The City of Westland received a State of Michigan Stormwater, Asset Management, and Wastewater (SAW) Grant. This program included the allocation of $450 million to support Michigan entities to build and develop an asset management plan for their critical stormwater and wastewater infrastructure. In total, 673 applications were received.
The City deployed a completely externalized solution that includes Cityworks Online (CWOL) and ESRI ArcGIS Online (AGOL). This deployment method was selected because it provides an efficient design that can be leveraged to serve the entire organization.
The initial deployment, in January 2015, outlined 10 users to accommodate Department of Public Services (DPS) administrative staff. Over the course of eight months, the licensing level has increased to more than 45 users.
A key aspect of Cityworks’ success in the City is the versatility to adapt to the needs of specific initiatives and goals within multiple departments. For example, the City used Cityworks to manage and track the SAW grant program work activities.
Project management and budgeting through Cityworks has provided an easy method to track the overall budget and work activities that are reimbursable through the SAW grant. Just by selecting the project name, the City can view and report on the initiatives taken to track costs and resources. Qualified activities such as pipe jetting/cleaning, meetings, trainings, and inspections can instantly be retrieved and submitted for reimbursement through the grant.
Included in the City of Westland SAW grant was the contracted effort to obtain PACP inspections and CCTV videos on key areas of infrastructure throughout the city. To track progress, the vendor was assigned its own Cityworks login to access a portion of the Westland Cityworks data.
This login allows the vendor to view the assigned CCTV inspections along with a customized map of the GIS stormwater data. The map view and inspections provide the CCTV crew with essential GIS information for completing the inspections, including facility ID, connected structure IDs, diameter, and material.
A custom inspection template was created to track the progress of the CCTV crew. As pipes are inspected, crews note whether the pipe was cleaned, inaccessible, or needs cleaning. Depending on the observations, the DPS administrators have an inbox built to effectively manage and monitor the status of all inspections in real-time. If a pipe needed to be cleaned before the CCTV crew is reassigned, the appropriate work order can be created with the click of a button.
Upon completing the project, the City will be able to utilize the Cityworks PACP module to import the inspection data in a standard format for historical tracking. A second custom inspection and Cityworks user were recently created to track the manhole inspection portion of the grant. This will be similar to the PACP project layout, with a completely different vendor and collection process.
Finally, the Contracts module is being utilized to track the bid tabs and contracted units approved in the grant. This encompasses all vendor contracts for GIS development, CCTV, Manhole Assessment and Certification Program (MACP), and asset management planning.
By Doug Ritter, CEO, Ritter GIS
Comments (0)