks, this type of integration can help direct work to the right departments while keeping management, field crews, call takers, and customers informed.

Fleet Management

Many aspects of fleet management are still conducted using paper forms or siloed systems. However, Cityworks can leverage information from an authoritative vehicle and parts inventory to add, update, or deactivate vehicular assets. These vehicles can then be used as equipment in work orders with associated rates or tracked as assets with preventive maintenance cycles. Organizations can set up service thresholds that automatically flag vehicles for scheduled maintenance and, once the vehicles are in the shop, mechanics can eliminate their paper forms by accessing and updating their work orders on tablets.

Pavement Management

Road maintenance and prescriptive treatments determined by a pavement management system can be automatically loaded as work orders into Cityworks. Once the work is complete, that information can be passed back into the pavement management system for cost tracking as well as updating conditions or timing milestones for future work.

Utility Locates

Most utilities provide a public, 811-style utility locate service, either internally or through a third-party application. Typically, the responsible agency receives an email notifying them of an incoming request—resulting in a high volume of emails that need to be reviewed and acted upon. A script can be set to monitor the email inbox and parse incoming messages to automatically create service requests in Cityworks. As those requests are closed, a message is then sent back to the 811 system to update the status and notify the requestor.

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)

Sensors from a SCADA system can relay information to trigger sensor-based activities in Cityworks. This is useful when operational runtime status requires more frequent activities than provided simply by calendar-based preventive maintenance. It also allows organizations to monitor asset conditions against physical thresholds and automatically create work orders for emergency or reactive maintenance—helping staff easily track their response efforts as the event progresses.

C. Michael Parma is a water solutions architect at GISinc. Contact him at info@gisinc.com.

There’s no question that building integrations to automatically connect Cityworks with other enterprise systems can provide a huge return on investment. However, ensuring the success of those integrations requires considering their wide range in complexity, from the simple one-way nightly data sync to the more complex near-real-time bi-directional integration.

Before getting started on your next integration project, here are a few considerations that can help you set the project requirements accordingly.

Clearly Define Your End Goals

Importing employee data is a common example of a simple integration. If human resources software is the system of record for employee data, users would naturally add and update employees in that system. An integration might push data such as name, title, department, and hourly rate into Cityworks on a regular basis.

While manually updating employees in Cityworks may not take a lot of work, an integration will eliminate problems like having Miles Wight-Kelly in one system and Miles W. Kelley in the other. The end goals, in this case, may be as much about achieving solid data integrity as reducing staff workload. 

Read: 7 Common Business Processes That Integrate With Cityworks

Evaluate API Capabilities

The most important tool available for building integrations is the Cityworks application programming interfaces (APIs). The APIs allow data to be sent to and from Cityworks through automated HTTP calls, instead of having to enter data manually. With every new release, Cityworks expands the capabilities of its APIs. For example, basic functions such as getting a list of employees have been around for a while, but as of Cityworks 15.2, employees can be added and updated through the API—exactly the functions necessary in this example.

The API documentation available on MyCityworks shows which methods require additional licensing and walks users through authenticating with Cityworks and making calls to the API. Free, open-source tools such as Postman make it easy to play with APIs, test out how to make calls correctly, and view the responses from Cityworks.

Understand Error Tolerance

One aspect critical to architecting an integration is understanding a team’s tolerance for errors, which are inevitable when dealing with distributed systems. Consider the risks involved if the integration fails.

In this employee data example, if the system imports employee data to Cityworks Monday night, then it fails Tuesday night, but runs successfully again on Wednesday night, what are the consequences? During the day on Wednesday, that Cityworks data would be a day old. But Wednesday night it would be corrected, so by Thursday it would be up to date again. The data updates would be delayed, but not lost.

What are the implications in this case? Would a supervisor need to add that new hire to the work order on Wednesday, or could it be completed the next day? If an employee received a raise and it didn’t show up in Cityworks until Thursday, is the organization comfortable with the work order cost entered on Wednesday being slightly low, or is a higher level of accuracy required? These are all important questions to document and consider.

Inform the System Administrator

Even if an organization can accept some minor consequences of an integration failing occasionally, the system administrator still must be made aware every time it fails—before questions are asked about why that new hire hasn’t shown up in the system yet. The integration should raise active notification of error-level events. One simple approach to this problem could be to use one of several open-source logging frameworks, such as nlog or log4j/log4net/log4javascript, that make it easy to send error alerts by email.

Identify Complex Requirements

If there is a need for higher reliability or the requirements are more complex—for example, bi-directional integrations or dealing with transactional data—organizations may need to consider a more sophisticated architecture, using tools such as Cityworks WebHooks, or even a message-based architecture and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB).

In many cases, organizations with IT staff who have the skills and availability to create an integration in-house can take advantage of Cityworks APIs along with free tools and frameworks. Identifying the potential risks and planning the architecture accordingly will allow organizations to take full advantage of the potential value in sharing data across the enterprise.

Miles Kelly and Victor Staggs are application developers at Woolpert. Contact them at miles.kelly@woolpert.com and victor.staggs@woolpert.com.

It seems there is never a lack of challenges for municipalities. From increased regulations to tightening budgets, the pressure to do more with less is ever-present. This is especially true for departments that manage the warehousing of assets and inventory.

The manual data collection processes of the past cannot keep up with the warehouse demands of today. Manual processes often result in lost or missing containers, tools, and equipment. Inaccuracies and backlogs also make it nearly impossible to get an accurate assessment of inventory stock levels. In short, manual processes waste time and increase costs.

The warehouse environment is full of opportunities to boost productivity. However, streamlining warehouse management can seem like a daunting task. How do local governments increase productivity and lower costs despite limited resources? Enter automated data collection.

Forward-thinking organizations are applying new automated systems to streamline warehouse operations, manage assets, maintain customer service, and ensure continuity. Two methods of automated data collection are typically used in warehouse management: barcoding and radio frequency identification (RFID). Here’s a brief overview of each.

Barcoding

A tried and true method that has been used for decades, barcoding is the most common form of automated data collection. Today, barcodes track everything from retail goods to machinery and medical records. In the warehouse environment, barcode labels can be created and applied to inventory and assets including containers, specialized tools, equipment, and machines. Each label contains key information about the item such as manufacturer and item number.

There are pros and cons associated with barcode technology. For instance, barcodes are “line of sight” technology. This means each barcode must be scanned individually by a barcode scanning device. Barcodes must also be attached to the outside of the product, making them more vulnerable to damage that renders them unreadable. However, barcoding does have its advantages. For instance, the cost of barcode labels is significantly lower in relation to RFID. Also, barcodes do not have limitations on the type of products they can be applied to.

Read: Barcoding Scanning with Cityworks Storeroom

RFID

If putting data into computer databases with little to no human intervention sounds appealing, RFID may be for you. RFID is a technology that reads tags, identifies information about the object, and enters this information into a computer database. An RFID system consists of an RFID tag or smart label, an RFID reader (also called an interrogator), and an antenna. The tag contains a circuit and an antenna, which transfers information to the reader. Once the information is transferred, the reader converts the information to a more usable form of data. This information is then transferred to a computer database using specialized software.

Although this technology is similar to barcoding, RFID systems are able to store much more information than traditional barcodes. Information such as product maintenance, shipping histories, and expiration dates can all be tracked using RFID. Unlike barcodes, RFID doesn’t require line of sight. This means RFID tags can be read at a faster rate than barcodes, without a human resource scanning each barcode label. However, RFID may struggle to read information when passing through liquid or metal, and the signal from one reader can interfere with the signal from another where coverage overlaps.

So which option is best for your warehouse? Choosing the right data collection method for your warehouse depends on many factors including the type of items to be tracked and your specific warehouse environment and workflows. In fact, many environments warrant using a mix of barcoding and RFID solutions to achieve the desired result.

Transform Warehouse Management

Both barcoding and RFID can help eliminate manual tasks and decrease errors, setting the stage for more efficient warehouse management. For example, automated inventory management can be performed much more quickly and accurately than manual counting, transferring, and recording. When integrated into a backend system such as Cityworks Storeroom, it also ensures real-time visibility into the quantity, location, and status of your inventory and assets.

In turn, costs are reduced by allowing more accurate ordering, less waste, and prevention of overstock. Beyond keeping inventory and assets in check, another step toward optimal warehouse management is ensuring your workers are operating at their highest productivity. Automating processes can help improve their pick routing, space utilization, and replenishment tasks such as:

• Receiving
• Put-away
• Picking (wave, directed, distributed)
• Cycle counting

Often called “task interleaving,” this consolidation helps workers complete replenishments, put-aways, and picks simultaneously and in a logical way. It adds efficiency to warehouse processes by eliminating non-productive activities and increasing inventory turns. Automated data collection can also help collect better time metrics against jobs, tasks, and work orders—allowing organizations to measure, analyze, and report against labor performance.

Automated data collection ensures warehouses are operating as “lean” as possible and that collected data is always accurate. With automated processes in place, it also becomes easier to measure productivity and understand where improvements are needed. The ultimate goal is to achieve maximum efficiency and get a handle on key warehouse data to put your goals within reach.

Webinar: Getting Started with Automated Warehouse Data Collection

Wendy Stanley is the marketing director at Radley Corporation. Contact her at contactus@radley.com.

Water and wastewater utilities are responsible for the care of both horizontal and vertical assets. Many organizations find themselves using one type of computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to manage their mains, valves, hydrants, and manholes—and another system to manage their plants and facilities.

While this may seem like a complete solution, it often leads to competing resource demands to maintain and support multiple software solutions as well as difficulties consolidating information for reporting and analytics.

Our partners at Black & Veatch recently worked with the City of Mesa Water Resources Department on a project to expand Cityworks and ArcGIS to include both their horizontal and vertical water assets in order to support a new asset management policy.

New clients often ask us with some incredulity, “GIS inside a facility? Can that really work?” The answer is yes.

Learn how the City of Mesa, Arizona, developed a GIS data model for their new Signal Butte Water Treatment Plant [Source: Water Finance and Management].

From the management of underground assets—like pipes, valves, and meters—to automatic hydrant inspection to efficiencies in our billing system, GIS can help increase the quality of service your water utility provides every day.

Central Arkansas Water has been a Cityworks user since 2008 and an Esri user since 1996. They recently wrote an article for Esri News for Water highlighting how their use of these two platforms has grown across their entire organization. 

“GIS provides a lifeline from the workers in the field to critical information to help them on a daily basis, whether it’s being able to quickly locate a valve, isolate a main break, or to find a meter to assist a customer. GIS enables us to have this information literally at our fingertips.”

Read the full article in Esri News for Water. 

By Robert J Taylor and Brandon Brown, City of Dublin

Once you start gathering data on your assets and operations, the next logical step is to present your data in a way that supports informed decision-making. The best tools for visualizing data depend on the questions you are trying to answer and the goals you hope to achieve. Together, Cityworks and ArcGIS offer a suite of data visualization options that can be customized for specific data sets and target audiences.

The City of Dublin, Ohio, has been using Cityworks for more than 10 years. In that time, the city has expanded its use of the system from simply tracking work orders to also managing service requests and inspections. Here are some of the ways they present data to their end users with the help of Cityworks and ArcGIS.  

Cityworks Tools

Cityworks offers a selection of data visualization tools right out of the box. Dublin uses those tools to create saved searches that power custom inboxes for Cityworks users. Custom inboxes help supervisors make important operational decisions while also providing snapshot views of key performance metrics.

For example, the city performs sidewalk inspections and then uses that inspection data to categorize repairs into either sidewalk shaving or sidewalk replacement. The inbox depicts those repair quantities so the work orders can be assigned to a project. Then, the inbox provides a chart of each project. Clicking any of the data columns will open the respective list of work orders associated with that project.

Cityworks also helps visualize the city’s asset inspection data. Custom searches filter the following:

• Completed inspections to review and close
• Open inspections to be completed
• Closed inspections that have assets in fair condition
• Completed inspections this year

All of these custom searches are set up with a rolling date criterion so the searches do not need to be updated each year.

A rolling date custom search also tracks scheduled and unscheduled stops in the city’s curbside chipping program. Scheduled stops are determined by service requests generated in the office or through the city’s customer relationship management application, GoDublin. Unscheduled stops are determined by service requests initiated by crews in the field using mobile devices. Supervisors are now able to analyze the ratio of scheduled and unscheduled stops to understand crew workloads and determine whether more marketing efforts are needed to promote the GoDublin application to the public.

ArcGIS Tools

When it comes time to budget planning and shared work plans, key decision-makers may need more robust data visualizations. This is possible if you subscribe to the enterprise URL service in Cityworks and have an ArcGIS Online account. An enterprise URL, or eURL, is a simple yet powerful tool for displaying Cityworks data on a map. Any custom search can be exported into ArcGIS Online using the eURL service.

Consider the sidewalk inspection and work order data discussed earlier. The city used Cityworks data and eURL to create an interactive map depicting the actual work locations, with interactive tiles that calculate quantities and buttons to filter searches. When users navigate around the map, the data automatically filters to reflect addresses within the visible area. The map also includes a search function for locating specific address locations.

eURL supports live data updates from Cityworks—which means that, as a new work order is added or an existing work order is changed, the map updates automatically. This map is used to communicate to Public Works and Engineering leadership when developing budget and work plans. The map will also be available to the public.

You can also configure web maps to display status or condition score of individual assets. With the help of inspection and work order data tracked in Cityworks, an ArcGIS Operations Dashboard can provide an easy-to-understand overview of asset condition, repair schedules, and more.  

Another custom dashboard tracks street service requests. This dashboard depicts the open and recently completed service requests on a map complete with tiles that calculate the numbers and a chart to depict the individual types of requests. Supervisors can use the dashboard to quickly see the quantity, location, and types of open requests.

In each example, these web maps and dashboards can be made accessible to decision-makers—regardless of whether they are Cityworks users—as well as the public.   

The Best of Both Worlds

Cityworks inboxes allow the user to combine Cityworks data visualization tools and ArcGIS Online web maps in a one-stop-shop for information. This is a powerful tool because it allows an individual to access the data they need in the visual format they desire.

The city has also found that some users like to add the Operations Dashboards into a tab in their Cityworks Inbox for quick and easy access. This allows them to quickly move from analytical and planning activities to operational activities without leaving the Cityworks platform.

Custom searches, custom web maps, and custom inboxes have proven to be valuable tools for managers at the City of Dublin. These tools assist the user to be more efficient and focused on performing the right work, on the right asset, at the right time.

Robert J Taylor is an infrastructure asset management engineer and Brandon Brown is a data/GIS manager at the City of Dublin.

Your work isn’t limited to your desk and neither is Cityworks. With the help of a continuous network connection, Cityworks Respond provides streamlined access to Cityworks AMS and PLL specifically for field use. You have the power to manage assets and create work orders, as well as capture digital signatures for inspections and permitting tasks, right in the palm of your hand.

Last week, we released Respond 2.0. The latest version of the app is built on Esri’s Javascript 4.x API, delivering an intuitive user experience that places your work management overview and detailed map in a side-by-side layout, all within the same browser tab. The 4.x map will also support exciting future developments such as 3D mapping.

Advantages of using Respond 2.0:

• Organize, manage, and maintain your asset information while working in the field.
• Perform workflows with your work management overview and detailed map in a side-by-side layout, all within the same browser tab.
• Display all of your asset details within a functional asset panel.
• Create work orders and easily add or remove costs, equipment, labor, and materials—all from your mobile device.
• Customize each end user’s experience with Cityworks Style.

Schedule a demo to see how Respond can help streamline your fieldwork.

When we launched Cityworks as a fledgling startup 24 years ago, we set out to change how local governments and utilities leverage their investment in Esri’s GIS platform to improve public asset management. Although we were a small team, we were determined to make a difference with our GIS-centric approach. Today, Cityworks is a recognized leader in providing innovative local government and utility software, with more than 700 organizations worldwide using our technology.

I am excited to announce that, on September 30, Cityworks signed an agreement to become part of Trimble, Inc. This has been a deeply contemplative decision. A long-time strategic partner, Trimble has been a friend and a tremendous advocate of Cityworks and the work we all aspire to do. 

Our joining with Trimble is strategic and will help us improve solutions for our customers who can benefit from improved infrastructure performance, increased productivity, and better return on investment associated with infrastructure construction and operation. The synergies created between both companies will accelerate our GIS-centric mission to help improve public asset management and communities around the world.

Trimble is a leader in developing technology that transforms the way the world works and in delivering products and services that connect the physical and digital worlds. Like Cityworks, Trimble builds purpose-driven products through enterprise lifecycle solutions across a broad range of industries such as utilities, agriculture, construction, geospatial, airports, and transportation. And, Trimble is a long-time Esri partner.

As this next chapter unfolds, I am committed to the success of Cityworks. This will never change. You are a valued customer, and we want to ensure that our relationship with you will not change. Customer success is the foundation of our approach to business. You will continue to receive the same high level of service and support you have come to depend upon from the Cityworks staff. All of your existing contacts for management, sales, support, and services will remain the same.

As a Trimble company, we have an exciting future, further securing Cityworks as the market leader in GIS-centric public asset management. More than ever, our talented and committed team of employees, executive staff and management, and me as president and CEO look forward to the opportunities ahead to ensure your continued success. Our foundational four pillars that drive our success are unchanged: GIS-centric technology, our employees, our clients, and our partners.

Our commitment to Esri’s platform will be undiminished. Cityworks will remain the leading ArcGIS pure-play you have always relied on. Our vision is fully supported by Trimble, including expanding to new markets we can serve.

We are grateful for the trust you put in Cityworks, and we remain committed to helping you do good locally.

Brian Haslam is president and CEO of Cityworks.

Whether you’re patching potholes or rebuilding roads, maintaining pavement infrastructure is both costly and time consuming. Get ahead of the curve by integrating your pavement analysis tool and your work management system.

This summer Cityworks released its newest product, Pavement Management. Pavement Management is designed for organizations that use a pavement management solution such as PAVER. The application enables you to perform seamless workflows within the Cityworks platform while fully leveraging your GIS.

An improved user experience allows you to easily export and import work history and condition scores from a single browser. You can also pull in suggested work activities to create proposed work orders, and assign them to a Cityworks project.

Book a demo at cityworks.com.

• Easily import and export data between pavement management solutions and Cityworks as .csv and .xml files
• Leverage your pavement management solution to calculate the Pavement Condition Index (PCI), perform pavement analysis, and predict future pavement conditions
• Share data, such as pavement material, work orders, and inspections, to increase overall efficiency
• Visually track PCI, last construction date, and current surface type with the power of ArcGIS
• Plan, prioritize, and budget pavement maintenance and rehabilitation

July marked the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. I was just 11 years old in 1969, and I remember sleeping out in the backyard one evening that summer and gazing at the moon while marveling that people have actually been there. Not just been there, walked there. What an incredible feat of human ingenuity, collaboration, and deliberate focus on success.

Since the Apollo mission, countless reviews, case studies, documentaries, and films have recounted the remarkable journey to the moon. In a recent issue of Businessweek, Peter Coy reflected on the five management strategies that defined the Apollo missions and how they are still valid today:

1. Have a clear objective, and use it to keep your project on track.

2. Harness incongruence, because dissenting voices can help you overcome critical flaws.

3. Delegate but decide. Teamwork is valuable, and so is strong leadership.

4. Prioritize effectiveness over elegance, especially when it comes to technology design.

5. Improvise, because things rarely go according to plan.

While each of these points rings true, prioritizing effectiveness over elegance seems particularly relevant in our day-to-day work.

On the launch pad, the Saturn 5 rocket was beautiful to behold: massive in height, powerful, and streamlined. Over the course of the Apollo mission, sections of the Saturn 5 rocket were intentionally discarded, leaving the miniscule lunar and command modules.

On their own, the modules looked awkward and unimpressive in comparison with the streamlined rocket. But the lunar and command modules weren’t designed to be elegant as much as they were designed to perform specific functions under specific conditions: land and take off from the moon and return the astronauts safely back to earth. The modules, while seemingly insignificant, were arguably the most important parts of the ship.

NASA and its partners understood the importance of prioritizing effectiveness over elegance. Before astronauts could land on the moon, entire missions were dedicated to testing the lunar and command modules, executing flight paths, and checking vital equipment. The success of the Apollo 11 mission was the result of nearly a decade of applied engineering, consistent collaboration, and incremental success.

At the Esri User Conference, I had the pleasure of hearing presentations from several Cityworks clients: Tameka Allen and Michelle Pearman at the City of Augusta, Chad Foley at the City of Raleigh, and Clint Hutchings at the City of West Jordan. Each of these cities has found success in collaborating across departments and setting incremental goals to improve the effectiveness of their operations.

They also demonstrated how different types of smart technology, when coupled with a GIS-centric approach, can improve their ability to respond to community needs and do good locally. For example, installing smart sensors on municipal garbage cans may not seem elegant on the surface. When the sensors are tied to ArcGIS® and Cityworks, they can be effective in helping solid waste teams reduce fuel consumption and prioritize time. Small changes like this contribute to the overall efficiency and sustainability of a community—and that’s elegant.

In December 1995, as Cityworks began to take shape, using ArcGIS as the asset repository for municipal and utility assets seemed so obviously smart to us. We thought, Why duplicate the ArcGIS geodatabase? It is open and resides in an open database. It models infrastructure assets efficiently and effectively. ArcGIS as the asset repository became the foundation of what we called GIS-centric.

Many technology systems claim to be GIS-centric, but don’t trust ArcGIS as the singular authoritative geodatabase. We are clear in our definition of GIS-centric: Cityworks is a pure-play ArcGIS solution designed to leverage an organization’s investment in ArcGIS for public asset management and community development.

Cityworks and ArcGIS together provide the backbone to help you improve your operations, respond to community needs, and do good locally. They combine to transform the complexity of managing your community infrastructure into an orchestrated process that supports decision making, customer service, and economic growth. Because the GIS-centric platform is open, your organization can achieve incremental improvements by adding to its core with smart technology.

Brian Haslam is CEO and founder of Cityworks.

BY EVE GEYER AND DUANE TREADON, CITY OF THOMASVILLE

How many times have you seen crews tear up a newly paved road for a water main replacement? This classic example of inefficient project planning is a common problem in communities across the globe. Employees at the City of Thomasville, Georgia, found a solution by building bridges.

These bridges are not made of steel cables and concrete. Rather, they are made of data. The architectural foundation for these bridges is Cityworks and ArcGIS, and together these technologies are closing the communications gap between city departments.

“City departments run independently in many ways, much like an island. We plan and work on our daily tasks and respond to the customer needs specific to that department,” said Chris White, executive director of public utilities. “We needed a way to bridge departmental islands and improve project coordination.”

Staff at the City of Thomasville have been implementing Cityworks PLL and AMS in small, manageable chunks since 2016. The first phase focused on the departments involved in the building permit process: building, engineering, and planning and zoning. The second phase expanded Cityworks to the gas, water, wastewater, and engineering departments. The third phase, which is ongoing, will include public works and engineering.

PERMITS AND INSPECTIONS

Prior to implementing Cityworks PLL, the building department used a siloed software system to issue permits, conduct inspections, and enforce code.

“The building department was the only agency using this system, so our communication with engineering and planning and zoning consisted of checklists in a folder, phone calls, emails, and Excel spreadsheets,” said Mark Harmon, chief building officer. “The process was cumbersome and unreliable.” 

During the first phase of implementation, the project team developed PLL cases that incorporated workflows from the building, engineering, and planning and zoning departments. It was a seamless process to translate current workflows into a digital platform. Each department added its own procedures—such as documenting significant conversations with applicants—so everyone could maintain situational awareness of the case. 

The Cityworks PLL cases did more than just replace the old checklist folders. They significantly reduced redundant emails and phone calls between departments, and they empowered staff to easily run reports and access information at the push of a button.

CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS

The city engineer also needed a solution to improve coordination and communication with utility providers on infrastructure projects. So, city staff created a Cityworks PLL case for capital improvement projects (CIP).  

“The engineering department is responsible for maintenance activities within city rights-of-way and delivery of infrastructure improvement within those rights-of-way,” explained Wayne Newsome, city engineer. “The city owns and maintains most of the utilities occupying our street rights-of-way, so it’s vitally important that utility infrastructure work is properly coordinated and scheduled in advance of planned street improvements and resurfacing projects.”

The CIP case captures major project milestones, from concept development to final infrastructure updates in the GIS. The workflow incorporates the utility review process into the plan design process to help the utility and engineering departments eliminate conflicts and plan associated work.

Now, both departments have one central location for CIP information, where they can easily access the status and associated work for any given project.

ACCESSIBLE DATA

Communicating a common operating view across an organization does not mean using only one interface to view the data. The GIS-centric nature of Cityworks makes it easy to externalize data to share outside of the platform.

The City of Thomasville uses Esri solutions, like Operations Dashboard and the web app builder, to consume Cityworks data, map services, and shapefiles via enterprise URLs (eURLs). By using eURL and Operations Dashboard, the city’s code enforcement officer can view the number and location of active cases by type. Similarly, the chief building officer can easily view a dynamic summary of all active trade permits or residential and commercial permits. eURL expands the value of Cityworks data by allowing increased flexibility in sharing information across the organization and community.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT

At the early stages of implementation, city staff developed benchmarks for measuring return on investment over a 10-year period. These ROI categories include paper reduction, business process efficiency, work order efficiency, and the elimination of software platforms. So far, the City of Thomasville has eliminated the use of one legacy software, and they plan to discontinue support for another system at the end of 2019.

In terms of business process efficiency, the city knew its employees were spending nearly $25,000 on 14 development projects using a siloed software platform and a paper folder to track staff input. By eliminating these inefficiencies, the city expects to see a 30 percent increase in employee productivity and a cost savings of approximately $7,500. 

The city also calculated that the water, gas, and wastewater departments were spending 456 hours each year looking through paperwork to find work history data. With the implementation of Cityworks, the city estimates a 25 percent efficiency gain with a cost savings just under $20,000.

Based on the current project schedule, the city expects to achieve ROI after just three to five years of using Cityworks.

The success of each of these implementation efforts ultimately lies in the hands of the end users. City employees who use the technologies every day play a critical role in customer service, process improvements, and operational success. The city’s mission statement is to “create and deliver exceptional service to our community through a culture of safety, courtesy, professionalism, and efficiency,” and the departments are staffed to do just that.

With the help of Cityworks and ArcGIS, the employees at the City of Thomasville will continue to improve communication and build bridges citywide.

Eve Geyer is project manager and Duane Treadon is GIS director at the City of Thomasville, Georgia.

INTEGRATING BEST-OF-BREED SOLUTIONS TO UNLEASH THE FULL POTENTIAL OF CITYWORKS PLL

Many of us today connect to the world through our mobile devices. We can see what’s happening at our front door even when we’re not at home. With just a few screen taps, we can purchase goods that are delivered the next day. Countless apps and services provide us near real-time updates on everything from weather alerts and sports scores to our daily routines and interactive hobbies.

Understandably, people also expect similar levels of service from their local governments. The most effective way for a municipality to meet this demand is through an integrated enterprise solution that engages residents, shares and collects information, and supports collaboration across departments. The City of Escondido implemented one such solution for its business licensing division and is in the process of implementing it in other departments.

Fueled by a strong economy, Escondido has experienced an influx of revitalization construction and new development. However, with roughly 2,000 new permits each year and 10,500 existing business licenses on an annual renewal cycle, city staff were struggling to keep up.

For years, Escondido has used Cityworks AMS and Esri’s ArcGIS as an end-to-end solution for asset management, with CitySourced as their customer-facing service request and community engagement solution. The city needed a similarly integrated solution for land management, community development, business licensing, permitting, inspections, and more. They also needed the solution to be GIS-centric.

“Our philosophy is to implement technology solutions that address the end-to-end workflows and customer-to-staff processing that produce information for data-driven decisions by leadership,” said Rob Van De Hey, Escondido’s director of information systems.

ENGAGING THE PUBLIC

Ultimately, the city decided to expand their current system—keeping ArcGIS as the foundation and using Cityworks AMS and PLL for work management and data tracking.

One of Escondido’s primary goals was to improve the efficiency of their customer interactions. To achieve this, they implemented Timmons Group PLL Portal, a public-facing portal that leverages Cityworks PLL and extended APIs and can be customized to meet an organization’s specific business needs.

The integrated enterprise system will ultimately allow for seamless communication across several different divisions: operations and maintenance, engineering, facilities, fire, planning, code enforcement, permitting, plan review, and business licensing.

It also puts the power of data entry and communication into the hands—and digital devices—of the public. Instead of calling or physically traveling to a city office, customers will be able to use the Timmons Group PLL Portal to submit applications, upload and download documents and plans, apply and renew business licenses, schedule appointments, and make payments.

The city expects to see an increase in compliance as a result of the easy-to-use customer portal.

“In the seven months since we launched the new platform, we’ve seen a 30 percent adoption rate among our customers,” said Van De Hey. “The data collected from the new system is already leading to increased efficiency, and it’s driving other improvements across the organization.”

STREAMLINING WORKFLOWS

The integrated solution will also incorporate Hyland OnBase for electronic plan review and document management. Hyland’s Electronic Plan Review (EPR) allows customers to submit plans electronically through the Timmons Group PLL Portal. Once the plans are received by the city, the Cityworks PLL workflow tracks the plan review process as multiple departments and reviewers work collaboratively on a single electronic version of the plan sets.

Comments, status changes, and notifications will be provided to the customer either through comments on the plans themselves or through standardized electronic communications—emails, text messages, Timmons Group PLL Portal updates, and CitySourced app notifications.

The collaborative workflow will drastically reduce plan review times. It will also eliminate confusion caused by multiple plan sets and will help keep applicants informed on the status of their project.

IMPROVING ACCESS

Because the integrated solution is built on the foundation of ArcGIS, city staff will be able to make fact-based decisions much more quickly and effectively. For example, city code requires that establishments applying for a liquor license be at least 1,000 feet away from any school. Thanks to GIS data, validating this requirement on a new application would take just seconds.

City staff will also benefit from mobile functionality available in Cityworks Respond 2.0 and the Cityworks mobile native apps.

“We wanted to give our employees effective tools for doing work when and where they need to,” explained Van De Hey. “Our field staff will be able to spend 20 to 30 percent more time out in the field completing inspections, working code enforcement cases, and interacting with customers electronically. We’ve already been able to handle higher workload volumes with existing staffing levels thanks to the efficiencies of the integrated system.”

Together, each of these best-of-breed solutions helps Escondido enhance its levels of service, increase efficiencies, and improve communication. By putting the right technologies into the hands of their employees and residents, the City of Escondido is connecting people and processes to build a vibrant, growing community.

Lou Garcia is a project director at Timmons Group. Contact him at louis.garcia@timmons.com

It’s no secret that state and local government agencies are being asked to do more with fewer resources. It’s not just large projects receiving scrutiny but also labor resources, technology infrastructure, and even the items on warehouse shelves.

Faced with smaller budgets and tighter reviews of every dollar spent, agencies must find ways to eliminate waste wherever possible. These four areas offer the most potential for optimizing existing resources while also minimizing operational costs.

1. Equipment Management

Quick! Do you know exactly what equipment you have and its location, condition, age, and value? If not, you’ll have a hard time estimating future budget needs without accurate and up-to-date information on those key attributes. Just as you track infrastructure items like pipes, streets, and fire hydrants, monitoring high dollar items such as computers, vehicles, and specialized tools is critical to managing maintenance, replacement, and operation costs over time.

When capital assets aren’t properly recorded, tracked, and monitored, organizations risk opening the door to audit issues. Paper-based equipment tracking processes, usually performed annually, leave a huge span of time for equipment to be lost, neglected, damaged, or replaced unnecessarily. However, automated data collection can help you save money by effectively managing equipment and other capital assets throughout their lifecycles.

Barcodes or RFID solutions that automate check-in and check-out add accountability to your process. The same system can also provide alerts on warranty renewals or maintenance tasks.   Real-time data updates to a central dashboard let you easily analyze the status of your equipment, preventing unnecessary spending on assets that still have useful life remaining. Plus, it reduces the chances of replacement due to an item being forgotten in an office or in the field.

2. Labor Tracking

With finite resources available for labor, the key to stretching those dollars is maximizing the productivity of current staff. The warehouse offers numerous opportunities to shave valuable time off of routine tasks like picking, counts, or replenishment. For instance, as much as 50 percent of an order picker’s time is often spent walking around the warehouse.

But how do you know where those opportunities lie without the data necessary for reporting? Tracking labor time through paper logs and spreadsheets does not give a real-time view of jobs, tasks, projects, or work orders. The right technology can help you identify areas for improvement.

For example, a warehouse task management solution could help optimize pick routing, space utilization, and inventory replenishment. When workers are directed to complete tasks in the most efficient way, they’re always at their highest productivity. At the same time, efficiency improvements allow the same workforce to do more, reducing associated operational costs.

Labor tracking extends beyond the warehouse. In the field, organizations need to monitor productivity to ensure work orders are completed efficiently. With an automated solution, you can track key data such as start and stop times and analyze gaps between scheduled time and actual time spent on a task.     

3. Inventory Control

Managing inventory is one of the mostly costly areas of any public works operation. Without careful management, expenses can creep up due to over-purchasing and lost, pilfered, or expired stock. When you’re managing storerooms across multiple locations, the problems become magnified.   

From receiving to put-away to picking, maintaining accurate inventory records can be challenging. Manual processes for conducting routine audits and recording incoming stock and shelf placement are labor intensive and take your staff away from more productive tasks.

Paper processes and manual data entry can also lead to inaccurate information and a lack of real-time inventory data. Human error in data entry can cause both over- and under-ordering—impacting job completion, customer satisfaction, and your bottom line. Waiting for data to be made available could mean delayed action in identifying these costly issues.

In the meantime, items such as tools, tires, and even safety vests could “walk” out the backdoor. Where does that leave you when the next job needs to be completed? Perhaps you’ll need to rush order replacements, pay hefty shipping charges, or deal with unhappy customers.

A real-time inventory control solution can help streamline workflows to eliminate these wasteful manual processes. Inventory receipts, issues, and transfers can be processed using hand-held devices and immediately viewed from a dashboard interface. This allows reporting and analysis at any time, capturing bin locations, on-hand quantities, and cost values.  

4. System Integrations

Most organizations have information systems for financial management, reporting, human resources, project tracking, or customer service. Many of these systems are used as stand-alone solutions. Over time, gaps in functionality may begin to emerge—namely, the lack of real-time data collection.

Unfortunately, introducing yet another software system without a plan to integrate it to your existing business information systems creates its own problems. The resulting data silos create a perfect storm of data errors, manual efforts, and wasteful spending.

A data collection solution with the capability to integrate with your backend systems is the key to tracking your operations from the warehouse to the field and back to the office. A single system of record can help provide a high-level overview of costs incurred through inventory, equipment, assets, and labor.

Using resources effectively and efficiently is not an option for today’s agencies. Collecting and analyzing critical data holds the key to reducing costs throughout your facility. Automating these processes and going paperless brings efficiency to operations, reduces waste, and helps identify areas for improvement.

No one knows what the future holds. But the clock won’t be turned back on the importance of data to state and local agencies. Embracing technology and connecting business systems can help ensure your facility is prepared to meet today’s challenges while also being primed for whatever comes next.

Wendy Stanley is the marketing director at Radley Corporation. Contact her at contactus@radley.com.

Water utilities don’t like leaks. Not only can they threaten infrastructure and demand emergency response, but especially in the case of treated water, leaks allow revenue to literally pour into the street. 

Yet for utilities like Green Bay Water Utility (GBWU) in Green Bay, Wisconsin, leaks come with the territory. When you consider a 130-year-old distribution system in various stages of maturity that contains 440 miles of pipes within the city limits alone and must withstand annual sub-zero temperatures, leaks big and small are to be expected.

The performance of the GBWU distribution system is included in one of the nonprofit utility’s seven stated values: sustainability by using asset management. That’s one reason why GBWU has used Cityworks for more than 12 years. In the past decade, GBWU Operations Manager Brian Powell has seen distribution performance continually improve.

GBWU GIS staff and POWER Engineers Senior Consultant Bill Hoisington have evolved processes from plotting leaks as simple points in the GIS to using multi-function Cityworks dashboards in office and mobile applications. Today, multiple departments at GBWU use Cityworks, including distribution, engineering services, customer service, pumping, and the filtration plant.

EARLY DETECTION SAVES WATER

A significant number of the 240 workdays each year have a leak repair work order associated with them, so Powell is always interested in better ways to find leaks. Big leaks often start as little ones, so fixing them once they are detected can avert main breaks that re-route traffic and wash up debris. Big breaks are also often unpredictable and require immediate attention by big crews from GBWU and other responders, regardless of the day or hour.  

A new technology Powell recently introduced at GBWU is already showing dividends. Utilis, a satellite-based infrastructure intelligence system, uses aerial imaging to detect leaks in underground pipes within  entire systems. Data taken from satellite-mounted sensors allows the Utilis algorithm to detect treated water by looking for a particular spectral signature.

GBWU is the first water utility to apply satellite data to maintenance operations in Wisconsin. In the past, GBWU hired a contractor to manually listen to every inch of the distribution system, assisted by equipment on the ground. Because the system is so large, the contractor could cover about 20 percent of the pipes per year. On average, about one percent of the area surveyed had a leak requiring investigation and possible repair. The Utilis process surveyed 100 percent of the distribution network and, since March, Utilis data has already helped GBWU detect four times more leaks than with their previous ground surveying method.

Utilis images identified 207 points of interest scattered throughout the system that represented excess treated water as opposed to ground water, rain, snow, or surface water. These “hot spots,” as Powell refers to them, cover 1,000 feet of water main, or about 11 percent of the system.

GIS technicians at GBWU import the data collected at the polygons of interest into Cityworks and create work orders for investigating the areas for leaks. Field workers then enter information into Cityworks while they inspect the area of interest. This additional data includes the type of leak (hydrant, valve, main), plus the volume of lost water. Once in the system, this information is immediately available for evaluation through future queries. The data may also trigger additional work orders.

KEEP THE BENEFITS FLOWING

At the time of publication of this article, GBWU crews had inspected 75 points of interest and detected 28 leaks. This new maintenance approach has reduced physical inspection by five percent and detected four times as many leaks.

Besides making better use of their work crews, the satellite data is also helping Cityworks’ customer service department users at GBWU. Although the utility doesn’t maintain pipes beyond their distribution system, the data entered into Cityworks from Utilis can be shared with homeowners. If a leak is suspected on the customer’s property, GBWU customer service can alert the owner and track the progress of the repair.

According to Powell, GBWU team’s proficiency in adopting new technology and maximizing its value has paid off for utility customers and staff alike.

“Cityworks allows us to more easily set up and track our leak detection program, which results in a more efficient maintenance program, saving us both time and money.”

Chris Kulchak is a marketing coordinator at POWER Engineers. Contact her at chris.kulchak@powereng.com.

At the Town of Apex Finance Department, the billing utility specialists were waiting for the meter technicians to bring in their yellow sheets. It was going to be another tight deadline to get billing data submitted, and they needed the reading verifications that had been requested earlier in the week. In the meantime, they were also creating service orders to be printed for new customer meter reads requested that same day.

Scattered across town, the meter technicians were out finishing the billing rechecks. They had hurried out that morning with their stacks of yellow sheets, sorting them by address in whatever way made sense to them. That afternoon, they would do the same process again with a different stack of yellow sheets, sometimes driving past meters they had checked earlier that day.

Upstairs in the IT department, the billing manager and IT director were discussing the unprecedented growth happening in Apex and how these current workflows were not going to keep up. The town was changing, and their systems needed to change, too.

AMERICA’S FASTEST GROWING SUBURB

The Town of Apex motto is “The Peak of Good Living”—in part because it began as a railroad town on the highest point of the old Chatham Railroad. Thanks to its close proximity to North Carolina’s Research Triangle, Apex has experienced significant growth. The town’s population grew by 54 percent between 2010 and 2019, reaching 53,852 residents and earning Apex the title of “America’s fastest growing suburb” according to a recent realtor.com study.

Apex first implemented Cityworks in 2013 to help manage the growing demand on their infrastructure. With the addition of Cityworks to each new department, communication improved and work flowed easier among town staff. Asset data and work history were more accessible. Paper work orders were a thing of the past and account information was more secure. Additional benefits came when field users switched to the Cityworks mobile native app, enabling real-time data and the ability to attach field pictures to work activities.

With more than 50 years of combined experience collecting meter data, the town’s four meter technicians were accustomed to doing things the way they had always been done. Tasks were assigned and completed with paper service orders and sometimes only phone calls. These service orders would sometimes get lost between departments, and the technicians were working overtime almost every day. It was time to consider a more accountable, secure, real-time mobile solution. It was time to consider Cityworks.

CONFIGURING THE WORKFLOWS

The team decided to implement Cityworks in phases, starting with the disconnect/connect nonpayment process, then the move-in and move-out workflows, and finally ending with meter read rechecks.

The town partnered with True North Geographic Technologies to configure Cityworks for the meter services team. True North built an additional data table in Cityworks to house active meter information such as serial number and service start date. IT was already pushing customer account data from the billing software into the existing Cityworks customer account table, so this additional meter data was easily added to the automatic push.

True North also built a new service request “account data” panel to display all active meter information for the specific account entered in the caller search field. The information needed for the meter is then copied from the panel and pasted into the service request comment field, making it easily accessible to the meter technician on the Cityworks mobile native app.

The implementation team considered all aspects of the division’s operations. They went on ride-alongs to understand the full workflow. They reconfigured new and existing Cityworks user accounts to meet end user requirements. They upgraded the town mobile devices to to support ease of use. They conducted extensive field and office training, and they created reference cards for the technicians to keep in their trucks as they learned to use the Cityworks mobile native app.

Now that the solution is live, the meter services supervisor uses event layers to assign work and track progress. The team also uses Esri’s Operations Dashboard to display daily work orders and monitor the requests coming in from billing.

 SUCCESS IN THREES

The team immediately saw savings in time and cost. For example, Cityworks allows the technicians to start work requested by the utility billing staff about three hours earlier each day. So far, the division has maintained its monthly average of 1,400 completed work orders—but now this is achieved without costly overtime. Meter read results are also immediately available to the billing staff, and each read is validated by an attached photograph.

On the utility billing side, read rechecks are now completed three days ahead of the billing cycle, easing pressure on staff and improving customer service. Utility billing staff can easily find mistakes entered in their billing software by viewing the pictures attached to the work orders. The amount of phone calls from office staff to meter technicians has also dropped significantly. Office staff simply use Cityworks to cancel a work order if a customer pays before disconnection or to enter any last-minute work orders to be completed.

The meter technicians needed a customizable tool to track their workload, help them operate more efficiently, and enhance communication with the utility billing division. Together, Cityworks and ArcGIS provided them with a complete solution that reduced costs, improved employee productivity, and enhanced customer service for the entire community.

Melissa Stuart is a data operations specialist at the Town of Apex, North Carolina.

There were so many amazing ideas shared at this year’s conference! We can’t begin to count them all, but here are 20 of our favorite quotes from the main stage presentations. 

1. “Cityworks and ArcGIS together provide the backbone to help you improve your operations, respond to community needs, and do good locally.”

—Brian Haslam, CEO, Cityworks

2. “Because the GIS-centric platform is open, your organization can achieve incremental improvements by adding to its core with smart technology empowering GIS intelligence.”

—Brian Haslam, CEO, Cityworks

3. “In an intelligent urban ecosystem, information is shared freely and easily among departments and citizens and used to advance clear priorities.”

—Becky Tamashasky, VP of Vision & Engineering, Cityworks

4. “It’s time to think beyond smart cities and take it to the next level where you are empowering GIS intelligence to lead the way to help create a stronger community, state, and nation.”

—Becky Tamashasky, VP of Vision & Engineering, Cityworks

5. “Digital plan submission from engineers allows our inspectors to use Collector on their iPads to view construction plans out in the field as the infrastructure is being installed.”

—Ashlyn Freeman, Business Process Analyst, and Carl Alexander, GIS Director, White House Utility District, TN

6. “The breakthrough isn’t AI—it’s that AI is now accessible by mere mortals like you and me.”

—Chad Foley, Enterprise Application Engineer, City of Raleigh, NC

7. “What if we could avoid the damage and the disruption from water main breaks, and what if we could do that by simply giving the pipes themselves a voice?”

—George Mastakas, VP of Enterprise Solutions, Cityworks

8. “Connecting Trimble IoT real-time data with Cityworks and ArcGIS enables proactive asset management to reduce infrastructure failure and asset repair costs.”

—Rami Naber, Product Manager, Trimble

9. “GIS mapping and geospatial infrastructure have never been so important.”

—Damian Spangrud, Director of Solutions, Esri

10. “We have been working closely with the ArcGIS Indoors team at Esri and are completely embracing the ArcGIS Indoors Information Model.”

—Mitch Ottessen, Subject Matter Expert, Cityworks

11. “If you’re not ready for risk analysis but have condition and other attributes, now your organization can leverage Operational Insights to gather location intelligence for your infrastructure strategies.”

—Dinorah Sanchez, Subject Matter Expert, Cityworks

12. “Operational Insights has helped our team transform how we import, analyze, and share our risk and criticality data.”

—Jessica Gooch, Water Resources Asset Manager, City of Portland, ME

13. “In sharing vital maps created in Operational Insights, it changes the perspective of staff who are used to viewing data in tables. This spatial view brings the data into context, patterns arise, and planning for next steps can begin.”

—Jessica Gooch, Water Resources Asset Manager, City of Portland, ME

14. “Powerful new PLL functionality in 15.5, Respond 2.0, and other recently released versions of the Cityworks platform make it easier than ever for your organization to operate efficiently and make effective decisions based on actionable data.”

—Cara Haslam, Subject Matter Expert, Cityworks

15. “Public Access offers a strong solution to the need for a public-facing permitting application.”

—Dan Puerling, Subject Matter Expert, Cityworks

16. “There was a gap between state and municipal requirements when it comes to business permitting. Once a business gets through all those high-level state requirements, they still had additional requirements they needed to meet at the municipal level, but they weren’t connected. With the City of Greenwood, we had an opportunity to explore and integrate the state and municipal permitting process. And due to the flexibility of Cityworks PLL and InBiz, we were able to connect the two existing pieces of technology and make it work.” 

—Lindsey Mayes, INBiz PMO Director, Indiana Secretary of State Office and Tom Maggard, GIS Technician, City of Greenwood, IN

17. “We’re obsessed with understanding the users of our technology.”

—Steve Berglund, President & CEO, Trimble, Inc.

18. “Cityworks and Trimble is a powerful combination with significant potential in the future to become more than we are at this point and time.”

—Steve Berglund, President & CEO, Trimble, Inc.

19. “It doesn’t matter how many resources you have. If you don’t know how to use them, it will never be enough.”

—Kristen Cox, State of Utah, Executive Director, Governor’s Office of Budget & Management

20. “Don’t confuse data with understanding. Be very specific on the question you are trying to answer.”

—Kristen Cox, State of Utah, Executive Director, Governor’s Office of Budget & Management

So many of you are doing amazing work and creating effective solutions for your communities. That’s why at each conference, we recognize exemplary Cityworks users. Congratulations to these nine winners for 2019!

Excellence in Departmental Practice

The Excellence in Departmental Practice Award highlights Cityworks clients who have helped transform their departments. These clients demonstrate leadership and creativity in applying public asset management strategies to daily operations and long-term planning. The winners are:

 City of Arvada, Colorado

The City of Arvada, Colorado, completed their initial Cityworks implementation around 2016, and they have quickly become a standout client. Their implementation includes parks, streets, stormwater, traffic, water, water treatment, and wastewater. They are also utilizing mobile and Citizen Engagement API, as well as integrations to their payroll system, CRM, and utility billing system. The City is tailoring the Cityworks experience to the needs of the end user by using both Cityworks office and mobile out in the field. Arvada is also actively involved with the Cityworks community, presenting at our conference as well as frequently presenting and always participating in the local Colorado Cityworks Users meeting.

 Yorba Linda Water District

Yorba Linda Water District in California has a 10-year history of using Cityworks, but it has truly expanded its use in the last two years by moving from 18 users to more than 50. One of the standout improvements in the district has been empowering users to participate in Cityworks and Asset Management, which has significantly increased user acceptance and successful data collection. They are also on track to see a 50% increase in work orders year over year.

City of Portland, Maine

 The City of Portland, Maine, is perhaps the first customer to configure and launch a complete asset strategy using Cityworks Operational Insights. They also have three full-time teams using Mobile in the field on many types of stormwater infrastructure. In addition to the great work bringing their departments to the digital age and being on the cutting edge using Operational Insights, Portland has integrated Cityworks with SeeClickFix for citizen engagement and IT Pipes for CCTV.

 Salt Lake City Public Utilities

One of our oldest and dearest customers, Salt Lake City Public Utilities has been with Cityworks for 21 years. With more than 130 users in the field and in the office, Salt Lake City Public Utilities uses Cityworks throughout the organization for critical decision-making and analysis, including water main break reports to determine if a water line meets criteria for replacement when a roadway is being considered for replacement, as well as mapping and analyzing impervious surfaces to determine best stormwater management practices to meet both state and federal regulations and maintenance requirements. Most recently, they have been using Cityworks inspections in the mobile app as they replace more than 90,000 water meters in their service area.

Excellence in Enterprise Practice

The Excellence in Enterprise Practice Award recognizes clients who use Cityworks throughout their organization in a high-quality manner. These clients offer great examples of how Cityworks enterprise solutions can help improve work, planning, budgeting, and communication across an entire organization. The winners are:

 Independence Power & Light

Independence Power & Light in Missouri has done a lot of great work in a short amount of time. They use Cityworks both for electric distribution and generation and have made amazing progress on vertical assets. Perhaps one of the most impressive pieces of their usage of Cityworks is how they have recognized the need to use Cityworks as a platform and build integrations to not only JD Edwards but their AS400 so that Cityworks could have updated materials.

City of Escondido, California

The City of Escondido, California, has transformed its operations and internal management by adopting an enterprise vision. They have pushed Cityworks to nearly every department from public works to utilities and have begun the rollout of PLL starting with business licensing and now permitting. Escondido’s team has transitioned from reactionary to visionary, becoming a technology leader in the region and showing their commitment to the smart community effort. 

 City of Kelowna, British Columbia

The City of Kelowna, British Columbia, serves the community in a variety of ways, and their asset management through Cityworks is an integrated approach to delivering value to the community through the effective management of existing and new infrastructure assets. As the City improves planning and operational efficiencies and maintains prompt time and resource tracking, they are reducing the risk of asset failure and providing service to the community in a sustainable manner that ensures the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

 City of O’Fallon, Illinois

The City of O’Fallon, Illinois, has been an exemplary customer with their use of AMS for years. And their use of Cityworks “inside” is a strong indicator that a customer understands the true power of Cityworks as an asset management tool that isn’t limited to just outdoor assets. It should be noted that while only using PLL since 2017, their use of it is just as innovative and powerful as their use of AMS. O’Fallon is a true ambassador and has endorsed Cityworks time and time again while mentoring fellow users both in their region and nationwide.

Excellence in Online Practice 

The Excellence in Online Practice recognizes a client using Cityworks Online and tools like eURL to improve data accessibility, transparency, and accountability in their community. The winner is:

 City of Greenwood, Indiana

The City of Greenwood, Indiana, has integrated a state-wide system called INBiz to their PLL Public Access Portal for new business permit applications. By routing customers seamlessly through INBiz and into Cityworks to track and manage contractor permits, they will likely increase their online permit submittal traffic by 80 percent. This type of forward thinking by Greenwood is paving the way for other municipalities in Indiana that use PLL to take advantage of this statewide system for integration.