City of Evanston
 Located just north of Chicago, Evanston Illinois is a picturesque city along the shores of Lake Michigan. With unique business districts, attractive homes, tree-lined streets, and pleasant public parks, it plays host to Northwestern University and a diverse population of nearly 75,000 people.
The city’s Public Works, Water and Sewer Division utilizes Cityworks to manage daily maintenance and operations.
Situation
With three different systems being used to manage more than 150 miles of water main, the sewer system and treatment plant operations, the Water and Sewer department had difficulty knowing which system was the most accurate and most dependable. A paper-based work order system, a DOS-based system and a collection of meter cards all grew out of sync with one another and it became nearly impossible to determine the reliability of maintenance records and asset locations. It became more and more necessary to refer to as-built paper drawings to determine what had taken place most recently – an archaic waste of time.
The city released a Request for Proposal to find a system that could be used by both divisions. Recognising the benefits of a Geographic Information System (GIS), they requested the system be able to project data to and use information available from the existing GIS data.
Vision
Staff envisioned a system that would be based on a single asset inventory without linking or synchronisation and one that would provide simple access to information to address the day-to-day questions. They imagined an easy-to-use and easy-to-manage solution that would do the things they needed and wanted both faster and more efficiently than any of their existing means.
Solution
Azteca Systems responded to the RFP and through a competitive review process, Cityworks was selected as the Maintenance Management System of choice. The city further tapped Varion Systems of Chicago, IL to implement Cityworks and provide supporting GIS and related set up services.
Cityworks is used on a daily basis for tracking maintenance activities related to the water and sewer utilities. In addition, Cityworks is used to manage utility locations and related activities. A wide variety of reports are prepared by all levels of management.
Result
Today, the City has a much better handle on the work going on and the condition of the infrastructure inventory. With accurate information, managers are now able to make better decisions based on timely and correct data.
"We have a tool that is open and flexible enough to not only help us answer basic questions, but is also able to adapt to our workflow and the expertise of our users in order to improve our business process," says Andrew Vitale, GIS Analyst. "Cityworks has the ability to transfer our user’s knowledge into the workflow processes."
City staff queries the data in support of a wide variety of scheduled and unscheduled reports. Information is combined with maps to produce detailed summaries to support operations, planning and scheduling. The ease and ability to search and report on the Cityworks and GIS data has drawn the strongest and most positive feedback as a result of implementation of the system.
Related Links
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Read the Case Study in ArcGIS Explorer
For more information, contact gViz;
e: assets@gviz.com.au
p: +61 2 433 202 44 |
