City administrators at Sandy City, Utah, are more confident in the safety and well-being of their community than ever before using Cityworks® to manage assets within its Fire Department and multiple areas within the Public Utilities Department. Not only has expanding the use of the GIS-centric public asset management solution throughout the city provided increased confidence in the maintenance and management of vital city assets, but city personnel are also saving time and money being able to access accurate information in an efficient manner.
Over the past two years, Sandy Public Utilities has grown from 6 Cityworks users to more than 36, expanding Cityworks from its initial implementation for streetlights and water meters into areas such as water distribution, construction, stormwater, and storeroom. Additionally, the Sandy City Fire Department (SCFD) is utilizing the system with solid results. Matt Eskesen, Sandy City GIS coordinator and Cityworks administrator, says he has “experienced the benefits of a system that is flexible and customizable,” and that Cityworks “has made it easier to see what is happening around the city on a daily basis.”
Cityworks helps SCFD use flow test inspections and create event layers for out-of-service fire hydrants. Prior to the deployment of Cityworks, any out-of-service fire hydrants “wouldn’t be known for weeks and were never easily accessible,” Eskesen says. He also states that by looking at the map, SCFD knows “exactly what fire hydrants are in working order and which ones are not.” Whenever a work order is issued in the Public Utilities Department for a fire hydrant, a symbol appears on the fire department map to show the fire hydrant is out of service. Once the fire hydrant is repaired, the symbol changes color and remains green for 30 days before disappearing. Customized fire hydrant symbols on the map enable the SCFD to efficiently track and maintain essential fire hydrants for the safety and well being of Sandy City residents and businesses.
In addition to customizing event layers for fire hydrant maintenance with Cityworks, Sandy City utilizes Cityworks Storeroom to take inventory of construction and maintenance materials. The city keeps a sizeable inventory stockpiled at all times in case of emergencies. The city also uses Storeroom to keep track of materials and parts lent to other cities—something that happens from time to time because of Sandy City’s prolific stockpile. A tracked inventory in Storeroom “prevents [the city] from purchasing a lot of unnecessary materials,” Eskesen says. Before the city used Cityworks Storeroom, Eskesen states, “If we needed a material and weren’t exactly sure if we had it or not, we would simply purchase it. Now that is all gone away. We know in an instant what we have.”
Scott Arnold, storeroom manager at Sandy City, used a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for a number of years before making the move to Cityworks Storeroom. Although apprehensive to make the change at first, Arnold found the switch from Excel to Cityworks Storeroom seamless: “I picked up Cityworks quickly, and information is easy to pull up in the system.”
Easy transitions are another factor that inspired Sandy City to utilize Cityworks on laptops for streetlight management in August of last year. Larry Bowler, former operations manager at Sandy City Public Utilities, says that utilizing laptops in the field allows workers to enter completed task information into the system for a supervisor or manager to instantly see. Bowler explains that a supervisor or manager can “at any time know the status in real-time, which is a huge time saver.” Using laptops in the field not only benefits workers, managers, and supervisors, but Bowler says, “On the flip side, field personnel can also access service requests while in the field, saving even more time and effort by being able to access and input the information much easier and at any time.”
“We are always pleased to see organizations improving business processes with Cityworks, and what a great thing to see them implementing it in ways that safeguard their community in areas such are the Fire Department and others,” states Brian Haslam, president and CEO of Cityworks–Azteca Systems. “Cityworks’ flexible nature and unique GIS-centric capabilities make it the leading solution in the industry, Empowering GIS® for Public Asset Management from around the world to our individual communities, ultimately providing safer and more sustainable communities for us to live in.”
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