Cityworks Magazine Fall 2020

A Trimble Company

Fall 2020

COMMUNITY 4.0

IMPROVING EFFICIENCY WHILE MEETING INCREASED DEMANDS 5 NEW ENHANCEMENTS IN

CITYWORKS 15.6 4 WAYS TO USE

CITYWORKS WITH ARCGIS INDOORS ENTERPRISE AIRPORT MANAGEMENT IN THE AGE OF COVID-19

Featuring: Greater Rockford Airport Authority, IL Spotsylvania County, VA Raleigh, NC Denton, TX Cupertino, CA

Cityworks.com

FALL 2020 | CITYWORKS MAGAZINE

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CITYWORKS MAGAZINE | FALL 2020

Do You Know Where Your Inventory Is? Inventory Tracking is more important than ever.

Where is our critical inventory?

How much do we have in stock?

What is the cost to our budget?

Radley’s Inventory Control solution for Cityworks users brings real-time visibility to your storeroom.

Eliminate manual tasks and bypass time-consuming paperwork. Collect data from barcodes, tags and RFID portals—updating Cityworks with each transaction, as it happens, in real-time.

Simplify inventory counts and automate Storeroom transactions to boost efficiency, with a real-time Cityworks-centric solution. Reduce waste and theft by tracking serial and lot numbers, expiration dates and more.

Take control of your inventory with Radley. Let’s get started today.

To learn more visit: www.radley.com/Cityworks

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PLANT MAINTENANCE

INSPECTIONS

TRANSFORMER MAINTENANCE

VEGETATION MANAGEMENT

DESIGN WORK ORDERS

OUTAGE RESPONSE

ASSET AND WORK MANAGEMENT FOR TRANSMISSION DISTRIBUTION, GENERATION AND GAS POWER360AMS can now leverage Esri’s Utility Network to effectively manage your assets.

WWW.POWER360AMS.COM 2

CITYWORKS MAGAZINE | FALL 2020

CONTENTS

CONTENTS | FALL 2020 PRESIDENT’S CORNER

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Creating a GIS-Centric Community of Action

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As virtual representations of assets continue to improve, communities are more empowered than ever before to make data-driven decisions and take actions to become safer, more resilient, and more sustainable.

BY BRIAN HASLAM, CITYWORKS PRESIDENT AND CEO

CITYWORKS EXPERT TIPS

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24 FEATURE STORIES

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Community 4.0: Improving Efficiency While Meeting Increased Demand

The traditional stopgap of doing more with less during tough times is not a sustainable solution.

Organizations need effective solutions to improve efficiency while meeting increased demand.

Community 4.0 can help.

BY CARL HORTON, CITYWORKS CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR

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Get Your Head in the Cloud: 6 Reasons to Use Cityworks Online

Using a cloud-hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution has several advantages, including increased accessibility, productivity, and collaboration. Not convinced? Here’s what Cityworks Online customers have to say about the benefits they are experiencing.

BY JAMIE ARMSTRONG, CITYWORKS CONTENT MARKETING MANAGER

4 Ways to Use Cityworks with ArcGIS Indoors With the release of ArcGIS Indoors, Esri is providing a great end-user experience in the vertical asset space.

And with the help of the ArcGIS Indoors Information Model, the ArcGIS Indoors mobile and web applications give end users the ability to route to these assets so that the necessary work can be completed and recorded in Cityworks.

BY MITCHELL OTTESEN, CITYWORKS SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT

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Operational Awareness: Your Data on Your Dash Developing dashboards is all about empowering users to determine how they want to display data and configure it themselves. Here are some of the latest configuration enhancements from Cityworks.

BY DINORAH SANCHEZ, CITYWORKS SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT

IN EVERY ISSUE

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Odds & Ends

54

News & Events

56

Inside the Numbers

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CONTENTS

CONTENTS | FALL 2020 CASE STUDIES

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Enterprise Airport Management in the Age of COVID-19 Like airports across the world, Chicago Rockford International Airport has been severely impacted by COVID-19. But with the help of Cityworks, the Greater Rockford Airport Authority has been able to manage operations with minimal disruption.

BY LINDSAY FERGUSON, CITYWORKS CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR

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Tracking and Approving Private Development Construction Projects

By utilizing the workflows in Cityworks PLL, Spotsylvania County staff have created a process to ensure that assets are properly managed throughout their entire life cycle.

BY GREG STEPHENSON, TIMMONS GROUP CLIENT SUPPORT MANAGER

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Keeping Parks Clean with Smart Technology With Cityworks, ArcGIS, and the Bigbelly smart waste system, the City of Raleigh, North Carolina, has streamlined their workflow while ensuring that their parks are clean and enjoyable for residents.

BY LINDSAY FERGUSON, CITYWORKS CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR

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Configuring Cityworks Data for Water Loss Audits

Water loss audits are vital for any water utility. By applying a customized Cityworks solution, the City of Denton, Texas, was able to achieve more accurate reporting with improved calculations and better data.

BY TIFFANY SHERRANE, WASTEWATER ASSET MANAGEMENT SPECIALIST, AND DANIEL PARISH, WATER PRODUCTION PLANT MANAGER, CITY OF DENTON, TEXAS

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5 Tips for Streamlining Facility Workflows

The uniquely slow and methodical approach we used to build out Cityworks in Cupertino has given us the power to change our processes and make each implementation as effective as possible.

BY ANDY BADAL, ASSET MANAGEMENT TECHNICIAN, CITY OF CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA

SOFTWARE DIGEST

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5 New Enhancements in Cityworks 15.6

Cityworks 15.6 and the latest versions of corresponding apps include a deep list of new functionality to expand your asset management capabilities.

BY SARA ADELMAN, CITYWORKS SENIOR COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

BEST PRACTICES

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

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5 Ways Aerial Imagery Helps You Plan Smarter

Together, Nearmap and Cityworks can help you see exactly what’s happening on the ground and reduce the number of site visits required.

BY ANGELA BREWSTER, NEARMAP CONTENT MARKETING MANAGER

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Industry Insights from Laura Carr Laura Carr, chief operations officer of NewEdge Services, LLC, knows what it takes to help clients achieve their implementation goals as well as their vision for the future.

Advisory Board Brian Haslam | President & CEO George Mastakas | Vice President, Enterprise Solutions Wayne Hill | Vice President, Client Relations Brent Wilson | Vice President, Sales Becky Tamashasky | Vice President, Vision & Product Engineering Sheldon Bagley | Vice President, Development Jed Call | Executive Director, Marketing

CITYWORKS GIS-CENTRIC CHARACTERISTICS Cityworks is an ArcGIS® pure-play, meaning we recognize the ArcGIS geodatabase as the only authoritative asset database. This translates to seven key characteristics that define our technology solutions.

Magazine Staff Jamie Armstrong | Editor Kaye Ryser | Assistant Editor Rylee Jo Ashcraft | Graphic Designer

Marketing and Communications Cindy Curletti | Marketing Manager Paige Burnhope | Marketing Coordinator

Subscriptions To subscribe, change your address, or cancel your subscription: stories@cityworks.com

Contact Us Tel: 801-523-2751 Email: stories@cityworks.com Archives available at: www.cityworks.com CITYWORKS, A TRIMBLE COMPANY 11075 South State Street, Suite 24 Sandy, UT 84070 801-523-2751 www.cityworks.com The information contained in this document is the exclusive property of Azteca Systems, LLC, a Trimble company. This work is protected under United States copyright law and other international copyright treaties and conventions. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as expressly permitted in writing by Azteca Systems dba Cityworks. All requests should be sent to Attention: Contracts and Legal Services Manager, Cityworks, 11075 south State, Suite 24, Sandy, UT 84070, USA.

NO REDUNDANCY

ArcGIS is the authoritative system of record with no writing or syncing to other asset data tables.

FULLY CONFIGURABLE

Events

Sara Adelman | Editor

Cityworks can support any geodatabase design for your assets—including linear, dispersed, or condensed.

NONPROPRIETARY

We build on the geodatabase with well-known and understood data structure elements. Your organization owns and fully controls its data.

ARCGIS UPDATES

Cityworks relies solely on ArcGIS feature services to update the authoritative asset data to ensure data integrity.

ARCGIS WEB MAP

Any application can access an ArcGIS web map without constraints, allowing you to find and view asset data at a glance.

The information contained in this document is subject to change without notice.

TRADEMARKS: Cityworks®, Cityworks Logo, Empowering GIS, GIS Empowered, the Three Layer Map Logo, Enables the Power of Where, @cityworks.com, cityworks.com, mycityworks.com, Azteca Systems, the Azteca Systems logo and Azteca Systems products referenced herein are either trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of Azteca Systems in the United States, Canada, the European Community, or certain other jurisdictions. Trimble® and the Trimble logo are a registered trademarks of Trimble, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Changes are periodically added to this information. Cityworks may make improvements and/or changes in the product(s) and/or the program(s) described herein at any time. In no event shall Cityworks and/or its respective suppliers be liable for any special, indirect, or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data, or profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence, or other tortious action arising out of or in connection with the use or performance of software, documents, or failure to provide services.

No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form.

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SINGLE SIGN-ON

Our software supports a single sign-on identity. All associated apps will support the preferred identity storehouse— ArcGIS Online or Portal for ArcGIS.

ANALYTICS & REPORTING

Cityworks uses ArcGIS tools for data analytics and powerful visualizations to support decision-making.

Training

EMPOWER YOUR TEAM. DRIVE RESULTS. Maximize your team’s success with Cityworks training. Whether you’re new to Cityworks or an experienced administrator, we have a training course to meet your needs. Our talented instructors offer a diverse lineup of online sessions.

Explore new Cityworks tools and functionality

Learn efficient workflows and best practices

Access exclusive materials to support your next project

EXPLORE FULL COURSE OFFERINGS ONLINE AT MYCITYWORKS.FORCE.COM/S/TRAINING

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SPRING FALL 2020 | CITYWORKS MAGAZINE

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CITYWORKS MAGAZINE | FALL 2020

ODDS & ENDS

ODDS & ENDS

Fun facts, poll results, and other interesting stuff

COVID-19 IMPACT ON OPERATIONS We recently asked our customers, “Which of these things impacted your organization’s operations during COVID-19?”

Here’s how more than 400 respondents answered.

64% We really can work from home and be productive 58% Not being able to interact with staff in person 16% Summer break for the kids started 3 months early 10% No toilet paper to be found 17% All of the above

FAST FACT:

Established in 1792, the City of Raleigh, North Carolina, was named after English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh but was also often called the “City of Oaks” because of its large number of oak trees. Turn to p. 36 to learn how Raleigh is using smart sensors and IoT to keep their parks clean.

FAST FACT:

Cupertino, California, is the home of Apple Inc.’s corporate headquarters. Turn to p. 45 to learn how the city has streamlined its facility workflows using Cityworks.

“A city is not gauged by its length and width but by the broadness of its vision and the height of its dreams.”

—Herb Caen

5 FASCINATING FACTS ABOUT TRAFFIC CONES Ah, the ubiquitous orange traffic cone. We see them practically every day, but what do we really know about them? Here are some fun facts about these bright, conical marvels that help to keep us safe on the roads.

1. There are an estimated 140 million traffic cones in use worldwide.

2. Before the traffic cone was invented, wooden barriers and wooden tripods were used to mark dangerous spots on the highway.

They were not easily seen and were often broken.

3. In 1940, while working as a street painter for the City of Los Angeles, Charles D. Scanlon designed a hollow, conical marker to keep cars from driving over wet paint. He patented the rubber traffic cone in 1943.

4. By 1947, rubber traffic cones were being mass produced, which means they have been used on roads for the past 73 years.

5. In the United States, approximately 1 million traffic cones are stolen each year. To help alleviate a similar problem in the United Kingdom, police departments throughout the country occasionally hold “cone amnesties,” giving citizens a chance to return “borrowed” traffic cones.

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PRESIDENT’S CORNER

CITYWORKS ONLINE

HEALTH HAZARDS

SMART CITY

SMART INFRASTRUCTURE

TRAFFIC FLOW OPTIMIZATION POTHOLE REPAIRS WASTE AND RECYCLING

AUTOMATIC IRRIGATION EARLY FLOOD WARNING FACILITY MANAGEMENT

CREATING A GIS-CENTRIC COMMUNITY OF ACTION As virtual representations of assets continue to improve, communities are more empowered than ever before to make data-driven decisions and take actions to become safer, more resilient, and more sustainable.

BY BRIAN HASLAM, CITYWORKS PRESIDENT AND CEO

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n many ways, today’s demand for timely and reliable data to support better decision-making reminds me of the late ’80s and early ’90s. An urgency was developing among utilities and local government organizations to digitize paper documents that contained their current and historical knowledge of critical infrastructure assets.

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It was not uncommon for this data to be stored in basement rooms of operations buildings, out of sight and out of mind. Key employees at these organizations knew that, if only this data could be made accessible, it could provide valuable insights into their operations.

As utilities and local government organizations digitized,

some chose to house their asset data in the database of work management systems. Others chose to house their data into the database of the GIS. Over the years, more and more organizations saw their GIS as the most up-to-date and accurate repository for their critical asset data. Using GIS data led to

PRESIDENT’S CORNER

better decisions and actions—better asset management.

Cityworks began by challenging the assumption that these two systems should remain siloed, and we looked for a way to connect work management systems with ArcGIS®, the geodatabase created

by Esri®. The ArcGIS geodatabase was dynamic and flexible. An organization could easily design and create their data to represent the real world. In contrast, work management system databases were much less dynamic. Changes required custom programming or custom scripting. We saw ArcGIS as a platform for asset management and built the Cityworks GIS-centric public asset management system.

Today, utilities and local governments face another turning point in technology development: the digital twin. As Esri explains, “A digital twin is a virtual representation of an object, process, or system that bridges the gap between the physical and digital worlds.”1 At its core, this is what GIS has always been, and this is the solution we were creating those decades ago with a GIS-centric public asset management platform. Cityworks and ArcGIS provide a powerful link between the physical and digital worlds, and the functionality of GIS as a dynamic, flexible, accurate, and up-to-date virtual representation of all asset types continues to improve. One key component of today’s digital twins is the ability to leverage real-time sensor data to monitor trends and predict outcomes. I have written much about the System of Engagement, System of Record, and System of Insight and how GIS-centric

is a core foundational component tending the GIS-centric digital twin with GIS as the asset repository. approach in a new intelligent asset IoT expands these systems by management solution for water providing real-time updates to and wastewater utilities. Citythe GIS, in turn leading to better works, ArcGIS, and Trimble work decision-making and actions for together to create a System of managing critical public assets—a Action that helps utilities optimize System of Action. asset performance, field productivThe Cityworks GIS-centric ity, and environmental compliance design continues to use the Esri while enhancing safety, sustaingeodatabase as the asset reposability, and quality of service. The itory for an organization’s critical solution allows utilities to leverage asset data without redundancy, sensor data, location intelligence, duplication, or syncing. (You can and analytics tools in their asset find the GIS-centric characteristics management strategies by combinon p. 6.) In Cityworks, there are no ing the Cityworks GIS-centric asset “behind the scenes” asset tables management platform with Trimrestricting the dynamic ble’s Telog® IoT recorders and flexible qualities of and the latest release of the geodatabase by Trimble Unity™ remote Turn to page 20 to read more about the requiring duplicate monitoring software.

System of Action for data or syncing. Our Just like the early local government and utilities.

GIS-centric approach ‘90s, today we live maximizes the geoin an exciting time of graphic capacity of digital advancement for utilitwins in every way. ties and local government Take, for example, the enorganizations. Yet the end-goal hancements ArcGIS Indoors and remains the same. We designed Cityworks offer for vertical asset and created the leading GIS-centric management (p. 49). Organizations platform to inform the actions you can now combine indoor spatial take and the decisions you make awareness with GIS data and smart to create more resilient, sustainsensors to identify and predict able, and safe communities— a equipment failure, automate asset system of action for communities controls, secure key areas, send of action. alerts, and more.

Another application of virtual “Digital Twins Enable Innovation and Savings,” asset modeling can be found in ArcUser, Esri, Fall 2019, https://www.esri.com/ the ArcGIS Utility Network, which about/newsroom/arcuser/digital-twins-enableoffers specialized functionality for innovation-and-savings/ linear assets managed by water, gas, and electric utilities. You can see how San Juan Water District uses the ArcGIS Utility Network Visit cityworks.com/IoT to watch a with Cityworks at webinar that explores the Cityworks youtu.be/hfCSmMZu75A. and Trimble real-time IoT solution As a part of the Trimble family for water and wastewater utilities. of companies, Cityworks is ex1

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CITYWORKS EXPERT TIPS

4 WAYS TO USE CITYWORKS WITH ARCGIS INDOORS With the release of ArcGIS Indoors, Esri is providing a great end-user experience in the vertical asset space. Features and assets that exist on various floors of a structure can now be easily visualized and located. And with the help of the ArcGIS Indoors Information Model (AIIM), the ArcGIS Indoors mobile and web applications give end users the ability to route to these assets so that the necessary work can be completed and then recorded in Cityworks.

BY MITCHELL OTTESEN, CITYWORKS SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT

E

sri ArcGIS technology gives organizations powerful tools for recording and exploring data to better understand the world we live in. Organizations benefit greatly from the spatial awareness that GIS information brings, and for more than 20 years, Cityworks and

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Esri have worked together to help them take advantage of this spatial awareness to better build, repair, and maintain vital infrastructure that millions of lives rely on. A lot of this infrastructure takes the form of linear assets that can be digitized and visualized easily using ArcGIS,

while Cityworks allows organizations to easily maintain a system of record of the work history done against this infrastructure. In a vertical asset management space, however, visualization and management of assets can be difficult.

CITYWORKS EXPERT TIPS

CHALLENGES OF VERTICAL ASSET MANAGEMENT Vertical asset management takes place within structures that often have multiple levels and floors.

Many organizations use hierarchies of related records to a spatial feature to record their work activities in this space. While this approach is possible and can be effective for vertical asset manage-

ment, the end-user experience isn’t optimal. The end user doesn’t have spatial awareness because this approach relies on nonspatial data.

In order to capture and maintain important asset data, you need a solution that inspires end-user adoption. You need a better user experience. This is critical to ensure that the system of record is being captured and maintained.

THE ARCGIS INDOORS SOLUTION Organizations can use ArcGIS Indoors geoprocessing tools to convert non-GIS CAD and BIM data to AIIM-compliant features. The AIIM GIS data can then be visualized and explored inside the ArcGIS Indoors mobile and web applications. The AIIM introduces the idea of features being level-aware—that features exist on a specific floor inside of a building or facility. Rather than configuring relationship classes, the AIIM infers feature relationships using attribute-based rules. These are then interpreted

by ArcGIS Indoors applications and widgets to create the visual experience, greatly improving speed and performance. After the data curation process is done, it’s time for Cityworks to do what Cityworks does best—enable ArcGIS technology. Cityworks has been working closely with the ArcGIS Indoors team to enable ArcGIS Indoors to create the best possible end-user experience in a vertical asset management space. Here are four ways Cityworks goes hand-in-hand with ArcGIS Indoors.

1. By reading facility and level data from AIIM-compliant assets, Cityworks work activities will inherit the floor awareness of the features that are attached to them. This is done by Cityworks storing the facility and level-specific information in the Cityworks database.

ArcGIS Indoors allows the configurations of applink actions such as creating work orders in Cityworks.

2. Because the Cityworks map natively supports ArcGIS map widgets, the floor-switcher widget used inside the ArcGIS

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CITYWORKS EXPERT TIPS

from ArcGIS Indoors. ArcGIS Indoors uses mobile map packages (MMPKs) to contain the GIS data and to configure integrations with third-party applications.

The power of eURLs allows Cityworks work activities to be displayed in the ArcGIS Indoors experiences.

Indoors web application can be easily installed into the Cityworks map. This means end users have a familiar experience whether they are working in ArcGIS Indoors or in Cityworks. You can use AIIM data to visualize an asset, navigate to it, and then perform work against it without ever having to leave Cityworks!

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3. You can configure ArcGIS Indoors to pass information from the AIIM features inside ArcGIS Indoors to the Cityworks mobile native apps by way of a URL scheme to perform a myriad of functions. One of the more advanced functions is the ability to go straight to the work order intake screen inside the Cityworks mobile app with an asset already attached

4. Cityworks information can be easily displayed inside an ArcGIS Indoors environment. Using the power of eURLs, Cityworks work activities can be shown inside both the ArcGIS Indoors mobile and web applications. This gives the user the ability to view work activity progress in real time while in the ArcGIS Indoors applications.

Because Cityworks work activities will be floor-aware, they will toggle alongside the assets with the ArcGIS Indoors floor-switcher widgets.

For example, a work order on the second floor of a building will appear when the user is looking at the second floor of the building in ArcGIS Indoors.

With the interactions and integration between ArcGIS Indoors and Cityworks, the end user no longer needs to navigate through hierarchies of related nonspatial tables to find the correct asset to attach to a work order or inspection. The asset can be easily attached through the map just like with linear assets. There are many industries that this can benefit, including but not limited to airports, facilities, and treatment plants.

With the power of ArcGIS Indoors and Cityworks, workers can have an enjoyable, easy-to-use, spatially aware end-user experience while performing their day-to-day work activities.

DEC 8-10 | SALT LAKE CITY, UT

L E AR N. CO NNEC T. S HA RE.

Save the date for Where: Cityworks Conference 2021!

We are already working on an incredible lineup, packed with interactive sessions, customer-led breakouts, and inspirational keynotes. Please plan to join us and share how you are using Cityworks and ArcGISÂŽ to lead innovation at your organization.

Cityworks.com

CITYWORKS EXPERT TIPS

OPERATIONAL AWARENESS: YOUR DATA ON YOUR DASH Developing dashboards is all about empowering users to determine how they want to display data and configure it themselves. Here are some of the latest configuration enhancements from Cityworks.

BY DINORAH SANCHEZ, CITYWORKS SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT

W

ith the release of Respond 2.0 and more recent versions, there has been a dramatic transformation regarding how you engage your data. Whether it’s the updated user interface, the new count widget, or the ability to query Storeroom data, Query Editor and Dashboards introduce new possibilities for understanding your data.

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QUICK QUERYING The first notable addition to Respond is the basic search, which provides a fast and easy way to find work activities from some of the most common fields. In Respond, at the top right corner, the magnifying lens will expose the basic and advanced search options. From there, you can select

from Permits, Work Orders, Service Requests, and Inspections to quickly open it.

The basic search is exactly that: basic. If you need more fields to search and open, then advanced search—better known as Query Editor—and Dashboards are the way to go.

Once in Query Editor, you will notice three separate panels:

CITYWORKS EXPERT TIPS

• The left panel is where you can create a new query and hold previously saved queries from the logged-in user.

• The center panel is where you can enter the query criteria, such as name, whether it will query Cityworks or GIS data, the type of activity, and finally enter query parameters.

• The right panel is where the query results appear. From here, you can select the response field you’d like to view.

Opening results is limited to a single selection.

The Show Query option, located right below the query name, is easy to miss but very powerful.

When you click on it, you can enter query syntax to create even more robust queries than what is possible through the Query Builder

below. If you are interested in using this feature, be aware that it uses a Cityworks Query Language (CQL) and that great documentation can be found by clicking on the question mark below the syntax box.

The Query Types field includes 13 options ranging from work activities to contracts, projects, and materials in addition to GIS feature and object queries. Another important tip: in the Query Builder section, the first box is the activity’s parent table while the indented boxes are child or related data tables.

DASHBOARD The home icon on the left toolbar will take you back to the last dashboard you viewed. Based on user feedback about Inbox, we developed the Dashboard Management page to provide a comprehensive method for managing dashboard

permissions and viewing and transferring ownerships. It also provides general dashboard management of editing, cloning, and deleting.

Using this page, a Cityworks administrator or power user can easily create a dashboard and transfer ownership to a supervisor for daily upkeep. To access the Dashboard Management page, simply tap the ellipsis at the top right toolbar, which will also take you to the most recently viewed dashboards and click Manage Dashboards as the last option.

The most visible change is apparent in configuring dashboards, a.k.a. edit mode. In the latest release, you can format the appearance of widget backgrounds, fonts, and chart colors. If you have been ready to change the default blue, now is your time.

Query Editor provides a query syntax area for the Query Builder to quickly get results.

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CITYWORKS EXPERT TIPS

Count

Bar Chart

Count

Map

Nongeocoded

Table

Pie Chart

An overview of the dashboard widgets and highlights.

By default, each dashboard starts with a grid of nine cells where widgets can be added. Spaces that don’t contain a widget will not display in the dashboard’s view mode, so there is no need to delete unused cells. If more rows or columns are needed, the user can easily add or even delete, but if a widget is in one of the desired deleted areas, the deletion will be prevented.

To better visualize your data, widget options include count, table, map, HTML, and chart (pie or bar).

You can preview the data while you are configuring each widget, and you can also add actions. For example, a pie chart slice might display unassigned items. You can add an action to open those activities and dispatch them. If you interact with PLL data, you can choose to view tasks in Task Manager.

The table widget allows you to view child data, summarizing the number of records based on the

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field column, while user-configured information is presented in a modal. We added an alert symbol in the bottom right corner of the map widget to indicate activities that are not geocoded, and in the latest version, the user can now view the activities and take action. If you want a different map background, take advantage of the new GIS Definition, which displays service definitions enabled for Dashboard’s use. Another Dashboard tip: pie charts will automatically redraw the distribution when you click on the legend categories.

Both Query and Dashboards have made their way to other apps such as Storeroom, so let your customer success representative know where you would like it next. Your feedback will drive future enhancements. For more information on how you can start using Query and Dashboard, check out the great user guides on

mycityworks.force.com. After all, collecting data is only the beginning of asset management. What you do with the analysis and how it informs your organization is what compels sustained asset management.

Learn More For more information about Query Editor and Dashboards, log into mycityworks.force.com and watch the presentation titled “CC19: Query Editor and Dashboards.” Or visit the Cityworks YouTube channel to watch “Cityworks Connect Episode 1: The Power of Dashboards.”

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The future is in your hands with Augmented Reality TRANSFORMING THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS

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COMMUNITY 4.0

IMPROVING EFFICIENCY WHILE MEETING INCREASED DEMAND The traditional stopgap of doing more with less during tough times is not a sustainable solution.

Organizations need effective solutions to improve efficiency while meeting increased demand.

Community 4.0 can help.

BY CARL HORTON, CITYWORKS CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR

I

t’s no secret that many of the changes unfolding in our communities as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in constrained resources— both in labor and revenue—for organizations across the globe. U.S. county organizations alone have seen a 20 percent reduction in workforce so far this year and expect to see a $202 billion impact to budgets through the 2021 fiscal year.1 At the same time, 82 percent of government officials believe their operations should be more technologically advanced.2 The challenges faced by local government, utility, and transportation organizations should not be minimized. They pose a real obstacle to keeping our communities resilient, sustainable, and safe. But the disruptive technologies and business processes available to us today offer a new strategy beyond simply doing more with less. Welcome to Community 4.0.

WHAT IS COMMUNITY 4.0?

Community 4.0 is one application of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). If you paid attention in history class, you’re probably familiar with the first three industrial revolutions: mechanization (late 1700s), mass production (early 1900s), and digitization (mid-1900s).

4IR further advances automation through the Internet of Things (IoT), massive data storage, artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced analytics, and increased customer autonomy.

The key aspect of 4IR is not new technology itself but the disruption and innovation introduced by the technology. The breadth and diversity of 4IR disruptions across industries is breathtaking, and the characteristics of 4IR are finding a place in government, utility, and transportation agencies with enough staying power that a transformation is happening: Community 4.0.

HOW DID WE GET HERE? Technology-driven disruption over the course of the past 40 years brought computerization to local government, utility, and transportation organizations. These disruptions largely supported the transformation from paper-based business processes to digital workflows.

For many organizations, this took the shape of a system of systems that seamlessly integrated critical business platforms with a GIS-centric work management solution and an authoritative geodatabase.

Business processes that use systems of record data from GIS are presented to end users through the appropriate systems of engagement suited to office, field, mobile, or public access needs. The data, unsiloed and easily accessible, can then be visualized and understood in a system of insights.

While this system of systems transformation brought vast improvements in productivity and performance, many underlying business processes and

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rationale remained the same as before. Community 4.0 expands the system of systems model by incorporating a system of action: technology that automates data collection and decision-making to support more efficient, accurate, and meaningful action.

Community 4.0 creates more useful data—not only in amounts of orders of magnitude but at relatively inexpensive cost. Remote sensors, for example, can monitor and collect a wide variety of infrastructure data such as pipe network flow and quality; traffic counting and monitoring; waste bin capacity; soil moisture content for watering and irrigation; crowd capacity for public health requirements; and threshold monitoring of streams, rivers, storage tanks, and tides.

Automated data collection is only meaningful when the data can easily be consumed, interpreted, and analyzed to support accurate decision-making.

Today, there are innumerable software solutions that analyze data through artificial intelligence or advanced analytics to identify trends not otherwise apparent through human observation alone.

PREDICTING FUTURE ACTION So, what does this mean for public asset management?

Traditional asset management relies on proactive inspections and routine discovery of potential problems. Proactive maintenance reduces the potential for reactive maintenance by implementing inspection and repair programs on a cyclical basis—leading to a significant reduction in costs and disruptions.

While traditional proactive maintenance provides a routine examination of assets, it has limits. First of all, it requires people to individually inspect large quantities of assets that are in reasonable operational condition.

“A system of action automates data collection and decisionmaking to support more efficient, accurate, and meaningful action.”

Trimble and Cityworks Release a System of Action In July, Cityworks and Trimble announced the release of a real-time asset management solution for IoT. The solution allows organizations to leverage sensor data, location intelligence, and analytics tools in their asset management strategies by combining Cityworks AMS with Trimble’s Telog® IoT recorders and the latest release of Trimble Unity™ remote monitoring software.

The Trimble and Cityworks platforms—used by thousands of water, wastewater, and municipal utilities around the globe—combine to create a system of action based on real-time asset data collected from Trimble’s Telog family of wireless, battery-powered IoT recorders.

The real-time remote monitoring data and configurable sensor alarms flow from Trimble Unity into Cityworks, triggering the creation of field inspections and work orders so field

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crews can quickly and easily complete their assigned work.

Cityworks provides a GIS-centric environment for collecting asset information, calculating business risk exposure, and analyzing trends based on combined historic maintenance, asset data, and sensor data.

Contact your Cityworks representative to learn more.

While that may sound like a positive outcome, the activity requires an expense. Why waste time, effort, and money on functioning assets?

Inspection programs are often unable to track systematic issues that arise in networks such as water, wastewater, electric, and streets. Because traditional inspection programs focus on individual assets rather than the entire system, they are limited in their capacity to interpret trends and critical thresholds. A given asset may be physically fine and properly maintained, but whether or not it has reached critical capacity threshold is often unknown.

A Community 4.0 maintenance process places IoT devices within the system to monitor asset performance. These devices all have a few things in common: 1) they can communicate over the internet to the maintenance system, 2) they continuously collect and transmit key data that is used to identify issues that could be missed during traditional maintenance, and 3) they largely operate without human interaction.

One key element of the data logs created by these devices is critical thresholds, such as unexpected flow rates. Another key element is trends, which are of-

ten undetectable through physical inspection alone.

For example, decreasing flow rates over a given time period may indicate a leak or other issue in the nearby system. While the IoT devices themselves do not necessarily perform any functions beyond data collection and transmission, the maintenance management system can be configured to monitor the data for critical thresholds and trends and create alarms, inspections, and reports to prompt human action as needed.

When you combine IoT sensor data with the power of GIS intelligence, you can perform more expansive asset monitoring, better prioritize repair activities, and enrich your analysis to support capital improvement planning.

1

“Comprehensive Analysis of COVID-19’s Impact on County Finances and Implications

for the U.S. Economy,” National Association of Counties, July 21, 2020, https://www. naco.org/resources/comprehensive-analysis-covid-19s-impact-county-finances.

2

Crowe, Cailin, “Pandemic Has Expedited Digitization of Government Services:

Survey,” Smart Cities Dive, August 24, 2020, https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/ pandemic-has-expedited-digitization-of-government-services-survey/.

Simple Actions. Powerful Solutions.

Here are a few ways a system of action can be applied to public asset management.

Streams, Rivers, and Tides Ultrasonic sensors can form an early warning network for flash flooding and high tides. Over time, trends can help inform flood mitigation efforts, emergence response plans, and community development strategies.

Irrigation Water is a precious resource, and so are the green spaces in our communities. A soil moisture sensor can automatically trigger or suspend irrigation cycles to meet the need of area vegetation while also reducing water waste.

Waste and Recycling Garbage trucks average 2.5 miles per gallon, and fuel accounts for about 20 percent of total costs in the waste collection industry. Waste metering sensors can optimize truck routing and pickup times.

Over time, trends can help inform more accurate resource allocation by location and season.

Health Hazards Communities are exploring ways to monitor wastewater collection systems for the presence of COVID-19 and other viruses. While current technology generally requires human assistance in collecting samples, IoT -based sampling devices are under development.

Potholes Cameras attached to city buses, garbage trucks, and other vehicles collect immense amounts of data. Affordable AI solutions can process the data to help a city identify and repair potholes relatively quickly and efficiently. Over time, AI data can support risk assessment and capital planning.

Facility Management Smart devices in buildings and vertical asset networks can help identify equipment failure, automate climate controls, secure key areas, dim lights, send alerts, and more.

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GET YOUR HEAD IN THE CLOUD:

6 REASONS TO USE CITYWORKS ONLINE

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Using a cloud-hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution has several advantages, including increased accessibility, productivity, and collaboration. Not convinced? Here’s what Cityworks Online customers have to say about the benefits they are experiencing.

BY JAMIE ARMSTRONG, CITYWORKS CONTENT MARKETING MANAGER

C

ityworks Online (CWOL) provides a cloud-hosted, GIS-centric enterprise platform that enables streamlined access from any device. This allows users to connect and collaborate from virtually anywhere while freeing up critical IT resources to focus on strategic tasks. Whether yours is a small or large organization, here are six reasons to consider using Cityworks in the cloud.

1. Access from Any Location When Lisa Kleinosky, GIS administrator for Altoona Water Authority in Blair County, Pennsylvania, started planning for a migration to Cityworks Online in the spring of 2018, she had a specific goal in mind. “I was primarily looking forward to having a hosted, cloudbased solution that was easy to administer,” she said.

In the two years that Altoona Water Authority has been using the platform, Kleinosky says that her team has seen a variety of benefits compared to their former desktop environment. “Ease of access is the most obvious improvement. Instead of having software installed on multiple client machines, each CWOL user simply needs internet access and a computer or mobile device.”

And in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, having access from any location has been vital for the organization, which provides drinking water to approximately 70,000 people and maintains a wastewater collection system for more than 40,000 people. “For several weeks, our clerk was working from home most days. She was able to create work orders just from her own computer with internet access,” Kleinosky explained. “I was also able to work remotely with Cityworks Online and could easily view work orders and create reports. We all have a way to access the system in our own time and at our own homes.

That’s a huge advantage.”

Trisha Gabriel, roads and parks supervisor for the City of Livonia, Michigan, agrees that having an exter-

nalized site with Cityworks Online has made it much easier to provide essential services during the pandemic.

“If we’re doing inspections for trees or play structures, we’re able to take the tablet out in the field and record our findings without having to be in the office at a computer,” she said. “We are also able to have people who are working from home put service requests into the system. We can get out to assist residents in a timely fashion—that has helped us significantly.”

2. Adaptability and Scalability Cityworks Online is completely scalable and adaptable to any size of local government or utility agency and provides the flexibility to create agile and simplified IT solutions—features that the City of Westland, Michigan, is taking full advantage of.

“Our mandate from the mayor is that we use technology to provide innovative solutions and services

Preparing for Cityworks Online What does your organization need to do prior to moving to Cityworks Online? Here are a few suggestions.

1. Do an upgrade to the current version of Cityworks on your database. Cityworks experts will perform a migration of a test site and make sure everything is running smoothly. While your organization is on the test site, Cityworks can provide admin and user training to ensure that everyone is up to date and ready to make the switch.

2. Externalize your organization’s GIS. The GIS services will need to be accessible from the Cityworks Online application servers. This will require the services to be externalized and available over the internet via https using a trusted SSL certificate.

3. Modernize your organization’s integrations.

Cityworks Online does not support integrations that require direct database access. The most reliable way to integrate with Cityworks is using our APIs.

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for our residents and city staff, so I’m always looking for ways to do things better, smarter, and faster,” said Craig Brown, chief innovation officer for the city.

“I knew that there was flexibility with Cityworks Online, but every time I look at the platform and I look at processes and things that are going on in the city, I can almost always fit Cityworks somewhere into that mix,” he said. “That isn’t something I can say about most other software packages. I’ve been able to twist Cityworks in a couple of very interesting ways.”

For Brown, scalability is also extremely important.

“Cityworks Online allows us to easily add additional departments,” he said. “Scalability is significantly easier with CWOL versus the on-premises solution.”

we have. Cityworks Online has definitely been a good tool for that. Our public works supervisors now have a better idea of what work needs to be done and where to allocate personnel. They’ve enjoyed actually seeing an organized roadmap for what they need to do for the week or for the month.”

4. Increased Collaboration

In addition to increased productivity, Don Rohraff, director of the public works department for the City of Livonia, Michigan, has seen the benefit of increased interdepartmental collaboration. “Working with our IT department, we can make sure that we have the migration and the integration of everything that’s happening between Cityworks and GIS,” he said.

3. Increased Productivity Altoona Water Authority has also experienced greater collaboration since expanding their Cityworks Cityworks offers extensive training courses designed Online deployment beyond the water maintenance to help clients who choose Cityworks Online. Cityworks department to also include the wastewater maintealso installs, configures, and maintains the environnance department. ment, including all upgrades. Cityworks staff can de“It’s just made everything a lot easier. Thankfully, ploy new feature applications faster—reducing errors there is a lot more collaboration and cooperation now and enhancing connectivity to ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS that we have multiple users from multiple deEnterprise, and third-party applications. It also partments,” said Kleinosky. “For more than a allows users to collaborate in real time and decade, Cityworks has been a crucial tool free up precious time for IT staff.

Did you know? for completing our necessary day-to-day “There’s less hardware maintenance.

In a recent survey, job functions. Now that we have migratWe don’t have to manage the server or 100 percent of CWOL ed to Cityworks Online, it should be easy the data storage,” said Brown. “Because customers said they were to expand Cityworks access and benewe don’t need to deal with any of that, satisfied with the service. fits to more employees and possibly to there is a lot less on our plate and we can other departments in the near future. For focus on other projects.” any organizations who might be looking for But it’s not just the IT department who an alternative to an on-premises solution, I would benefits. For Michael Brack, assistant town manager absolutely recommend Cityworks Online.” for Fraser, Colorado, the decision to switch to Cityworks Online came down to creating greater accountability for the street operators and the water utilities group.

5. Security “CWOL has been a really valuable tool for us to track which work has been done on which assets With Cityworks Online, customers enjoy the security throughout town, as well as who did the work,” he said. of a large Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. In fact, “We can maintain that work history and then follow up Cityworks Online provides the ability to restore point as needed. It allows us to provide more accountability in time—allowing data to be recovered in the event of for the infrastructure as a whole.” a security breach or a natural disaster. The City of Galt, Famous for its skiing, the tiny town of Fraser has a California, recently experienced the power of CWOL’s population of about 1,300 people. But during the winsecurity firsthand when the city was hit with a ransomter, that number can skyrocket to more than 15,000. ware attack in December 2019.

“We have huge fluctuations,” said Brack. “This reAfter a city employee opened an email disguised quires a higher level of service with the resources that to look as though it was sent from another staff mem-

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Why isn’t your organization using Cityworks Online?

In a recent survey, Cityworks customers who weren’t using CWOL cited cost, security concerns, and need for training as the top three reasons for not using the platform. Yet, 76 percent of respondents said they would consider using Cityworks Online in the future.

Check all that apply.

data was hosted on Cityworks Online and that it was perfectly safe.”

It took several weeks and an estimated $785,000 for the city to restore its systems. “That cost includes IT experts, risk management providers, legal counsel, and forensic audits,” interim city manager Thomas Haglund told Government Technology magazine in January.

But thanks to Cityworks Online, “it was much easier to get up and running, and we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel,” said Huston. “Cityworks makes what we do for the residents of our community a lot easier.”

6. Cost Savings

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

77%

Cost

19%

Security concerns

15%

Need for training

9%

Management resistant to change

5%

Employees resistant to change

Contact your client success representative today to learn more about the benefits of Cityworks Online and discuss any concerns.

ber, malware spread throughout the city’s network of computers and servers, encrypting critical data, locking up email communication to and from city accounts, and knocking several important phone lines out of service.

“We were dead in the water,” said Bryna Smith, administrative assistant for City of Galt Public Works Department. “We couldn’t do anything—it was awful.”

The city consulted with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, and all city computers were removed from the premises. Eventually, a single computer connected to Cityworks Online was brought in for staff to use. Because CWOL was unaffected by the ransomware attack, employees were able to log their work, create service requests, and even send emails to contractors and vendors since CWOL also handles email routing.

“I thought about the annual reports that we’re required to send to the state and wondered how we would provide any information,” said Judy Huston, supervising administrative assistant for City of Galt Public Works Department. “Then I realized that the

With Cityworks Online, the Cityworks team manages cloud deployment and provides end-to-end support, allowing customers to reap cost-saving benefits. There is faster go-live across the entire organization, and since everything is hosted and maintained by Cityworks, there is no IT overhead required to maintain the platform.

“There’s a definite return on investment,” said Brown. “We save the costs of purchasing physical equipment and the cost of the labor involved with maintaining the server and updating machines with the latest version of Cityworks. There is also a cost savings in the licensing itself.”

In addition to saving on IT costs, customers save money by working more efficiently. According to Brack, Cityworks Online prevents confusion about which assets require work and helps prioritize what work needs to be done. It also helps with time management, empowering workers to work smarter and complete more work than before in the same time period.

“Less management is required once the workers understand the program and use it properly,” he said.

“It allows for handoff and shows which duties they still need to complete, what equipment they’re going to need, and how many people are going to be required to complete a certain work order.”

Access to valuable data also helps the Town of Fraser make smarter financial decisions. “We can figure out which type of work takes up the most time, what the town is spending the most money on for public works, and which types of assets are requiring the most maintenance,” said Brack. “It gives our supervisors and managers a lot more knowledge and helps us justify costs.”

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CASE STUDY

ENTERPRISE AIRPORT MANAGEMENT IN THE AGE OF COVID-19 Like airports across the world, Chicago Rockford International Airport in Illinois has been severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. But with the help of Cityworks, the Greater Rockford Airport Authority has been able to manage operations with minimal disruption, even earning the FAA Part 139 certification on schedule.

GREATER ROCKFORD AIRPORT AUTHORITY, ILLINOIS Pop. Served: 230,000 annually Depts. Using Cityworks: Operations Staff Using Cityworks: 36 User Since: 2015

BY LINDSAY FERGUSON, CITYWORKS CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR

T

he Chicago Rockford International Airport (RFD) runs like a small city in and of itself.

Spanning more than 3,000 acres, RFD encompasses state-of-theart airport facilities and runways with lengths of 10,000 and 8,200 feet. The nineteenth busiest cargo airport in the United States, RFD has a rapidly growing cargo industry and is home to UPS’s largest

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regional parcel-sorting center. The airport also serves about 230,000 passengers each year.

Close to 40 full-time employees across varying departments run RFD around the clock. Airport sectors include administration, maintenance, terminal staff, security, and the fire department—all managed through the operations department of the Greater Rock-

ford Airport Authority. Regulatory compliance for both the FAA and TSA, as well as environmental compliance, are also managed through the operations department.

COVID-19 IMPACT In March 2020, the airport implemented significant staff scheduling adjustments to ensure the safety

CASE STUDY

of airport personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the staff moved to 12-hour in-airport shifts every third day and working from home on the other days.

Others worked on an A team and B team rotation where the A team worked in-airport one week and the B team the next.

The fire department is required to be fully staffed at all times, so fire department staff quarantined in the station and only entered other areas of the airport if there was an emergency.

During the spring of 2020, passenger travel decreased by 96 percent nationwide. While RFD experienced similar passenger decline, cargo flights increased by 30 percent. UPS and Amazon increased flights out of RFD, making the cargo side of the airport the busiest it’s ever been.

All airport inspections, including Part 139 inspections required

by the FAA, continued as normal through the hard work of airport staff operating within the confines of their new working arrangements. Cityworks was the core application that kept everyone on the same page.

“We use Cityworks for all operations, inspections, and to log all incidents at the airport. It’s been easy for me to keep an eye on all these areas during our altered schedules,” said Seth Nygen, operations manager at RFD. “Our operations and maintenance staff can also monitor what’s going on at the airport even when they aren’t physically there. Cityworks helped everyone view and share information as staff rotated through the schedule.”

In mid-June 2020, the airport migrated back to mostly normal work schedules but is prepared to adapt accordingly if the virus forces further adjustments in the future.

THE PATH TO CITYWORKS Prior to their Cityworks implementation, RFD staff tracked maintenance work, record keeping, compliance documents, and all other data manually. They used a basic computer-based work order system that included several paper forms and Excel spreadsheets. Offices were lined with cabinets full of handbooks, manuals, plans, and paperwork. Staff poured countless hours each day into consistent record matching, but they couldn’t effectively track information needed for FAA compliance.

In 2013, RFD applied for a FAA pilot program and was selected as a trial location for an electronic airport layout plan collecting GIS data to assist in FAA compliance. This led to research on what other airports were using for enterprise airport management, and discovering Cityworks.

Chicago Rockford International Airport’s airfield layout.

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CASE STUDY

Chicago Rockford International Airport’s new terminal.

THE RESULTS Once Cityworks was up and running, staff quickly realized the benefits of the system. Managing all aspects of airport maintenance and operations—including FAA certification inspections—from one central GIS-centric system allowed RFD to dig deeper into their operations analysis.

“The data we can capture in Cityworks proves every day that this investment is saving time and money,” Nygen said. “Airports are a constantly changing environment, and Cityworks keeps up with that and allows for complete control of our operation. We have become less reactive and more proactive as an organization and have better efficiency and greater understanding of our operation overall.”

During RFD’s annual FAA certification inspection, the airport shared their Cityworks implementation with their FAA inspector.

Familiar with neighboring Milwau-

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kee Mitchell International Airiport’s Cityworks system, RFD’s inspector encouraged them to continue developing the system.

Nygen explained, “Our FAA inspector saw the growth that we were experiencing and was impressed with the Cityworks system and the reports it was producing. He encouraged us to further develop Cityworks, recognizing the benefits it provides and our need to fully embrace a digital platform to stay on top of growth. Through Cityworks, we were able to streamline our daily work processes as well as our annual inspections, which resulted in RFD achieving a perfect inspection this past March.”

UNEXPECTED BENEFITS During the spring, while on rotating schedules, RFD staff began using features within Cityworks that they hadn’t before. Automated reports of airport metrics to keep everyone connected allowed for less in-per-

Camp Grant The land that Chicago Rockford International Airport is built on was once a U.S. Army facility and prisoner of war camp. Camp Grant, named after Civil War general and U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant, operated from 1917 to 1946. In 1946, the State of Illinois adopted the Airport Authorities Act and the Greater Rockford Airport Authority was created.

son interaction while trying to safely socially distance. The reports they began using are now helping the airport in other unexpected ways through sharing and automation of data.

“Cityworks reporting tools, specifically Crystal Reports, kept everyone together and connected,” said Nygen. “Instead of doing a lot of the work in person, the system does the work for you, which kept lines of communication

CASE STUDY

open when staff were on rotating work schedules between the airport and home.”

Using Cityworks for nearly seven years now and finding new ways to maximize its benefits through the current pandemic, RFD is an ideal model of an airport Cityworks implementation.

“Airports are a constantly changing environment and need a system that can not only keep up but allow for complete control of the operations 24/7/365. Cityworks does that and more,” stated Nygen.

“The data we are able to capture via Cityworks proves to us every day that our use of the system saves us time and money. Our plans are to continue development through all aspects of our airport campus, every department and asset including environmental, noise, wildlife, ARFF [Airport Rescue and Firefighting], and so on. We look forward to our enterprise airport management system’s continued development and the benefits the airport will reap as a result.”

Chicago Rockford International Airport’s metrics.

Chicago Rockford International Airport’s security audit dashboard.

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CASE STUDY

TRACKING AND APPROVING PRIVATE DEVELOPMENT CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS

SPOTSYLVANIA COUNTY, VIRGINIA Pop. Served: 40,000 Depts. Using Cityworks: Public Utility Department Staff Using Cityworks: 73 User Since: 2017

By utilizing the workflows in Cityworks PLL, Spotsylvania County staff have created a process to ensure that assets are properly managed throughout their entire life cycle.

BY GREG STEPHENSON, TIMMONS GROUP CLIENT SUPPORT MANAGER

W

hat if? It’s a question that’s often posed but rarely answered. For Spotsylvania County Utilities Department, however, the answer to a Friday afternoon “what if” conversation resulted in an innovative process for handling the department’s private development construction projects, inspections, and approvals.

Located just an hour south of Washington, D.C., Spotsylvania

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County has experienced a tremendous amount of growth over the past decade. But the Spotsylvania County Utilities Department was having trouble tracking the high volume of utility assets being constructed to serve new developments.

The county decided to work with Timmons Group to create a new process for tracking and approving private development construction projects. The solution

uses ArcGIS and Cityworks AMS and PLL to graphically illustrate and document the utility inspection and acceptance process from the date of site plan approval through the project warranty period.

Timmons Group worked with county staff to develop workflows to track new assets at every stage of their development—including application intake, review and pre-construction meetings, site

CASE STUDY

This never existed before, so now we are catching things that were wrong from the beginning. We have this formal process where things are not getting lost through the cracks.”

Warranty data, condition score, and condition date are all programmatically captured at

Workflows were developed to track new assets at each stage of their development.

visits, inspections and tests, acceptance, and warranty.

CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT WORK ORDERS The completion of the construction authorization task in the PLL workflow automatically creates construction management work orders in Cityworks AMS containing child inspections—including those for vacuum manhole test, low-pressure air test, and hydrostatic pressure test.

Water bacteria management work orders can also be created and stored in Cityworks AMS to track results and assets tested.

Status changes can notify the testing lab when tests are ready, and laboratory results can be stored for future reference.

Each work order contains the date and time of inspection and allows users to attach pictures and notes from the site visit.

GIS UPDATES Once a plan is approved, the proposed assets move through a workflow to update the utility’s GIS. This allows the county to start the asset life cycle early.

“What’s great about this is we can trace an asset all the way from that initial pre-construction meeting all the way through the inspection lifecycle,” said Erik Ray, director of technical services at Spotsylvania County. “And then when the as-builts are submitted, we make those modifications in our GIS, which just builds confidence in our asset repository.

first acceptance.

“Warranty data was something we had never tracked before,” added Bradley Sacra, manager of utilities development services. “Assets that are currently under warranty are shaded a different color, which, in the case of an emergency, easily informs our field service crews of the warranty status. It’s been great to know immediately that we can recoup some of our expenditures used to fix those assets. If it’s not an emergency, we can engage with the contractor or the developer to fix those without having to utilize the Utility Department’s resources.”

In addition, the GIS can be updated with final as-built plans or field-noted items such as make, model, or other important aspects of a given asset. This helps ensure data quality and build overall confidence in the GIS data being presented to the end users.

“The reason we’re putting make and model in there is to help our utilities field services group,” said Steve Gunnett, construction inspector with Spotsylvania County. “If there’s a call that a hydrant was damaged or out of service for some reason, our field services staff are able to look it up and know exactly what parts that they need to take to make repair.

That saves them from dispatching someone to figure out what’s going

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CASE STUDY

on and then having to come back to the utility shop to get parts.”

Each private development project is identified through the use of polygons in an embedded Cityworks inbox tab. This information is shared with customer service staff so they can consult the map to see if a development has reached first acceptance and is ready for water meter installation and account setup. This process has drastically reduced the amount of emails, phone calls, and conversations about when a development is ready for a given meter to be set, which in turn has reduced the amount of time it takes to set up a customer as a consumer and ratepayer.

The county also wanted to improve engagement with the development community to increase

transparency and ease of use.

The Timmons Group PLL Portal is being implemented to expose information to the developers so that they could receive feedback in real time and make requests and schedules digitally.

In addition, the county is actively receiving developer and contractor feedback through its involvement in local building associations.

REAL-TIME ANALYSIS Timmons Group also integrated Esri’s Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS to the overall solution. This configurable web app provides location-aware data visualization and analytics to give utilities staff a real-time overview of projects in development. Each inspector can easily view his or her own

Esri’s ArcGIS Dashboard gives utilities staff a real-time overview of projects in development.

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workload as well as where in the workflow each project stands.

For Spotsylvania County Utilities Department, exploring “What if?” has led to innovative solutions and streamlined processes.

“I always say if you ask the question, Cityworks can be configured to pretty much answer anything, but the question has to be asked first,” said Ray. As Spotsylvania County continues to grow and develop, demand for new utility services will only increase. By utilizing the workflows in Cityworks PLL to generate work orders and inspections in Cityworks, county staff, with help from Timmons Group, have created an efficient and thoughtful process to ensure that these assets are properly tracked and managed throughout their entire life cycle.

Building Permits • Community Development • Code Compliance • Infrastructure Permits • Licensing

GOODBYE, PAPERWORK. HELLO, EFFICIENCY.

For more than 20 years, Cityworks has been Empowering GIS® for public agencies. Designed to simplify applications for customers and streamline workflows for staff, Cityworks PLL helps local governments and utilities deliver better service to their communities.

• Give staff the power of GIS and automation • Help customers faster

• Boost productivity • Make insightful decisions • Improve collaboration

Learn more by visiting with us at Cityworks.com PERMITTING, LICENSING, & LAND (PLL)

CASE STUDY

RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA

KEEPING PARKS CLEAN WITH SMART TECHNOLOGY With Cityworks, ArcGIS, and the Bigbelly smart waste system, the City of Raleigh, North Carolina, has streamlined their workflow while ensuring that their parks are clean and enjoyable.

BY LINDSAY FERGUSON, CITYWORKS CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR

T

he City of Raleigh takes a very GIS-centric approach to asset management.

“If it’s in ArcGIS Online, it’s in Cityworks,” explains Chad Foley, enterprise application engineer at the City of Raleigh.

Most recently, the city expanded its deployment of the Cityworks mobile native app—together with Bigbelly smart waste bins—to help the Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Resources Department (PRCR) manage the care of more than 200

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Pop. Served: 458,880 Depts. Using Cityworks: City Manager’s Office; Development Services; Engineering Services; Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources; Public Utilities; Solid Waste Services; Transportation Staff Using Cityworks: 1,100 User Since: 2007

parks covering more than 10,000 acres of green space.

THE CHALLENGE Unlike building systems, which typically have good industry data on average costs per square foot, grounds maintenance costs are often highly subjective.

“For instance, how much does it cost yearly to maintain a 50-acre park? There’s just no consistent, reliable data on that,” explains Ivan Dickey, superintendent of PRCR.

“We needed a system that would track what it costs us to maintain these types of properties so we could improve our annual budgets and planning.”

After the initial implementation of Cityworks, PRCR continued to rely on legacy processes. Field crews completed paper work orders and came back to the office

CASE STUDY

at the end of the day to enter the data into Cityworks. This was especially cumbersome for the refuse crews who serviced the trash and recycling bins in the parks.

“Most of our work is routine maintenance. Our refuse crews used to have to physically stop at each trash can and check whether it needed to be emptied,” said Randolph Johnson, crew supervisor. “It wasn’t cost effective to have crew members sit in the office for two hours at the end of each workday filling out work orders.”

The department knew that electronic data tracking and reporting would help with planning, budgeting, and having a broader scope of what was going on throughout city parks. They also needed to create a better workflow to support their field crews.

THE SOLUTION For Johnson and his crews, the solution was two-fold. About ten years ago, the city started installing Bigbelly smart waste and recycling bins, which communicate real-time bin capacity status and notify crews when bins are ready to be emptied. Each morning, PRCR receives an email with the capacity of each Bigbelly bin, allowing crews to prioritize their daily work. iPhones equipped with the Cityworks mobile app were assigned to individual crew members.

Using the out-of-the-box Cityworks app design, crews can now access their work orders and inspections from the field.

“Crews open the current day on their phone, go to the park, and complete their assigned work orders for that day right in the app.

It works great,” said Dickey.

Raleigh’s Bigbelly GeoEvent Service.

The department also worked with the City of Raleigh’s IT department to enhance and modernize their workflows.

To get crews up to speed with the change, PRCR did some informal training and sent out instructions with screenshots for initial setup. The crews were adaptive and took naturally to the new system.

“A great deal of the mobile app adoption happened organically,” said Foley. “The crews just liked using it better.”

To close the loop, the IT department is working on an enhancement that uses ArcGIS GeoEvent Server to pull Bigbelly sensor data and automatically create work orders in Cityworks— eliminating yet another manual step in their workflow.

THE RESULTS Cityworks mobile native apps, ArcGIS, and smart technology have together helped streamline processes across the city. For PRCR, these solutions have brought crews up-to-date technologically, providing significant time savings and enhanced reporting capabilities.

“Our work is highly seasonal, and a sunny weekend changes our schedule tremendously. Now we can accurately track how many cans we’re servicing at each park and how much time we spend at each park,” said Dickey. “We can start developing ratios based on trash volume and the time of year.

We’re building good data so we can justify our seasonal and annual needs.”

The department has seen improved attention to detail, data accuracy, and overall efficiency.

They have been able to capture data on equipment, labor, material costs, and more.

“It’s clear that we have greatly improved our efficiency using the Cityworks app,” states Foley. “Our employees much prefer using the app to track their work proactively in the field without having to return to the office at the end of the day, providing additional time savings.”

With positive results and enthusiasm from their crews, PRCR continues moving forward with the solution and looks forward to enhancements involving the Bigbelly sensor data, which will further streamline processes.

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BEST PRACTICES

5 WAYS AERIAL IMAGERY HELPS YOU PLAN SMARTER Together, Nearmap and Cityworks can help you see exactly what’s happening on the ground and reduce the number of site visits, saving valuable time and precious resources.

BY ANGELA BREWSTER, NEARMAP CONTENT MARKETING MANAGER

H

ow much easier would it be

Nearmap with Cityworks and Arc-

to plan maintenance and

GIS can help you plan smarter.

manage project timelines

if you could see exactly what was happening on the ground before sending crews into the field? Nearmap provides high-resolution aerial imagery that can enhance your ArcGIS maps and provide valuable visual information about your assets.

Here are five ways that integrating

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CITYWORKS MAGAZINE | FALL 2020

1. Easy Integration The first question that always pops up when customers ask about getting Nearmap imagery inside of Cityworks almost always centers around integration. Not only is it a process you can follow with simple steps, but there are two documented and supported ways you can

bring Nearmap’s imagery into your Cityworks instance: • Use Nearmap’s WMS 2.0 to create a web map in ArcGIS Online and link it to your Cityworks environment • Create a web map in ArcGIS Online and bring it into Cityworks via Esri’s ArcGIS Marketplace

BEST PRACTICES

2. Heightened Visualization How close would you like to get to the city streets, sidewalks, and other property parcels that you help manage? Is 2.8 inches of ground sampling distance close enough for you? We’re talking less than 3 inches between pixels when it comes to resolution. That’s how closely you can view your public assets inside Cityworks with Nearmap’s high- resolution aerial imagery.

“With the rapid expansion in Grand Rapids, Nearmap provides current imagery that allows us to emulate changes of projects and infrastructure while reducing field site visits,” said Angela Doede, application administrator for the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“We’re always looking for ways to improve our workflows, and Cityworks already provided one way for us to manage our city assets.

Bringing the quality of Nearmap imagery into Cityworks provides a whole new level of confidence in our work.”

Nearmap imagery allows you to see the cracks in a street as well as manhole covers, hydrants, striping, signage, and more. You can also get clear views of buildings, terrain, parks, and vegetation and accurately measure length, area, and radius. But it’s not just about the street views. One example of this is stormwater management, where you can quickly and clearly survey any impervious surfaces that prevent natural filtrations or identify potential erosion hazards or pollutants.

3. Currency If you happen to use satellite imagery to view your city assets, you might discover that the imagery is

not always as up to date as you’d like. In fact, many satellite images can be up to five years old. In contrast, Nearmap flies over 430 urban areas at least twice a year.

“Nearmap affords us the ability to have a bird’s-eye view of our city several times per year, at a resolution that is rarely obtainable within our budget,” said Matthew W. Bradbury, GIS administrator for the City of Redlands, California. “Going with Nearmap just makes sense for our GIS applications across the organization.

We can look at our infrastructure inside of Cityworks, view historical imagery from Nearmap, and plan for the future.”

4. Historical Captures Beyond the current and consistent imagery, you have the ability to view captures over multiple years.

Nearmap has been capturing aerial images in most cities since 2014, which allows you to track changes to your city assets over time.

This type of detailed information can improve communication with your team and help you make better decisions. For example,

asset managers can track wear and tear of public assets as well as gauge if assets are missing.

Public works could be interested in tracking long-term projects to ensure that they meet codes and regulations, and historical imagery provides an easily accessible bird’s-eye view.

5. Integration with Esri Applications Nearmap is a subscription-based service. With your single subscription, you can integrate imagery into Cityworks and beyond, including all of your favorite Esri applications. As an Esri Gold Partner, Nearmap integrates with: • ArcGIS Online • ArcGIS Enterprise • ArcGIS Pro • ArcGIS Urban • ArcGIS Collector • ArcGIS Survey123 • ArcGIS Web AppBuilder To learn more about inspecting public assets with high-resolution aerial imagery, visit nearmap.com/cityworks.

Aerial image of Grand Rapids, Michigan, provided by Nearmap.

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BEST PRACTICES

CONFIGURING CITYWORKS DATA FOR WATER LOSS AUDITS Water loss audits are vital for any water utility. By applying a customized Cityworks solution, the City of Denton, Texas, was able to achieve more accurate reporting with improved calculations and better data.

BY TIFFANY SHERRANE, WASTEWATER ASSET MANAGEMENT SPECIALIST, AND DANIEL PARISH, WATER PRODUCTION PLANT MANAGER, CITY OF DENTON, TEXAS

T

he City of Denton’s water utilities department maintains 2 water production plants, 2 pump stations, 646 miles of main, 5,452 hydrants, and 41,459 meters.

Despite the challenges of aging infrastructure, increasing regulatory requirements, and inadequate resources, the city strives to keep water safe and affordable.

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CITYWORKS MAGAZINE | FALL 2020

WHY WE AUDIT Producing 6,476 million gallons of water per year requires an accurate management of water use. Each year, the City of Denton conducts a water loss audit, reporting how much water was produced and, of that produced water, how much reached our customers.

The water loss audit is a required annual report for many water suppliers. It’s a helpful and necessary report in water loss control, assisting in increasing water use efficiency, fiscal responsibility, system health, and long-term sustainability of water resources.

Our 2019 water loss audit revealed an Infrastructure Leakage

BEST PRACTICES

Index (ILI) of 2.13 continuing within the 1<3 range since 2003. Indicators of our fiscal and system health calculated at 3.09 percent for apparent losses and 9.40 percent for our real losses. The audit is a driver for our meter testing and replacement programs and provides results from our operations and maintenance programs.

IMPROVED CALCULATIONS With system heath playing a pivotal role in the distribution system, we identified an area for improvement by accounting for system heath through an improved calculation of components in the water loss audit. Most notably, we improved the method in which we approach water losses that result from breaks and leaks. In years past, the audit relied on a catchall calculation—a one-size-fits-all approach—to find the gallons lost.

With better identification of the

water coming from breaks, the utility now has a tighter audit and more precise accounting of where all our water goes once it’s treated.

Denton’s field service workers record the main break events as they happen throughout the city, tracking the details of each break within Cityworks work orders.

Customizations and refined data collection methods are associated with water loss within Cityworks by implementing a set of new custom fields such as dimensions, pressure, and estimated leak times.

Cityworks doesn’t have a natural function for the water loss calculator, and we needed a way to run complex calculations based off data input by the field user while also having the data readily available for reports and dashboards. So, we programmed the calculation scenarios into a trigger through SQL Server Management Studio that pulled the custom field data captured through Cityworks

work orders. As a result, we can calculate water loss volumes both individually per break and summed up for reporting purposes by month or by year.

Water Loss Facts and Figures Water audits are the first step to preventing water loss—a problem that is much more costly than most people realize. In fact, according to the EPA: • The United States will need to spend up to $200 billion dollars on water systems by 2035 to upgrade transmission and distribution systems.

• An estimated $97 billion of that amount will be needed for water loss control.

• The average water loss in systems is 16 percent, but up to 75 percent of that is recoverable.

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BEST PRACTICES

We identified the necessary data requirements and created the fields in our main breaks work order template. Several fields such as failure type, condition, dimensions, operating pressure, and estimated leak time were included—some of which were set as required—ensuring that all data involved in the water volume calculation could not be left blank. Otherwise, blank values would yield a null in the water volume calculation and disrupt the process. The calculation scenarios prompted us to refine our main breaks into separate categories: hole, joint, split, straight-around, and other, giving us additional improvements over our past methods. The scenarios were published by another municipality in Texas in which we retrieved from the Texas Water Development Board’s website and built into our process, with the referenced SQL trigger supplying the heavy lifting of the

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CITYWORKS MAGAZINE | FALL 2020

process. Its result was a “calculated total gallons lost” custom field on the work order that populated the calculated water loss volume from the main break once all the data points were entered.

MORE ACCURATE DATA Since the improvements, we began to see a significant difference in the quality of data. Our old ways of measuring lost flow were proven to be less accurate. For example, the calculations for 2018, using our one-size-fits-all approach, reported 2.8 million gallons in lost water.

Within the first week of using the improved calculation, we captured a main break of 484,805 gallons.

With that one break, our utility had already met one-sixth of the loss estimated from the previous year.

Obviously, not every break is going to be that high, but it demonstrated that we could calculate our losses with a higher degree of accuracy. We reported 40 million

gallons of lost water for our 2019 year with no significant difference in the number or type of leaks.

We were able to build on top of the platform provided by Cityworks, which allowed customization and the ability to improve our operations and service commitments.

The results spoke volumes—37 million gallons, to be exact.

Water lost? More like water found!

DENTON, TEXAS Pop. Served: 130,990 Depts. Using Cityworks: Water Distribution, Wastewater Collection, Water Metering, Parks Staff Using Cityworks: 100 User Since: 1997

EA Engineering, Science, and Technology, Inc., PBC

collaborative analysis thoughtfully applied EA is a client focused, 100% employee-owned public benefit corporation that provides environmental, compliance, natural resources, technology, infrastructure engineering and management solutions to a wide range of public and private sector clients. ► Trusted and experienced Cityworks implementation partner for over 11 years ► Integrated engineers, business analysts, scientists, compliance specialists, and industrial hygienists as subject matter experts applying technology solutions ► Partners with your organization from workflow analysis, implementation to long term operations to meet your business process needs

Offices Nationwide | 410.584.7000 |FALL www.eaest.com | gisinfo@eaest.com 2020 | CITYWORKS MAGAZINE 43

Jones Edmunds is excited to announce that we are now a

CITYWORKS PLATINUM PARTNER

Our Partnership is About People!

The People We Serve and Our Experienced Team of Professionals.

We are truly proud of the people behind the partnership.

Our Implementation Consulting Team is focused on developing the right solutions to help you with your unique asset management and permitting needs.

From the Nation’s oldest city to its largest waste-to-energy facility, our team serves a diversity of clients. We provide expertise in applying Cityworks AMS and PLL to help our clients with all elements of asset management, permitting, planning and development. We are ready to help you and your organization – from an initial implementation through the application of analytical tools to help you plan work, track work, refine budgets, and assess risk.

For more information, contact us at cityworks@jonesedmunds.com.

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CITYWORKS MAGAZINE | FALL 2020

“For over 10 years, Jones Edmunds has helped us better manage our operations and capital dollars by ensuring that our staff get the most out of Cityworks, from our initial service request and work management system, to what it has become today, our comprehensive asset management solution.”

- Tom Tibbitts, GISP PSM

Information Systems Manager St. Johns County Utility Department

BEST PRACTICES

5 TIPS FOR STREAMLINING FACILITY WORKFLOWS The uniquely slow and methodical approach we used to build out Cityworks in Cupertino has allowed us to learn from mistakes made early on. This has given us the power to change our processes and make each implementation as effective as possible.

BY ANDY BADAL, ASSET MANAGEMENT TECHNICIAN, CITY OF CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA

O

ur most recent, and final,

We wanted to develop a frame-

tions supervisor. GIS staff facilitat-

custom implementation to

work we could use in the future to

ed the conversation. One valuable

close out our public works

streamline our facilities workflows

lesson we learned over the years

department was with the facilities

using Cityworks. Here are five les-

is that everyone has input, and

division. The great thing about this

sons we learned along the way.

the more we allow all staff to feel

rollout is that we have built a scal-

like their input is valued, the more

able framework that will last long

1. Start at the beginning of the

likely we are to see them use this

term. We can take what we have

process. We gathered a cross-func-

software in their daily work. We get

built and continue to develop and

tional team that included crew

everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s opinions first, and then

branch off from what we have.

leads, technicians, and the opera-

we start to build.

FALL 2020 | CITYWORKS MAGAZINE

45

BEST PRACTICES

How we broke one facility into many sub-facilities.

One of the unique ideas that came out of this feedback was breaking out all of our facilities into manageable sections called sub-facilities. This allows for our city staff to report a problem in a specific area of a building and also tells the technician where to go specifically in the building.

Our webform on the intranet.

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CITYWORKS MAGAZINE | FALL 2020

2. Appoint a liaison in each facility to directly report issues to facilities staff. These liaisons play a key role in relaying service needs directly to our techs.

What we wanted was a single point of contact for each facility.

This allowed us to reduce duplicate requests, screen requests to ensure that they were facility related, streamline information provided to our techs, and initiate the work order creation process in Cityworks.

BEST PRACTICES

Liaison service request dashboard.

3. Create a webform and put it on your organizationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s intranet.

We worked with Quartic Solutions to make a webform that allows liaisons to enter requests and pinpoint where the issue is located.

We added parent IDs to GIS layers, which has allowed us to tie our sub-facilities to a specific facility and then all of those facilities to a specific facility site. Once this webform is submitted, the liaison receives a confirmation email with their request number and another email once the request has been completed. We also created an operations dashboard for the liaisons that displays the status of all submitted requests.

4. Monitor all the reactionary work staff members need to do.

The next piece was preventative maintenance. We were able to use work cycles to start scheduling our preventative maintenance work orders. We attached these work orders to sub-facilities or facility

assets as a whole and set them to trigger on the appropriate frequency. We then created and saved custom searches in staff inboxes so that they can see these coming up, assign the work to the techs, and prioritize effectively.

5. Report. Report. Report.

We created a number of Crystal Reports looking at different information that is tracked in Cityworks. The nice thing is that we took this into consideration from the beginning. Therefore, any information that our supervisor thought he might want to see was incorporated into the service requests and work orders, giving us the ability to generate multiple reports based on their needs.

We have also created real-time dashboards that show where and why work is happening. We plan on continuing this effort and diving deeper into analytics. We also plan on being able to provide cost per facility, cost per system, or even

cost per sub-facility data that will help us make better business decisions in the future.

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Pop. Served: 66,762 Depts. Using Cityworks: Engineering, Environmental, Facilities, Fleet, Grounds, Streets, Sidewalks, Streetlight, Storm, Traffic, Trees, and Medians Staff Using Cityworks: 58 User Since: 2010

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NOVEMBER 10, 2020

If there is anything that we have learned from our users, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s that there are NO LIMITS to what they can do.

Our users are transforming their communities and turning asset data into real-time, actionable organization value to improve the lives of their customers and residents. Cityworks Convergeâ&#x201E;˘ is about learning together to achieve successâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an event where Cityworks users can converge to spark innovation, exchange knowledge, and empower GIS intelligence across every community.

JOIN US FOR THE NEXT USER SUMMIT

November 10, 2020

found the session very informative and really â&#x20AC;&#x153; Iappreciate all the work that went into pulling this off!

I have lots of new ideas based on what I heard from the presentations and really look forward to the next release of Cityworks.

â&#x20AC;?

Time: 11:30 AM - 2:00 PM (MT)

Kathleen Heaps, City of Escondido, CA

Register at: Cityworks.com/converge HEREâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S THE CURRENT LINEUP OF SPEAKERS Matt Piper, Esri, Global Director Industry Solutions: Utilities, Water Craig Brown, Chief Innovation Officer, City of Westland, MI

you for the summit today. I had several staff â&#x20AC;&#x153; Thank members watch, and all thought it was very well done and felt we learned a lot. â&#x20AC;?

Daniel F. Moats, City of Hamilton, OH

Darren Rozenek, IT Applications Manager, City of Akron, OH Nick Hetrick, Functional Analyst III, King County, WA Jacob Pitsch, Programmer, Racine, WI Michael Elkins, Parks & Planning Administrator, Green, OH

wanted to say thank you for organizing the â&#x20AC;&#x153; Just webinar today. Definitely a lot of information but

Chrissy Lingenfelter, GIS Manager, Green, OH Chris Fisher, Operations Specialist, Greater Rockford Airport Authority

Cityworks users and experts will share success factors, strategies, CITYWORKS MAGAZINE | FALL 2020 and48product highlights.

Interactive experience with audience engagement and live Q&A.

exciting to see how customizable Cityworks can be.

Alyssa Colasante, County of Lennox & Addington, ON

â&#x20AC;?

Drive your business, discover new resources, and engage with peers.

SOFTWARE DIGEST

5 NEW ENHANCEMENTS IN CITYWORKS 15.6 The release of Cityworks 15.6 includes a deep list of new functionality to expand your asset management capabilities and improve workflows.

BY SARA ADELMAN, CITYWORKS SENIOR COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

W

e recently announced the release of Cityworks 15.6 and the latest versions of corresponding apps. Here are some of the exciting new enhancements that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll find.

1. Now Supporting ArcGIS Indoors!

Cityworks 15.6, Respond 3.0, and mobile native apps 9.0 will be crit-

ical tools in your facility management toolbox. The latest versions support ArcGIS Indoors facility and level fields, allowing users to easily identify and navigate to the exact location of an indoor work activity.

Since the Cityworks map experiences natively support ArcGIS JavaScript widgets, you can also add the ArcGIS Indoors Floor Switcher widget to Cityworks maps.

2. Barcoding and Equipment Management Cityworks Office users licensed for Equipment Checkout can now see panels listing the equipment reserved and checked out against a work order. Respond users can also check out and check in equipment from the work order.

If your organization uses barcodes to label field assets, you can

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49

SOFTWARE DIGEST

now scan a barcode in Respond 3.0 and mobile native apps 9.0 to quickly view asset information and create work activities.

3. Enhanced Analytics Tools Operational Insights 2.1 now includes asset curves! This new functionality allows you to visualize the impact of your configured asset and maintenance strategies on the assetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s expected useful life with business risk implications.

Each trajectory end year now displays in the eURL and can be written back to the GIS, along with the calculation name.

Several enhancements have been made to query functionality across the Cityworks platform.

Event layer eURLs are now supported on the split map to display activity searches, and GIS feature queries are supported even if the asset name uses spaces. The effort field is now consistently available across work orders, service requests, and inspections.

Public Access visible checklist.

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CITYWORKS MAGAZINE | FALL 2020

ArcGIS Indoors facility and level fields.

SOFTWARE DIGEST

Operational Insights asset curves.

If you’ve been itching to get creative with dashboards, now’s the time. You can style your widgets with customizable fonts, backgrounds, and charts. Plus: • The map widget lets you customize the map with map service definitions enabled in Designer.

• The count widget now includes a dropdown with preconfigured formatting for numbers, currencies, and percentages.

• The table widget allows you to display child data—for example, you can view the number of tasks per work order in a work order query.

4. Cityworks PLL and Public Access Taking your business processes online is more critical now than ever, and the latest version of Cityworks PLL streamlines the user

experience for both customers and staff. Case descriptions can be edited, and users can add comments when they schedule inspections.

In Public Access 5.1, you now have the option of making internal checklists visible to your customers so they can see, for example, why an inspection failed. We’ve also made enhancements to security role configuration and the Authorize.Net online payment process.

5. Simplified Configuration Cityworks administrators know all the best shortcuts in our software.

We have new ones to share! Public Access 5.1, for example, allows you to configure prompts for new users who are creating logins. Their selections will place them into a corresponding role, automating the process for your staff.

Style 1.3, the customization tool for Cityworks apps, allows you to share and copy user profiles.

Whether it’s moving a profile from test to production or importing a unique profile from another Cityworks client, this eliminates the need to create the same profile multiple times and is much more efficient.

Learn More Want to learn more about what Cityworks 15.6 can do for your organization? Don’t miss our upcoming webinars!

What’s New in Cityworks 15.6 for AMS: Wednesday, October 7 Registration link: bit.ly/2RM6Uu2 What’s New in Cityworks 15.6 for PLL: Thursday, October 15 Registration link: bit.ly/35ZxMyU

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INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS FROM LAURA CARR Laura Carr, chief operations officer of NewEdge Services, LLC, knows what it takes to help clients achieve their implementation goals as well as their vision for the future. We asked her to share her insights on GIS and asset management trends, implementation strategy, and cloud-hosted solutions.

INTERVIEW BY JAMIE ARMSTRONG, CITYWORKS CONTENT MARKETING MANAGER

Q. You’ve been working with GIS and asset management for 25 years. Why did you choose this field and how did you get your start?

A. I was studying geology at Texas A&M University. During my junior year, a geologist recommended that I get some knowledge on a new mapping technology called GIS. I added four classes and got an internship with the City of College Station’s GIS department. I graduated in 1997, got a job as a GIS technician with the City of Denton, Texas, and never looked back.

Q. What GIS and asset management trends have you seen recently?

A. During my career as a GIS technician, analyst, and consultant, I have seen GIS move from a

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CITYWORKS MAGAZINE | FALL 2020

backroom mapping application to a technology of its own that requires an understanding of spatial relationships, information technology, the internet, and building business relationships with the users. It is no longer just a mapping software but a tool to provide valuable data such as which assets we spend the most money on for repairs and maintenance. It allows us to use demographic data and past permitting history to make zoning and land use decisions, and in today’s COVID-19 environment, we can determine where cases are abundant and provide not only tabular but location information on those hot spots.

The shift from GIS being a desktop-only software to having abundant capabilities in the web has allowed the use and understanding of GIS to grow outside of

just the GIS staff. City managers, council members, and citizens can log into portals and see dashboards of information all built on GIS data. Just ten years ago, these types of users would have needed to ask a GIS staff member to provide pieces of information for their reports that they can now access through a website.

Q. What role does an enterprise approach to systems play in the workplace?

A. GIS is now a large piece of a city’s enterprise software puzzle.

The ability to integrate GIS with work order management software, permitting systems, and financial software provides municipalities with more data and tools to make good decisions for growth and for its citizens. When I started out as a

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

GIS technician, no one would have thought to ask if a utility billing system could integrate with GIS. Now, as a consultant and implementer of Cityworks, I see it all the time.

Q. What is one of the biggest mistakes organizations make when implementing new software or technology?

A. Lack of planning. It’s all about planning—planning for how you want your software solution to look now and how you want it to look in the future. That planning includes setting goals to “fix” your current issues and long-term goals for the future. Engagement of the end users is key when planning for a software implementation.

When we implement Cityworks, we encourage users from all levels to

Cityworks—they start thinking about what we need to do to accomplish our goals and prevent failures. If a system failed because of training, then this go-round we need to budget and schedule time for training for our users. If our vision is to integrate with another enterprise system, then we need to budget for that or build it into a long-term plan so we don’t lose that functionality.

Q. Could you talk a little bit about the value you are seeing with cloud-hosted solutions?

A. When I was trying to sell hosting services nine years ago, municipalities were afraid that hosting meant that they had no control over their data or application.

What they are now realizing is that

“The shift from GIS being a desktop-only software to having abundant capabilities in the web has allowed the use and understanding of GIS to grow outside of just the GIS staff. City managers, council members, and citizens can log into portals and see dashboards of information all built on GIS data.” participate in the discussion. That way, you get a big-picture view of how operations occur from the top down.

Q. What tips do you have for any implementation strategy?

A. There are three questions I always ask at a kickoff meeting: 1) Why are you implementing Cityworks? 2) Where have your previous systems failed? 3) What is the vision? If I have a client start to think about these three items now—whether that be for GIS or

not function because it’s on-premises, through the NewEdge hosted solution users can still access both GIS and Cityworks apps and information, pull reports, and so forth.

Q. What are some of the most important lessons you’ve learned throughout your career?

A. Be flexible. Times change, and you have to change with them.

Build your network—it is the most important thing you can do as a professional.

Q. What advice do you have for women in GIS? A. Stand your ground and always be the smartest person in the room. If you know what you are talking about and can give solid advice, then those in the room will listen.

Q. Who is someone you admire in the industry?

A. There is a group of women who I admire in my industry. We all started out in the GIS community together in the mid to late ’90s in the North Texas area. We have seen each other through the thick the data and the application are and thin of our careers including still their property but that they do changing jobs or industries, figurnot have to deal with the hardware ing out how to be good moms and and upgrades to the softwives, and how to be sucware. NewEdge handles cessful GIS professionals. those services for our Without them, I would not To learn about the hosted clients and Cityworks cloudbe where I am today. takes the burden off hosted solution, turn

to p. 24.

IT staffs.

Cloud hosting also provides the ability to have your applications available should an emergency occur or should you lose power or internet within your network. So, while your time-keeping app might

Q. What technology are you geeking out over?

A. I spend all day using technology. My geek-out moments are time with friends and time to settle in and read a good book—not on a device but an actual book!

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NEWS & EVENTS

NEWS & EVENTS

Industry happenings and highlights

ESRI USER CONFERENCE AWARD WINNERS It was exciting to see so many Cityworks customers recognized at this year’s Esri UC! Check out these award winners.

PRESIDENT’S AWARD:

NEW VIDEO SERIES: CITYWORKS CONNECT The new Cityworks Connect video series features influencers and experts who share insights on how communities are remaining resilient in an uncertain and extraordinary time. Each short episode discusses issues impacting public works and utilities, community planners and engineers, and multi-jurisdictional managers. To watch, visit youtube.com/cityworks and select the Cityworks Connect playlist.

Live and curated on-demand programming

Jack Dangermond, president and founder of Esri, awarded the Regional Municipality of York, Ontario, Canada, with the prestigious President’s Award. They have excelled at using Cityworks and ArcGIS to create a more resilient, sustainable, and safe community.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN GIS (SAG) AWARD WINNERS: Congratulations to these 11 organizations for earning a SAG award!

SUPPORTING RESILIENT, SUSTAINABLE, AND SAFE COMMUNITIES

Catch Us at These Upcoming Events!

WEFTEC October 5–9 Esri Infrastructure Management & GIS Conference October 27–30 Cityworks Converge User Summit November 10

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CITYWORKS MAGAZINE | FALL 2020

Fall Training Courses Want to learn more about Respond, Public Access, or disaster preparation with Cityworks AMS? Don’t let social distancing stop you from learning! Whether you are new to Cityworks or need to brush up on your skills, there is a course that’s right for you. Log into mycityworks.force.com and click on the Training tab for the complete schedule.

• City of Escondido, CA • Southern California Edison, CA • Tampa International Airport, FL • City of Topeka, KS • Washtenaw County, MI • City of Biloxi Department of Engineering, MS • Greene County, OH • King County, WA • Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency • City of Charlotte, NC • City of Philadelphia, PA

Be Safe. Be Reliable.

Be Remote.

You don’t have to be here…

…to be there for your customers.

Trimble Unity and Cityworks AMS – An IoT Solution Monitor asset performance and events remotely with Telog IoT wireless sensors integrated with Trimble Unity and Cityworks.

TRANSFORMING THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS

Find out more at: trimblewater.com/unity-cityworks

INSIDE THE NUMBERS

THE CLOUD:

Using a cloud-hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution has several advantages, including increased security, productivity, and cost savings. Here are some fascinating facts that show why cloud computing is here to stay.

3.6 BILLION

Cloud users in 2018

47%

Organizations that migrated to the cloud for cost optimization

74%

Chief financial officers who said cloud computing technology had the largest positive impact on their organization in 2017

42%

Organizations that migrated to the cloud to access data anytime, anywhere

89%

Companies that use cloud-hosted SaaS platforms

1/3

32%

Average portion of an IT budget spent on cloud services

Rate at which demand for SaaS is growing year over year

2/3

Estimated percentage of workloads that will be processed by cloud data centers in 2021

End users who prefer cloud adoption over an on-premises solution

94%

60% FEWER

Security breaches in the cloud versus on-premises data centers

$3.86 MILLION

Average cost of a data breach

PAGE

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Turn to page 24 to read about Cityworks customers who are enjoying the benefits of Cityworks Online as a cloud-hosted solution.

CITYWORKS MAGAZINE | FALL 2020

STREAMLINE UNDERGROUND UTILITY LOCATING WITH

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Discover how Dig-Smart software solutions changed the ticket management industry forever.

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If you have received this magazine in error, please call 801-523-2751 or email stories@cityworks.com.

TOGETHER, CITYWORKS AND ARCGIS HELP YOU MANAGE A MORE RESILIENT, SUSTAINABLE, AND SAFE COMMUNITY.

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