InPrint Summer 2011

CITYWORKS

®

InPrint

Empowering GIS™ for Asset Management, Permitting, Licensing, and more!

In this Issue: GIS - Centric Pu b l i c As s e t M a n a g e m e nt Cit y works Em p owe r i n g Fi e l d Employees a n d E n h a n c i n g R e m o te Data Collec t i o n Cit y works 20 1 0 . 1 a n d 2 0 1 1 – Wh at You Need to K n ow

Summer 2011

S u m m e r 2 011

C it y works

Cityworks | Azteca Systems, Inc. 11075 South State Street, Suite 24 Sandy, UT 84070 801-523-2751 www.cityworks.com

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E mpowering GIS TM for A s s e t Ma n a g e m e n t , Pe r m i tt in g , Li c e n s i n g , a n d m o re !

Edit or in C hie f: Tom Paliz zi Edit or: Kaye Ryser A s s oc iate Edit or: Linds ay Ferguson Te c hnic al Edit or: Karen Thomas, Reece Hanzon Edit orial Inquirie s: Kaye Ryser,

k r yser@cit y work s.com Graphic De signe r: Shannan B agley Adve r t ising: Kaye Ryser C ont ribut or: Emily Paliz zi

E xe c ut ive B oar d:

Brian Haslam , Pre sident & C EO George Mast akas , E xe cutive Dire c tor, Enterpris e S olutions Wayne Hill , E xe cutive Dire c tor, Client & Information S er vice s C arl Hor ton, E xe cutive Dire c tor, S of t ware Development Tom Paliz zi , E xe cutive Dire c tor, S ale s & Marketing Steve Thomas , E xe cutive Manager, Cus tomer Supp or t

S u b s c r i p t i o n In q u i r i e s :

H ow t o Re a c h U s :

To c h a n g e yo u r a d d r e s s o r

w w w.c i t y wo r k s .c o m/m e d i a / In P r i n t . a s px

c a n c e l yo u r s u b s c r i p t i o n,

Te l: 8 01-52 3 -2751

p l e a s e c o n t a c t:

Em a i l: i n f o @ c i t y wo r k s .c o m

i n p r i nt @ c i t y wo r k s .c o m

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Inside this Issue

FEATURES 4

President’s Corner – GIS-Centric Public Asset

CITYWORKS SPOTLIGHT 28

Management 6

Windows 7 Ruggedized Solutions

10

Miami Beach, FL: Five Years Using Cityworks

12

Infrastructure Optimization (IO) Toolset Used

by Southgate Water and Sanitation District, CO

14

Private Water Utility

Cityworks Empowering Field Employees and Enhancing Remote Data Collection

9

Utilizing Cityworks at Cupertino, CA, with Many

USER INFORMATION 30

Positive Customer Experience

32

MyCityworks.com

34

Cityworks Campus

35

Tips & Tricks – New Cityworks Server Plug-In

Tangible Results 16

City of Vernon, BC, Streamlines Infrastructure Maintenance

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Collaborative Cityworks Project at Eagle River Water & Sanitation District Links Maintenance Field Crews and Office Users

23

Southwest Region Spotlight – Global Water,

Swedish Water Utility Improves Processes with

Tool

CITYWORKS NEWS 20

Cityworks 2011 User Conference Recap

29

Partner Listing

36

First Annual Cityworks Reporting Competition

38

Exemplary Cityworks User Award

38

2011 Cityworks User of the Year Award

39

Saco, ME, Public Works Presented Asset

Cityworks Server AMS 24

Server AMS and PLL Bring Enterprise-Level Business Intelligence to Redlands, CA

SOFTWARE 26

Cityworks 2010.1 and 2011 – What You Need to Know

Management Excellence Award 39

Cityworks Raises Awareness and Funds for TLC

Copyright © Azteca Systems, Inc. 2011 All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

The information contained in this document is the exclusive property of Azteca Systems, Inc. The 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, Inc. All requests should be sent to Attention: Cityworks InPrint, Azteca Systems, Inc., 11075 South State Street, #24, Sandy, UT 84070. The information contained in this document is subject to change without notice.

Summer 2011

Azteca Systems, Cityworks, and Powered by Esri are registered trademarks; Cityworks Desktop, Cityworks Anywhere, Cityworks Server, GIS Empowered by Cityworks, and Empowering GIS are trademarks of Azteca Systems, Inc.; and www.mycityworks.com, www.gocityworks.com, www.cityworks.com, and @cityworks.com are service marks of Azteca Systems, Inc. The names of other companies and products mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective trademark owners.

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President’s Corner

GIS-Centric Public Asset Management

By Brian L. Haslam, President & CEO, Cityworks | Azteca Systems, Inc.

Geographic information system (GIS) mapping software has grown from workgroup and departmental deployment to pervasive, organization-wide technology for analysis and decision making. This evolutionary process will only continue to grow and be accelerated by modern GIS web development framework such as Esri® ArcGIS Server. Local governments have traditionally used GIS to produce and analyze maps, but now with the increase in GIS knowledge and skills, this important technology investment is being applied to managing public assets. GIS is the perfect platform for local governments to design and create an integrated GIS-centric public asset management system using spatial relationships as a way to manage, coordinate, and analyze all public assets and work activities.

D e fining Asset Managem e n t Asset management is a broad term covering systems for monitoring and maintaining the value of assets. In the financial market sector, the term is often used as a shortened version for financial asset management which applies to the management of securities. To accountants, fixed assets are items which can be valued (capitalized and depreciated) and posted to a ledger. For local government, asset management specifically applies to managing tangible assets, like computers, water and wastewater systems, streets and sidewalks, trees and parks, electric power systems, buildings, and treatment plants.

Jurisdictions use asset management to maximize the value of their infrastructure assets by using life cycle costs to improve performance and extend asset life. Infrastructure asset management improves financial decision making when taking into consideration all of the interdependencies of the tangible assets.

In addition to managing infrastructure assets, local governments provide services in conjunction with properties and businesses. Planning and enforcement responsibilities within their jurisdiction include permits, licenses, planning and engineering activities, and code enforcement cases. These land-based, location-specific activities have been very difficult to manage and coordinate with other business processes. Because they have a specific location, cost, and life cycle, they essentially act as assets to the organization. Combining infrastructure asset management with land-focused

Heat map visualization to assess condition.

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asset management enables an organization to establish an enterprise asset management (EAM) model.

An asset management plan begins by setting asset management goals and assessing what is needed to accomplish them. For example, a goal may be to ensure water mains serving critical facilities, such as hospitals, do not fail, so a condition assessment of the water mains serving each hospital could be performed. The assessment may lead to a decision to schedule regular inspections of these water mains. This cyclical condition monitoring drives rehabilitation or replacement decisions, and may even justify designing and building redundant water mains to serve the hospitals. GIS is the perfect platform from which to design and create this type of integrated asset management system, taking full advantage of the spatial structure as a way to manage and analyze linkages between all local government public assets and associated work activities.

T h e G I S - C e n tr i c A p p ro a c h to A s s e t M a n a g ement One of the first tasks for any asset management undertaking is an inventory of existing assets and the creation of an asset registry. Esri’s ArcGIS provides a location-aware open-data structure, common framework, and data management tools, making it ideal for designing and creating asset management solutions that rely on the geodatabase as the asset registry.

The GIS-centric approach leverages the investment in Esri’s GIS and designates the ArcGIS geodatabase as the asset registry and repository, providing a common framework for many disparate systems that are useful in overall asset management planning and policy making.

There are well established rules defining the unique characteristics of the GIS-centric approach (see NAGCS.org): 1. The Esri ArcGIS geodatabase is the asset / feature data repository.

2. The asset / feature data storage is non-redundant with no reliance on views, links, data mapping, or database triggers.

3. The asset / feature data model is fully user-definable and customizable without vendor support.

4. The format of the asset / feature data structures is non-proprietary for field names, types, tables, relationships, and other data design elements.

5. The shared asset / feature data design allows other GIS-centric solutions to concurrently utilize the asset / feature data.

6. Inherently location-aware asset / feature data structure enables full utilization of GIS analysis and modeling tools.

7. ArcGIS software is used to create and maintain the asset / feature data (including for coordinates, shapes, attributes, and data error identification / correction methods), preserving the integrity of the geodatabase relationships, domains, data types, etc.

G I S - C e n t r i c S o f t w a re Solutions Core to any asset management plan is managing and tracking historical, scheduled, and reactive work activities. Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) software provides these tools but has grown beyond tracking and

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managing work activities to include inspection and monitoring tools for condition assessment, thereby becoming an asset management solution.

However, not all asset management needs are provided by one software system. Because of the common framework and the openness of the geodatabase as the asset registry, many software solutions are available to support an asset management program. Consider the water main example above. A comprehensive asset management plan can benefit by incorporating other GIS-centric software systems such as water modeling, field inspection, automatic vehicle location (AVL), underground utility location software, and asset life cycle management and budgeting software. It is critical these additional software solutions work in conjunction with the CMMS. D e veloping a GIS-Centr i c P u b l i c A s s e t M a n a g e m e n t S y s te m GIS-centric public asset management is a system design approach for managing public assets that leverages the investment local governments continue to make in GIS and provides a common framework for sharing useful data from disparate systems. Permits, licenses, code enforcement, land-use development and planning, and other land-focused work activities occupy location just as in-the-ground or above-ground tangible assets do.

All these public assets are interconnected and share proximity. As yet, there is not a widely accepted term to encompass this subset of land-focused asset management, even though these public assets affect other tangible assets and work activities and are critically important sources of revenue and points of citizen interaction.

Infrastructure asset management and land-focused asset management are frequently interdependent rather than separate activities. For example, a proposed new subdivision may affect water pressure requiring a water system upgrade. A proposed restaurant may affect the wastewater system requiring additional monitoring and maintenance activities. A code enforcement violation may be resolved by generating a maintenance work order with a chargeback to the violator. A road cut and excavation may require securing a special permit. A permit may lead to the scheduling of an inspection. Requests for service from the public may spawn all of the above. Even planting a tree may require a special permit.

local government will make plans to apply asset management approaches to land-focused assets as well as infrastructure assets.

Local governments allocate considerable resources toward developing and maintaining the GIS database as the authoritative dataset. The success and growth of GIS tends to lead an organization towards a desire to leverage the GIS for more than producing maps or performing analysis. GIS locationaware data structures and development environment provides a common framework from which to design and create asset management solutions.

The convergence between infrastructure asset management and landfocused asset management is leading local governments to seek for solutions to accomplish all their public asset management plans and goals.

They recognize GIS reveals many details about the asset, nearby similar assets, and disparate assets, affecting short-term and long-term monitoring and management plans, and hence decision making. A modern GIS web development framework, such as Esri’s ArcGIS Server, is the perfect platform from which to design and create integrated GIS-centric public asset management systems for both infrastructure and land-focused assets, and as a common framework to incorporate other applications to meet the organization’s GIS-centric public asset management program. cw For more information on GIS-centric public asset management systems, visit Cityworks.com.

Technology that enables citizen-sourced information gathering (or crowdsourcing) is also changing how governments collect and manage spatial data to improve customer service interactions. The challenge facing local government is the boundaries between infrastructure and land-focused asset management are converging. GIS capabilities that analyze spatial relationships among public assets provide important insights for overall prioritization of monitoring, maintenance, and decision making for both infrastructure and land-focused assets.

I n Conclusion CMMS asset management solutions are an important part of an overall EAM program but focused on physical assets. Local governments have important land-focused assets that occupy location just like physical assets (such as permits, licenses, and code enforcement). These assets represent much of the revenue that funds an organization. A truly EAM program for Maintenance scoring to assess condition.

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Features

Cityworks Empowering Field Employees and Enhancing Remote Data Collection

By Lindsay Ferguson, PR & Marketing, Cityworks | Azteca Systems, Inc.

Whether it’s sidewalk inspectors carrying PC tablets running Cityworks Anywhere in Ann Arbor, Michigan; stormwater crews accessing the browser to download their work activities using Server AMS in Burien, Washington; or building inspectors with laptops and printers in their trucks ready to leave their inspections on-site in West Valley City, Utah; Cityworks empowers field workers and facilitates remote data collection.

The first mobile Cityworks solution was Cityworks Wireless in 1998, which was deployed via laptops in Houston, Texas. DataPump was released in 2001 and is still available today. This disconnected mode allows field workers to check out their requests and/or work orders for the day, and then check them back in to sync the database information. Other workers can still view the records while they are checked out, but can’t edit them until they are checked in.

Today technology allows users to access the data in real-time with a wireless connection to Cityworks Anywhere and browser-based Server AMS (Asset Management Solution) and PLL (Permits, Licensing, and Land). Many users continue to utilize DataPump as well.

Cityworks Anywhere incorporates Esri’s ArcGIS Engine, embedding a map and common GIS tools in a solution ideally suited for field, remote, and mobile users. The browser-based Cityworks Server AMS and PLL, developed in Microsoft .NET with Esri’s leading ArcGIS Server technologies, enable enterprise web access for higher levels of operational efficiency.

Users utilize Cityworks platforms in the field in a variety of ways and for multiple uses. Some use Cityworks on its own while others use it alongside other applications. As a flexible system meeting the needs of hundreds of organizations worldwide, Cityworks can provide a field solution tailored to the users’ individual requirements and unique workflows.

Cit y o f B u r i e n , Washington Contributed by Fernando Llamas, Addressing Coordinator, City of Burien

The City of Burien, located about 15 miles south of Seattle, has a population of about 34,000. As a friendly community with rich heritage, Burien boasts well-established neighborhoods and a small-town atmosphere within a short drive of the state’s metropolitan center.

Burien uses a combination of GIS web services, Cityworks Server AMS, and networking to conduct field operations for Public Works crews. The City has two separate crew divisions, Street and Stormwater, using Server AMS. Stormwater crews began using Cityworks Desktop 4.5 with DataPump to manage their work orders and service requests. When Stormwater migrated to Server AMS, they brought the Street crews online to access and maintain their work in the field.

With this transition to Server, street assets had to be inventoried and added to the GIS.

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“With four major street inventories happening concurrently, the results are brought into Cityworks frequently through GIS,” stated Fernando Llamas, Addressing Coordinator, City of Burien. “This is one of the reasons I love Cityworks for what it is. I can update GIS, and my crews can see the new asset in the field in real time, even through versioning.”

The crews can now see all the assets they have to manage in one system. In addition, they can easily map, find assets, and give updates to the GIS department if a discrepancy exists.

When crews find an issue with an asset in the field, they create a work order, perform the work, track associated costs, and in the instance the GIS needs updating, submit the work order to the GIS

Department. All of this is done by field crews not connected to the City’s network.

Rugged laptops with Verizon Wireless 4G cards are installed in each crew truck and connected through an encrypted VPN to a service provided by the City. The VPN service, Netmotion, transforms the laptops into traveling offices. The VPN tunnel connects laptops directly to the City’s intranet where Cityworks Server AMS resides. It also snapshots the network connection in case a laptop loses connectivity so internal resources continue as if the laptop is still connected. Once the laptop comes back online, it restores the current session as if the user never lost the connection.

Llamas continues: “The turn-around time from problem to resolution went from being 72 hours and/or days before our Cityworks usage, to now an average of only 24 hours using Cityworks.

This, of course, depends on the severity of the work or request. Nonetheless, within the same day, an asset can be worked on with the problem resolved and also updated in the GIS. Service requests are also worked on out in the field as an administrative user enters them from the office, resulting in quicker response time and less duplication, with only one crew responding instead of all of them.”

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Or a n g e W a te r and Sewer Authority, North Carolina Contributed by Beth Canada, GIS Coordinator, OWASA

Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) is a public, nonprofit agency providing water, sewer, and reclaimed water to the towns of Carrboro and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, including the University of North Carolina. OWASA provides service to approximately 80,000 residents through more than 20,000 customer accounts and maintains approximately 390 miles of water lines and 321 miles of sewer lines.

Prior to crew leaders creating work orders in Cityworks Anywhere in the field, OWASA had one technician in the office who created work orders using Cityworks Desktop and printed each work order with a coordinating paper map. These documents were then given to each crew leader who followed up on the tasks, wrote notes about work performed on the work orders, and returned the paperwork to a technician in the office who entered the information into Cityworks.

OWASA field and TV inspection crews use 11 Panasonic semi-rugged Toughbooks running Windows XP with Anywhere 4.5 and an Esri ArcEngine 9.3.1 license. Currently, most crew leaders do not have wireless internet access.

They operate in a disconnected environment in the field using DataPump to move data from the production SQL Server Cityworks database to the local SQL Express database. A local copy of the GIS data is maintained on the Toughbooks and

each user updates the data weekly by copying the latest GIS data from the network to the local drive.

OWASA has one additional user, the Locator, who has a wireless connection with an aircard on a Toughbook. In addition to Cityworks Anywhere, he uses ArcMap, Cityworks Desktop, and Dig-Smart software to receive locate requests throughout the day. OWASA set up this system to enable the user to more effectively do his job and eliminate repeat visits to the office to pick up locate information.

Beth Canada, GIS Coordinator, stated, “Our new workflow utilizing Cityworks in the field has increased efficiency drastically, decreased data entry mistakes, and allowed for faster work order completion and reporting.”

Using an integration with Cityworks and I.T.pipes software, OWASA’s TV inspection crews have found an effective field solution in which they utilize a Toughbook, ArcMap, Cityworks Desktop, and I.T.pipes. Prior to this integration, the crew had paper maps and a standalone PC in the inspection truck where they burned the data to a CD to take back to the office at the end of the day. Manually typing the information was time-consuming and prone to error. There was no central repository for the inspection data and no integration with GIS or Cityworks.

The I.T.pipes software has a module that allows users to select sewer mains that will be inspected and the GIS data (pipe size, material, upstream and downstream manhole number IDs, etc.) which is automatically transferred to the inspection software. With the Cityworks/I.T.pipes integration the crew performs an inspection and all video, snapshots, and observations are recorded in the I.T.pipes inspection software while data is stored on the Toughbook local hard drive. At the end of the day, crew members return to the office, create Cityworks work orders for inspections performed, and use the I.T.pipes Cityworks Integration Module which automatically syncs inspection data from the laptop to Cityworks and the inspection master database located on the server.

The efficiencies and automation of processes in the new sewer inspection workflow has resulted in more TV inspections being performed. The integration with Cityworks allows field crews to quickly access inspection data and schedule immediate repairs. They can focus on preventive maintenance and identifying areas for potential sewer rehab projects.

Ms. Canada continues, “The use of Cityworks by crews in the field has resulted in a paperless system, allowing field crews to complete work orders while on-site and access GIS maps. Crew leaders can more effectively plan their days by viewing work order locations on a map and assign resources needed. Work order data entry is faster and more complete resulting in more efficient and timely reporting.”

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W e s t V a l l e y C i ty, Utah Contributed by Ken Cushing, Programming Supervisor, West Valley

West Valley City is located in the in the Salt Lake Valley between the Wasatch and Oquirrh mountain ranges. A suburb of Salt Lake City, West Valley is the second largest city in Utah with a population of about 130,000.

wasted with data entry, and it was difficult transferring it over at the end of each day. We decided a field solution was in the City’s best interest.”

Building inspectors and Code Enforcement officers at West Valley City utilize Cityworks Server PLL (Permits, Licensing and Land) in the field. Users are equipped with laptops, printers, and Sprint aircards which connect to the City’s network via VPN. Inspectors and officers are able to perform all their daily tasks from their vehicles, from creating new code enforcement cases to conducting a building inspection for a contractor.

All of these features are available to the users in the field.

Ken Cushing, Programming Supervisor at West Valley, said, “Server PLL gives all departments a live view of the current status of every permit or case in the field and around the city where the work is actually taking place. The program enables West Valley to track and manage daily activities much more efficiently than previously done.”

The City deployed field laptops with PLL in early 2010. Since then, City staff is more efficient in fulfilling their day-to-day responsibilities and the City’s quality of customer service has improved.

Now building inspectors are entering inspection results in real time and giving contractors immediate, readable results. Contractors and other interested parties can be notified of the results by email upon completion of the inspection, including any corrections that need to be made. Similarly, code enforcement officers create cases and generate courtesy notices from their vehicles. They’re able to print out notices and post them on the property, rather than print them in the office and mail them. The City took field access a step further and built a custom, inhouse ArcGIS web application which functions as a “quick” create tool, allowing officers to click on a property and create a new case or view any open cases on adjacent properties.

Before West Valley implemented Server PLL, inspection and code enforcement staff used paper forms, which had to be printed every morning, carried around all day, and returned to the office every evening for entry into the computer system. Ken said, “A lot of time was

“Server PLL fits exactly what we were looking for,” Cushing said. “West Valley wanted a system to be based on a land layer with parcels and have everything point to that. PLL has proven to be a citywide application and has greatly improved our field processes.”

West Valley is very happy with the results Server PLL has produced. They have also been influential in many of the enhancements added to the application to improve its field capabilities.

Matt Harman, Azteca Systems Project Manager, observed West Valley City building inspectors, noting how they use Server PLL. Harman’s observations helped the Cityworks development team understand users’ expectations and provide invaluable feedback on how to improve the product.

Harmon said, “It’s great to spend a morning in the field with the actual end users of Server PLL. Observing the users with the application in the field, in a real-world setting, highlights the features of the application that work well and also the areas we can improve. And we have improved. Server PLL 2011 includes many new features as a result of the feedback from West Valley, from speed improvements to new ways to manage inspection results. In my opinion, for building inspectors, code enforcement, and others, Server PLL belongs in the field. It is the best way to improve the work efficiency and integrity of the data across the organization.”

Cu c a mo n g a V a l ley Water District Contributed by Darron Paulson, Customer Service Officer, CVWD

The Cucamonga Valley Water District (CVWD) is a public utility providing reliable water and wastewater services to over 186,000 customers.

CVWD’s service area includes the City of Rancho Cucamonga; portions of the cities of Upland, Ontario, and Fontana; and some unincorporated areas of San Bernardino County. With an average daily demand of about 50 million gallons, CVWD serves a 47-square-mile area which includes approximately 48,000 water connections and 37,000 sewer connections.

The organization needed a solution that would not only appeal to managers, but field employees would value and be enthusiastic about using as well.

CVWD chose Cityworks as their CMMS based on its field capabilities. When looking for a system, CVWD wanted to find a solution that worked for their field employees. From the beginning, field employees were heavily involved in the process of reviewing and selecting a program.

Ultimately, a strong field solution is what drove the District towards selecting Cityworks. They also integrate iWater’s infraMap into the system.

The Water Maintenance Department uses this combined solution to produce a clear picture of their distribution system.

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“In regards to field employees, that is where Cityworks brings its greatest value. Our field employees really enjoy working in the map environment as that is what best suits the way they do their work every day, and Cityworks is the ideal program to work within GIS.”

The District utilizes laptops in the field and receives real-time field updates. A typical field routine for valve maintenance at the District involves the field crew identifying an area to work in, going to the location, opening infraMap on their laptop, exiting the vehicle, and performing the valve inspection. Once they complete the job, a work order is created in Cityworks to record the information.

In addition to being a valuable field solution, the drastic reduction in paper consumption Cityworks had provided the City fits right in with their technology plan towards green solutions and helps communicate to the public the importance of conserving natural resources.

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Cit y o f W o o d l a nd, California Contributed by Daniel Hewitt, GIS Specialist; and J Kimura, Database Administrator, City of Woodland

Woodland is located approximately 20 miles northwest of Sacramento. Within the past decade, Woodland has grown to approximately 55,500 residents, with many additions to the community including numerous subdivisions and shopping centers.

Woodland utilizes Cityworks Anywhere, which is accessible in real time to Public Works staff in the office or field. Field staff can create, edit, and complete work orders and service requests anytime, including after hours for emergency callouts. Labor, materials, and equipment are added to work orders at the time work is completed which adds efficiency and accuracy to data entry.

Currently the City’s GIS stores assets for the following groups: Sewer, Storm, Water, Electrical, Trees, Signs and Markings, Parks, and Wastewater Treatment Plant. Users in these groups attach all work orders to a GIS asset in Cityworks.

Service requests and unattached work orders are geocoded.

Woodland’s CCTV inspection program is heavily reliant on Cityworks and GIS. I.T.pipes integration with Cityworks and GIS has recently been implemented, reducing the risk of human error

during inspections by using data validation for attribute and observation collection. Data collected during the inspection is consolidated into a single database with some of the inspection values being pushed back into GIS. The majority of the Public Work Department’s Dell laptops used in the field are semi-rugged (E6400 ATG Series) while a handful are fully ruggedized (XFR Series). All laptops have an internal mobile broadband card. VPN connectivity is managed via Netmotion (netmotionwireless.com), which protects data traffic and wireless devices with the industry’s highest encryption standards.

Netmotion automatically maintains connection and application sessions, optimizes connection and quality of service (QoS) to improve network speed and prioritize critical applications, and creates a centralized view of wireless deployments with comprehensive reporting. GIS data is stored in an Esri ArcSDE geodatabase, which is running on Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

Cityworks is used from two separate terminal servers. One terminal server runs Cityworks Anywhere and is used by most of the Public Works staff. A second terminal server is setup with Cityworks Desktop for those that need tools only offered in ArcMap. Licensing is configured so GIS

attributes can be edited in Cityworks Anywhere by those given permission. Security for feature classes is controlled with NT authentication in SDE. “Cityworks in the field allows our field staff to have real-time access to service requests, work orders, and GIS inventory assets,” states Daniel Hewitt, GIS Specialist, City of Woodland. “This enables them to enter their labor, material, and equipment in a single instance, making it a more efficient and moving the City towards a paperless workflow process. Having Cityworks Anywhere also offers the end users a mapping solution which uses the City’s enterprise geodatabase as the common and authoritative data source.

This allows work orders to be associated with GIS assets and used to generate reports and identify problem areas. It facilitates analysis and preventive planning, moving away from a reactionary maintenance model. End users also have the ability to edit GIS attributes in the field and submit redlines to office GIS staff for updating the GIS. GIS features are constantly analyzed and verified for accuracy by the field crew staff.

As a result, Public Works has taken ownership of the GIS inventory and in turn has made GIS a valuable asset to the entire organization.” cw

W i n d o w s 7 R u g gedized Solutions As presented by Wayne Hill, Executive Director, Client & Information Services, Cityworks | Azteca Systems, at the Cityworks 2011 User Conference

With the ever-increasing interest in mobile technology, Cityworks has been researching various Windows 7 tablets. Last March, we entered into an agreement with a company called Motion Computing, allowing us access to their ruggedized solutions to test Cityworks Server. As many of you know, I demonstrated their F5V tablet at our conference and discussed several of their other tablets and options.

tablet solutions, such as the ASUS EEE Slate and the Tangent Tycoon. This is an ever-changing market with new players arriving all the time. As a matter of fact, we just purchased an Acer Iconia Tab W500 tablet to test.

Cityworks Server will work with any of these Windows 7 tablets; however, it is important to note that to interact with the map, you have to choose a Windows tablet with Silverlight support. cw

Cost for “going ruggedized” can be pricey; therefore, we are looking into other Windows 7

Summer 2011

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Miami Beach, Florida: Five Years Using Cityworks

By Adriana Castro, GIS Programmer/Analyst; and Bert Dorrestyn, GIS Manager, City of Miami Beach

The City of Miami Beach, with 92,145 residents and 7 million visitors annually, requires a lot of work to maintain its beauty and appeal. The contributions of the Department of Public Works are particularly important.

The Miami Beach Public Works Department is one of only 68 agencies nationally accredited by the American Public Works Association. This is the result of working as a team to accomplish the mission of providing “effective and efficient public works services that ensure the safety, health, and well-being of all who live, work, and play in our vibrant, tropical, historic community.”

Public Works exists to maintain the City’s infrastructure and manage and deliver services. The Department integrates: • Engineering • Environmental Resources Management • GIS • Streets and Street Lighting • Transportation Management • Property Management • Sanitation • Utilities

• Water • Sewer • Stormwater Part of the Department’s responsibility is the City’s infrastructure that includes: • 4 water storage tanks (12-million-gallon capacity) • 140 miles of roads and streets • 33 miles of alleys • 242 miles of sidewalk • 180 miles of water lines • 152 miles of sewer lines • 59 miles of stormwater lines • 33 pump stations • 5100 street lights • 3.26 miles of City-owned seawalls • 1400 landscape uplights • 2.6 miles of recreational corridors • 322 buildings, facilities, and structures • 12 miles of inland canals • 4 million square feet of buildings and facilities In order to better manage its infrastructure, the City implemented Cityworks in July 2006 as an integrated Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) working within the GIS. As part of this project, the entire infrastructure was converted from paper atlas sheets and neighborhood surveys to the GIS. This conversion took over two years and, in the meantime, the City tracked their asset maintenance using Cityworks Standalone and their inventory with Cityworks Storeroom. Initially, Cityworks was used only for our Operations Division. Over the years, however, we have extended the use of Cityworks in other divisions of the Public Works Department such as Sanitation, Engineering, and Property Management.

After four successful years using the Standalone version, the City decided to upgrade to Cityworks Server AMS. Its deployment took four months and included these tasks: 1. Installation of the server 2. GIS map service preparation 3. Administrators training 4. Users training 5. Viewer installation of Firefox The test and production installation of Server AMS, as well as the administrator and power user training, was done by Azteca specialists who visited our city twice. The GIS team, which maintains and administers Cityworks, conducted small group training for other users. This smallgroup approach gave every user the chance to ask questions applicable to their responsibilities. This approach took time but gave the GIS team the opportunity to meet all the users and show them the various user requirements.

Restored Old City Hall

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Initially, the Information System Department would not approve Firefox as an acceptable browser; however, with the addition of ProCon Firefox to limit the use to Cityworks, we were able to implement the use of this browser. This browser now appears on the user’s desktop as Cityworks Server.

There are many challenges when a new system is implemented, but the personal support we received from the Azteca Systems support team made it a very smooth transition. The system works very well in spite of the inevitable problems that happen with any system implementation of this size and scope. We expect most of these problems will be resolved when we upgrade to the latest version of Server AMS. Some of the benefits of using Server AMS compared to Standalone are: 1. Eliminates the need to install Cityworks Desktop on users’ computers.

2. Web application has an embedded GIS. It was difficult to teach users to use ArcMap with only the Cityworks toolbar.

3. Inbox tab allows users to see service requests and work orders without doing a search each time they open the application.

4. The option to save customized searches simplifies reports.

5. The search page allows users to select more than one status.

After the deployment of Server AMS, the City of Miami Beach expanded its use to integrate other systems used in the City. One of the most important achievements has been the interface between the City’s Citizen Portal WebQA and Cityworks. Citizens can create a service request online, which automatically creates a Cityworks service request. This interface uses the Cityworks API and an in-house developed service to communicate progress and end status back to the WebQA service request. As a result, duplicate requests have been eliminated, and the Public Works Department is providing better service.

Transactions form (Form MX) and these forms are later entered into Cityworks Storeroom. Through the use of a Mobile Warehouse System, which is fully integrated with Cityworks Storeroom, simple searches can locate materials available in the warehouse. In addition, through the use of barcoding technology, the MX forms can be eliminated. This new workflow will eliminate transaction errors and omissions and will speed up all warehouse processes.

The City of Miami Beach will soon upgrade ArcGIS from version 9.3.1 to version 10. This upgrade will be done as soon as Cityworks Server 2011 is available. With this upgrade, we expect to solve some of our current problems.

Cityworks has provided the City of Miami Beach an excellent automated work reception and ordering system. The system has been instrumental in helping Public Works achieve the intended outcomes of the City’s Strategic Plan such as improving cleanliness of the City, enhancing mobility, ensuring beach preservation, maintaining facilities and infrastructure, improving storm drainage, ensuring value and timely delivery of capital projects, and enhancing environmental sustainability. cw Statistics from Miami Beach Economic Development Department, “Miami Beach Economic Indicators,” (2008) at www.miamibeachfl.gov

The Property Management Division of Public Works uses a facility management system. It is our intention to replace this system with Cityworks. Our convention center, which is managed by a separate entity, was using the same facility management system as the Public Works Property Management Division. The GIS team has converted the convention center facility management system to Cityworks. This implementation was very difficult and complicated because of the different workflows used; however, users are very pleased with the results and with the cost savings.

The City of Miami Beach is using the Cityworks Storeroom add-on to manage the materials inventory including requisitions, suppliers, issues, and receipt of materials. However, this system can only be used by desktop systems and many materials cannot easily be moved to the desktop locations. The total inventory is valued at an average of $2,600,000, with a total of $1,100,000 in materials assigned to work orders per year. Transactions are recorded in the Materials

Summer 2011

Citizen Request Portal

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Infrastructure Optimization (IO) Toolset Used by Southgate Water and Sanitation District, Colorado

By Kirk McClurkin, Project Director, Infrastructure Management, Woolpert; and Tom Mansfield, Operation Manager, Southgate Water and Sanitation District

A s set Management Syste m L e v e r a g e s E x i s ti n g G I S P l atform Infrastructure managers have a variety of information sources available to help manage assets. As Cityworks end users with GIS, infrastructure managers at the Southgate Water and Sanitation District in Centennial, Colorado, have the ability to view all their assets, including data on recently completed work. The District’s ability to access and integrate data from other specialized sources (such as CCTV and hydraulic modeling) is not as easy and represents a gap in operational data. (See Figure 1) Southgate’s Board realized it required a more sophisticated approach to asset management that would consolidate and leverage all available data sources to enable the District to make capital improvement and rehabilitation decisions. With fewer dollars available and fewer resources to perform the work, doing more with less is the reality facing Southgate’s infrastructure managers.

Southgate provides water distribution and wastewater collection systems to over 75,000 residents. With a coverage area of 18 square miles, including the cities of Cherry Hills Village, Centennial, Greenwood Village, and Lone Tree and the counties of Arapahoe and unincorporated Douglas, Southgate’s ability to maintain high service levels to its customer base depends largely on its ability to optimize and maintain its existing infrastructure.

I n f ra s t r u c t u r e O p t i m i z a ti o n T o o l s e t C a l c u lates Risk Exposure To enhance this GIS-enabled Asset Management System (AMS), Southgate tapped Woolpert to pilot test and install a program that would fully realize the potential of the existing AMS and GIS information and other data sources.

Through a collaborative process that began in 2010, Woolpert provided Southgate with the resources to create a customizable tool to enable dataflow tracking of its entire infrastructure. The adapted solution became known as the Infrastructure Optimization (IO) toolset, a set of sophisticated analysis tools designed to support infrastructure sustainability and optimization. IO provides the framework to systematically analyze and calculate asset criticality and risk, predict replacement costs, and conduct scenario-based planning for infrastructure maintenance and replacement rehabilitation.

IO is an Esri ArcGIS extension designed for engineers and operators. Along with the advancements in Server AMS, IO closes the data gap for Southgate’s infrastructure managers. IO is an advanced asset management toolset that rapidly improves the engineer’s decision-making capability by determining where investments will provide the maximum life cycle for assets. IO supports a holistic, sustainable project approach that integrates with the existing GIS and CMMS data to inform rehabilitation and replacement decisions. (See Figure 2)

Figure 1 - Lack of visibility in all information sources provides a data gap in the asset management system.

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D e termining Asset Risk IO allows Southgate operators to create scenarios to generate and evaluate asset risk scores. Asset ID, Date Installed, and other GIS data help determine risk analysis and inspection. Engineers can then configure a weighted tracking system to determine the probability of failure (PoF) factors for an asset (e.g., percent consumed, sewer and soil conditions, maintenance frequency). Consequence of failure (CoF) factors are configured and weighted in much the same manner (sewer pipe size, ground surface, etc.).

The sum of PoF and CoF results in a 0-100 score of business risk exposure (BRE) or risk. Risk configuration is completed once all the PoF and CoF factors are compiled. Risk scenarios are represented in a color-coded severity system that displays asset severity in the GIS. This helps operators quickly evaluate areas of high risk and prioritize where to perform inspections, maintenance, and rehabilitation.

The IO interface allows Southgate engineers to generate charts and reports of calculated replacement costs on high-risk assets. For example, an operator can select the eight-inch main pipes, filter by material type, and generate replacement reports that illustrate the cost of replacing the selected mains with different materials. The results estimate current and future values to help with long-term forecasting.

C a lculate Potential Rep l a c e m e n t C o s ts IO’s replacement module is used to calculate potential replacement costs.

Engineers can use a straight-line depreciation method using Date Installed and Estimated Effective Life in the current year (which is automatically calculated when determining risk). Alternatively, operators can evaluate cost using custom decay curves. Using standard replacement strategies, operators can quickly determine replacement costs by year.

With IO’s ability to systematically analyze and calculate asset criticality and risk, predict replacement costs, and conduct scenario-based planning, Southgate has a toolset that can manage infrastructure maintenance and replacement rehabilitation for years to come. The IO toolset is now available as a third-party application to Cityworks users. For more information, visit www.woolpert.com/io. cw

C o n ti n u i n g th e W o o l p e r t/ C i ty w o r ks C o l l a boration In the past 15 years, Woolpert has worked with Cityworks to support 30 different Woolpert clients in over 100 Woolpert projects, becoming Cityworks first diamond-level partner. It was this relationship that earned Southgate’s trust in the project. Because of the strong bond between Cityworks and Woolpert and their reliability, dedication, and commitment, Southgate was very confident in the product that Woolpert could provide.

Figure 2 - Holistic project approach determines risk and provides replacement costs and recommendations.

Summer 2011

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Utilizing Cityworks at Cupertino, California, with Many Tangible Results

By Teri Gerhardt, GIS Coordinator, City of Cupertino

The City of Cupertino implemented Cityworks Desktop to manage multiple assets and procedures and is experiencing great results with the system.

Cityworks was the clear choice for the City because of its unmatched GIS capabilities, comprehensive tracking tool, and easy-to-use reporting tools.

The program has enhanced workflow, improved time management, reduced paper consumption, and increased customer satisfaction in Cupertino. The City staff looks forward to expanding their use of Cityworks in the near future.

T h e Situation Several events prompted the City to implement a new asset management system. The Human Resources Department was having difficulties with liability cases stemming from personal and property damage caused by trees. The paper work order system made it impossible to retrieve the documentation needed to prove the damage was caused by an act of nature rather than negligence on the City’s part.

Additionally, traffic operations staff was struggling to meet the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) deadline of January 2012, which required the City to evaluate current retroreflectivity levels and create a strategy for bringing non-compliant assets up to code. Furthermore, the City’s operation crews and managers were frustrated with the current paper system because it was a difficult and time-consuming way to organize and manage data.

They were eager to move to a system that would give them enhanced capabilities in the field, retain asset history, and efficiently organize asset and maintenance data.

T h e Solution Cupertino chose Cityworks Desktop because it is a streamlined system requiring no interface (integration or synchronization) between Cityworks and the GIS where the GIS is the only common asset database utilized.

Having experience with non-GIS-centric systems and being aware of the complications involved when two systems won’t communicate with each other, choosing a GIS-centric approach was an easy choice for the City to make. It was also important to employ one solution that would work with all assets and allow everyone to access the same system and view the same data. The City also foresaw Cityworks making the Public Works Design and Operations Divisions more effective by assisting in setting work priorities, concentrating work in specific geographic locations, and planning preventive maintenance through cyclical work orders.

Overall, Cityworks was anticipated to be an efficient timesaver for staff, a comprehensive tracking tool for supervisors, and a necessary and easy-touse reporting tool for management.

T h e I m p l e m e n ta t i o n Cupertino’s Cityworks implementation was completed in phases, beginning with streetlights, traffic control, and trees in the first fiscal year (2009-2010).

Since the GIS staff is limited to one GIS Coordinator, the initial step was to hire Cityworks business partner, Quartic Solutions, to design the data models, configure the systems and hardware, and handle implementation and training. The City also chose to implement iWater’s infraMap, an easy-to-use mobile mapping environment that integrates nicely with the Cityworks work order system.

Cupertino purchased the GIS streetlight inventory from the City’s power company. The inventory was converted to the data model structure, then infraMap was used to assess the data received from the energy company, allowing the City to report discrepancies discovered in the field.

Because the tree inventory was such a complicated task and lacked funding for inventory collection at the time, the City decided to deploy Cityworks in the field, adding new assets as work orders were created. Finally, the traffic control inventories were collected in five months using four interns, Google street view, and field verification. Each group is currently collecting both asset and attribute data in the field, as well as creating and retrieving work orders for the assets they maintain.

Phase two, fiscal year 2010-2011, consisted of the storm drain system and fleet maintenance. The City already had inventories for both systems, but both needed new data models. Again with Quartic’s support, the City developed new data models with input from all involved parties, converted the data, deployed the solution, and trained personnel on Cityworks and infraMap. From now on, the storm drain crew will be creating work orders in the field and making updates to the storm drain features via redlining in infraMap. Fleet is up and running, creating work orders and cyclical preventive maintenance work orders in the shop.

Using Cityworks Desktop

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R e s u l ts Cityworks has greatly enhanced Cupertino’s workflow and produced many tangible results. The City has saved a great deal of time using Cityworks

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because the staff can now quickly retrieve information through the system, rather than manually thumbing through stacks of paperwork. Customer service efficiency has improved dramatically because tasks don’t fall through the cracks anymore as details are documented in the database and problems remain open until they are addressed.

Furthermore, customer satisfaction levels have also increased as callers are surprised and impressed when Cupertino staff members follow up with specific details tracked in Cityworks once a problem has been resolved. In addition, Cityworks allows Cupertino to monitor problems and solutions more closely, allowing administrative staff members to answer questions over the phone that previously required a visit from a field worker. The City is able to forecast workloads more accurately and identify repeated problems and repetitive complaints, allowing them to pinpoint areas of the City that require more attention.

Cityworks has significantly reduced the amount of paper used by the City, while facilitating more efficient access to information. In addition, the City no longer needs to rely on staff memory. As the City continues to change and long-serving maintenance personnel retire, it will be impossible for staff to remember everything. Fortunately, Cityworks now provides all the important detail history that eluded staff in the past. All these factors have allowed the Public Works Department to shift to a more proactive maintenance cycle, allowing the City to be more productive and efficient.

The phased implementation has created a closed-loop system. Staff trained in the first phase are now experts and can assist newly trained staff when questions arise. In the field, Operations staff can submit work orders to other departments if they notice a tree is down or a light is out. Additionally, any discrepancies in the GIS data, such as a road name or address, are reported and corrected, allowing the City to make the system even more efficient.

Cityworks on a field laptop

The Operations staff has come to thoroughly appreciate Cityworks and utilizes all the features it offers. They feel empowered with the ability to proactively manage their assets, a nearly insurmountable challenge in the past because of the intrinsic dysfunction of an antiquated paper system.

F u tu re Funding has been secured to begin phase three of Cupertino’s asset management plan (scheduled for fiscal year 2011-2012), which will include sidewalks, curbs, and gutters. As the asset management system continues to grow, the GIS data will need ongoing maintenance and the City will most likely find even more uses for Cityworks in the future. cw

A b o u t t h e C i t y o f C u p e r ti n o The City of Cupertino lies at the center of Silicon Valley’s compass with a short drive south to San Jose and the campuses of the world’s leading technology firms, north to San Francisco and the Bay, or west to the redwoods of the peninsula and the shores of the Pacific.

Cupertino owes its earliest mention in recorded history to the 1776 expedition led by the Spanish explorer, Captain Juan Bautista de Anza. Many of Cupertino’s pioneer settlers planted grapes in the late 1800s. Vineyards and wineries proliferated on Monte Bello Ridge, the lower foothills, and the flatlands below.

Until the mid-1960s, Cupertino remained largely a town of ranches and estate vineyards. Then two things happened: De Anza College opened and, soon after, computers came on the scene. The college was named for the great Spanish explorer whose cartographer named the creek from which the city took its name.

Apple Computer arrived in Cupertino in the late 1970s, where it still serves as the company’s worldwide headquarters. Today, within Cupertino’s borders is a thriving business community that’s home to some of the greatest innovators in technology, companies like Hewlett-Packard, Apple Inc., and IBM.

Cityworks on a tablet PC

Summer 2011

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City of Vernon, British Columbia, Streamlines Infrastructure Maintenance

By Karen Stewart, Industry Manager, Public Works, ESRI Canada

With a population of 36,000, Vernon is the commercial hub of North Okanagan and was ranked the third best city in British Columbia by MoneySense Magazine. Recognized for its prosperity, affordable housing, lifestyle, and weather, the City is in the process of developing a number of key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure it is actively competing with other BC municipalities. As part of this process, they recently implemented a formal complaints management system that ensures a fast and efficient turnaround of service requests. This has enabled the City to effectively maintain its infrastructure, minimize liability, and provide reliable customer service.

Vernon receives over 4000 service requests per year by phone and email from both residents and City staff. Prior to 2010, when a service request was received, the calltaker would issue a handwritten note and deliver it to the Public Works supervisor. Not only were these notes easily misplaced, there was no process in place to track when work on a project had begun or been completed. The City also lacked a system for prioritizing projects based on potential liability. For example, burned-out street lights or missing storm covers pose a safety risk to citizens and should be given priority over less urgent complaints.

To more effectively manage its infrastructure, the City of Vernon overhauled their service request process and created a formalized complaints management system. They developed a central hub to receive requests and implemented both Cityworks Desktop and Server AMS 2010 to process service requests for all of the City’s assets, from underground wastewater utilities to street signs.

Utilizing the forms and tools within Cityworks, Vernon’s GIS and Operations Departments created 60 templates for service-related issues such as snow and ice removal, garbage and recycling pickup, and pothole repair. They assigned a billing code to each type of service request, allowing them to link templates to the Accounting Department and track where money is being spent.

When a service request is received, the operator fills in the corresponding form and emails it to the Public Works supervisor, who delegates the work to an employee. Projects are assigned one of three levels of priority, based on the severity of the complaint. When projects are complete, the date and time of completion is recorded and the issue is closed in Cityworks. This new process enables managers to track “time to close,” allowing benchmark levels of service to be established and compared. The new system has also helped reduce liability concerns by enabling the City to prioritize projects and ensure they are being completed on schedule.

“With a formal complaints management process in place, we are always on task, tackling service requests as soon as they come in,” said Chris Thompson, GIS/Asset Management Analyst, City of Vernon. “We can easily prioritize projects and identify problem areas to ensure that we are deploying resources where they are needed most.”

Aside from tracking new projects, search tools within Cityworks are also used to pull up old service requests, so operations personnel can analyze patterns and trends over time. They can see the number of service requests received within each category and map out trouble areas.

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This information can then be shared with upper management and the City Council to make critical budget allocation decisions and measure key performance indicators. For example, staff can create charts to identify the number of service requests logged per meter of road and see how this compares to other municipalities.

Looking forward, the City of Vernon will soon use Cityworks to develop a complete maintenance management system to track work orders across all departments. This will enable Public Works supervisors to create and assign preventive maintenance tasks to proactively manage the City’s infrastructure. cw

“With a formal complaints management process in place, we are always on task, tackling service requests as soon as they come in.

We can easily prioritize projects and identify problem areas to ensure that we are deploying resources where they are needed most.”

Chris Thompson, City of Vernon

A Server AMS service request accompanied by its mapped location

Server AMS work order screen showing a completed corrective work order for a piece of HVAC equipment

Summer 2011

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Collaborative Cityworks Project at Eagle River Water & Sanitation District Links Maintenance Field Crews and Office Users

By Steve Kerr, Project Manager, POWER Engineers; and Kevin Aoki, IS Division Manager, Eagle River Water & Sanitation District

A seasonal influx nearly doubles the permanent population of Eagle County, Colorado, during the winter and summer months. Temporary residents come to enjoy world-class mountain resorts such as Vail and Beaver Creek.

Eagle River Water and Sanitation District (the District) owns and operates the water and sewer infrastructure for the entire county. Our challenge is to provide efficient, reliable water and wastewater services at any time of year, in spite of the fluctuating population. The District encompasses approximately 54,400 acres in Eagle County and includes the towns of Vail, Minturn, Avon, and surrounding developments.

Until 2010, the District used a work order management system with no link to the GIS data maintained by the Information Systems Division. Field users in the Distribution & Collection (D&C) Division had no access to the work orders. All users worked with printed maps and work order forms. This system made it difficult to generate essential monthly and yearly reports.

The District envisioned a system that would give D&C maintenance crews up-to-date information on water and sewer assets and provide access to all work assignments while in the field. With more field users than office users, the new system needed a robust, easy-to-use field application as well as a strong in-office product. After a survey of applications in the market, the District chose the combination of Cityworks Server AMS (Asset Management System) and infraMap®, iWater’s field access product. Server AMS provides in-office access to facility and work information, as well as field access to work information. InfraMap provides field access to facility information and seamless access to the Cityworks work order forms.

The District also decided to launch the new system to a small group of users to test the applications before fully implementing them. During the “soft launch,” these users did an excellent job of using the system for their real work. Their efforts helped identify areas in which the applications could be reconfigured to make them easier for field crews to use. When the test group was satisfied, the District went ahead with the “hard launch” to all field users.

D e l i v e r i n g D a ta to F i e l d a n d O f f i c e U s e rs The Server AMS deployment at the District uses multiple integrated components to deliver asset and work management information to office and field users. The system is centered around two Windows Server machines.

A database server manages the Server AMS and GIS data using SQL Server and ArcSDE. A separate application server uses ArcGIS Server and the Server AMS application to deliver map services to end users. These core servers provide the data and tools for both field and office users. Cityworks administrators use the Designer and Storeroom applications to prepare and maintain the Cityworks database. Office staff use Server AMS to initiate, review, update, and close work orders along with required reports.

F o cusing on Doing It th e “ R i g h t W a y ” The District realized that a successful project must focus on work processes as well as technology. The project started with an analysis of District work processes. Team members from POWER Engineers led business process workshops and together with Eagle River staff analyzed their existing workflows and revised them to incorporate the use of Server AMS and infraMap. The workshops involved demonstrations of the two products, so District employees could visualize how the system would work for them.

After the work processes were approved, team members began identifying specific configuration requirements.

C a p tu r i n g a n d I n te g r a ti n g F i e l d D a ta A key component to this solution is the use of infraMap with Cityworks integration. InfraMap provides a robust easy-to-use interface for field staff to capture their daily work. In 2002, iWater created infraMap to help its own crews work more efficiently. Designed to reduce overtime and eliminate paperwork, the program has been perfected through daily use by iWater field personnel.

Due to the mountainous terrain of the District’s service area, wireless connectivity was not possible, so a sync-and-go approach was implemented.

At the District, field users begin their day by synchronizing their GIS and Cityworks data right from infraMap. InfraMap integrates the Cityworks DataPump application and ArcGIS replication technology to ensure each field computer has the most current GIS, asset, and work order information.

Within infraMap, the current list of work orders is presented and organized for the user. Selecting a work order automatically zooms the map to the

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work order location and opens the Cityworks work order form. At the end of the day, all completed work is synchronized with the master database and available for final review by office users.

Kyle Higgins, System Maintenance Technician at the District, stated, “The implementation of the Cityworks and iWater programs has enabled the District to not only be more efficient, but increase productivity as well.

The dedication of POWER, iWater, and District employees to customize the programs to fit our needs was paramount in its development. The ease of use combined with the ability to track every action performed on an asset has already had a positive impact in our preventive maintenance programs.

The more we acclimate to the program, the more we discover we can’t live without it!”

By using this integrated system, the District has been able to track and capture maintenance activities on all water (hydrants, mains, valves) and sewer (manholes, mains, lift stations) assets. In addition, the District is beginning to use Cityworks to track inspections during construction of new District water and sewer assets.

Server AMS also integrates with two other key systems: the Customer Information System (CIS) and the Gasboy® fueling system. The interface with CIS pulls customer data to the Cityworks CustomerAcct table, providing the D&C team with up-to-date customer information for service requests.

The interface to Gasboy, which is currently under development, will pull over vehicle fuel usage and mileage data to generate work orders for fuel tank refills and vehicle replacement. D&C now performs routine maintenance on their own vehicles and utilizes Server AMS to track work orders on these vehicles. In the near future, the Gasboy interface will be used to generate vehicle maintenance work orders.

Besides information about assets, the old work order system had a lot of valuable information on asset maintenance history. The IT staff will migrate pertinent work order information from the old system to Cityworks, thus providing access to this important historical information.

C o llaborating Makes GI S - C e n tr i c C i t y w o r ks M o r e V a l u a b l e During the implementation process, it became apparent the list of assets in the old work management system did not match the list of assets found in the GIS. Work orders existed for assets that were missing from the GIS. Together, the D&C group and the IT GIS team worked closely to reconcile the two asset data sources. This resulted in a much more accurate and valuable GIS-centric AMS. Working as a team, the D&C division, IT Department, Cityworks, POWER Engineers, and iWater delivered a system that end users have gladly accepted. Kevin Aoki, IT Division Manager, said “The level of collaboration between the District, POWER Engineers, iWater, and Cityworks for this project was outstanding. Throughout the project, all parties remained in constant communication and maintained a common vision of deploying a product that was designed for Distribution & Collections by Distribution & Collections. Much time was invested documenting our business processes as well as understanding the unique challenges of our systems and the Vail Valley. The result was an end product that is powerful enough for Distribution

Summer 2011

Eagle River screen shots

& Collections administrative staff, easy to use in the field, and is supportable by the District’s IT staff.”

Steve Kerr, Project Manager at POWER Engineers, stated, “We really enjoyed working with the Eagle River team to help them deliver the Cityworks/ infraMap solution. Their commitment to doing things the “right way,” with an emphasis on full buy-in from the end user group and IT, upfront business process modeling, and a great release strategy, ensured the implementation of a top quality solution that meets the needs of their end users.”

One huge benefit was creating a single location for field users to enter work data. In the previous system, the users would fill out the hard copy work report, which would be entered into the legacy work management system, but they would also record work in a “Daily Log” spreadsheet. Cityworks now serves as the official log for all work performed. Extensive use of Crystal Reports has made month-end accounting much easier and less timeconsuming.

E x te n d i n g B e n e f i ts i n to th e F u t u r e The District has already seen great results from using Cityworks and infraMap as a single, integrated system for tracking and managing utility infrastructure. A possible future extension to the system is work and asset management for water and wastewater treatment plants. cw About POWER Engineers

POWER Engineers is a consulting engineering firm specializing in energy, facilities, communications, and environmental services. Founded in 1976, POWER Engineers is an employee-owned company with offices throughout the United States and abroad.

POWER’s GIS and Asset Management Solutions group brings over 600 years of combined experience in serving the GIS industry.

About the District

Eagle River Water & Sanitation District is a local government responsible for regional water and wastewater operations that serve the mountain resorts of Vail and Beaver Creek as well as surrounding communities. The District is a quasimunicipal corporation and a political subdivision of the state with a service area encompassing approximately 54,400 acres in Eagle County, Colorado. Included within its boundaries are the towns of Vail, Minturn, and Avon as well as the Arrowhead, Beaver Creek, Berry Creek, EagleVail, Edwards, Bachelor Gulch, and Cordillera mixeduse developments. The District’s current system serves 24,778 water and 25,155 wastewater single-family equivalent units. While the District’s permanent population is approximately 20,000, during peak season population exceeds 45,000, due to the influx of visitors and part-time residents for recreation and tourism purposes.

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CW 2011 User Thank you all for another More than 400 attendees from around the world gathered at the Dixie Center in St. George, Utah, for the 2011 Cityworks User Conference on May 16, 2011. With instructors and presenters sharing their knowledge, and clients and partners forming important relationships, the conference was a great success and highly acclaimed by everyone involved.

The conference began with the plenary session Monday morning in a unique setting featuring a relaxed venue where attendees were encouraged to make themselves comfortable and plug-in and connect with Cityworks staff and colleagues back home.

President and CEO, Brian Haslam, welcomed the group and gave an overview of Cityworks trends and the field of public asset management. Cityworks developers demonstrated the expanded capabilities of 2011 Server AMS and PLL and showcased some new and exciting functionality.

The session continued with discussions on community engagement and utilizing Cityworks on popular mobile platforms. The afternoon session consisted of a plenary workshop on Cityworks 2011 Server which included a more in-depth look into Cityworks 2011 and research and development for Cityworks 2012.

Conference wonderful conference!

The plenary session adjourned and attendees proceeded to the User Appreciation Social held at the Entrada at Snow Canyon Country Club, nestled amid a scenic red rock landscape. The event included a men’s and women’s long shot driving contest, as well as a 3-putt charity challenge to raise money for the Trichotillomania Learning Center.

conference hosting and attending sessions, answering questions in the Doctor’s Office, and meeting with clients.

The remaining two days of conference were filled with Cityworks user and partner presentations featuring topics such as: • Migrations to Cityworks Server AMS and PLL • Open 311 citizen request portals • Field mobility • Permitting, licensing, land, and code enforcement • Fleet and facilities management • Operational awareness • Advanced asset management, like condition assessment and risk analysis • EPA-funded utilities’ monitoring of customer complaints • Integrations with other business systems

The conference concluded with the traditional Meet the Developers session and User Feedback Luncheon, where attendees along with Cityworks development and managerial staff exchanged open questions, enhancement suggestions, and product feedback.

Over twenty exhibitors showcased their services and solutions in the exhibit hall and were readily available to answer questions and discuss solutions. Over sixty members of the Cityworks staff were present at the

New to the conference this year were Expresso Technical Sessions, live and interactive text feedback, the Cityworks 5K fun run/walk, the Cityworks Crystal Reports competition, and the Cityworks Store.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” -Nelson Mandela RIT: Do you have limited time and resources, but require training?

Utilize our Remote Interactive Training to participate in live courses over the internet.

LIVE: Do you learn better in a classroom setting? If so, attend this training retreat at our headquarters in Salt Lake City. The face-toface experience with our instructors is like no other, not to mention fun!

REGIONAL: A great logistical solution for your training needs and a great way to share Cityworks knowledge. Look into this option for meeting your personnel’s training needs and earn free seats by hosting!

Remote Interactive Training

Regional Training

Live Administration Training

Ah-ha moment!

Cityworks Campus...flip the switch!

Visit www.mycityworks.com/cityworkscampus.com for details or contact John Jarnagin directly at 801-617-8328 or training@cityworks.com.

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Swedish Water Utility Improves Processes with Cityworks Server AMS

By Asa Snith, Head of Network Department, MSV; and Lindsay Ferguson, PR & Marketing, Cityworks | Azteca Systems, Inc.

MittSverige Vatten (MSV) is a Swedish water utility company providing clean drinking water to residents within the municipalities of Sundsvall, Timra, and Nordanstig. MSV recently implemented Server AMS to assist in asset management needs and looks forward to additional benefits as a result of expanding the system throughout the organization.

Cityworks is used within MSV’s Customer Service and Network Departments.

The Network Operation Unit cares for disturbances and reports problems to Customer Service. Using Cityworks, Customer Service is now able to extract more data from the system, which produces valuable information to analyze and helps improve processes.

When there is a problem with an asset or process, MSV usually receives multiple calls reporting the issue. Before implementing Cityworks, this process was problematic because there was little time to get the information to staff members. MSV wanted to provide efficient service to customers from first contact and envisioned a system that could allow multiple staff members to register problems directly, giving everyone access to the information simultaneously.

“Cityworks is very simple to use and everyone at MSV that utilizes the system likes it,” Snith said. “We recently upgraded our server and will upgrade to the latest version of Cityworks Server AMS at the end of the summer, which will improve our processes even more. With Cityworks, we are able to easily extract all the information that we put in.”

MSV was also looking for a program with strong GIS capabilities. While planning for development and renewal of the water and wastewater networks, MSV wanted historical problems in a GIS environment, so they could create reports and analyses utilizing the GIS. When searching for a CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System), a group of individuals from different departments at MSV gathered for several days to discuss expectations for a new system. In accordance with Swedish law, the group formed a procurement (an evaluation and selection process based on capability, cost, and a few other factors) for the purchase of their CMMS. After researching many different software solutions, MSV selected Cityworks as the application that best fit the organization’s needs.

“Now, with MSV’s Cityworks implementation, it’s possible for staff members who first receive a work report to create one work order that is viewable for everyone in the system, eliminating the issue of duplicates,” said Asa Snith.

“When further information on the issue is received, the work order can be updated so everyone has the right information at their fingertips. Through its efficient workflow and GIS capabilities, Cityworks now enables us to make better decisions about asset management and workflow including how and where to spend time and money.”

The municipalities have suggested additional long-term plans for the network that will also benefit their processes. Cityworks will play a key role in these steps continuing to help improve the organization’s workflows.

Snith said, “At MSV we face the challenge of having different expectations and needs from the system, depending on where we preside within the organization. We recognize the importance of having a correct database with all the information on our network and are working on quality assurance for this. Cityworks is a clever and useful program that provides us a way to store and access information, but we realize that in order to get the best of it we must develop improved routines to take advantage of the information we now have for our use.”

In the future, MSV looks forward to incorporating a reporting tool Esri is developing specifically for them. The new tool, which will soon be completed, will integrate with Cityworks and provide reports on useful statistics such as leaks, stops, water quality problems, network length, and so on. These statistics must be reported to MSV’s board and to Svenskt Vatten (a Swedish industry organization) three times a year. Having a tool to make these statistics easier to produce and analyze will be a great benefit to the organization. MSV also wants to report all planned operations, such as replacements and interruptions of service (including specific locations and durations), on the water and wastewater networks to Customer Service and customers alike. Utilizing this tool within Cityworks will facilitate these processes.

Snith concluded, “As we have only begun using the Cityworks system, we are taking our use of the software one step at a time and look forward to further benefits as we expand the system.”

More about MSV Providing potable water to around 110,000 people, MSV produces water for the Sundsvall region of Sweden, which has some of the best tasting water in all of Europe. Their vast knowledge of water and water purification, combined with ideal climate and nature, are contributing factors to the high quality of their water. With 46 purification plants and 22 water sources, MSV produces 15.1 million cubic meters of water and purifies 21 million cubic meters of wastewater annually. cw

Summer 2011

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Server AMS and PLL Bring Enterprise-Level Business Intelligence to Redlands

By Phil Mielke, GIS Supervisor, City of Redlands

The City of Redlands, California, is a fairly small municipality serving a population of 70,000. We didn’t have an Information Technology (IT) Department until 2008 so work order solutions were paper-based. Each department had their own policies and procedures in place. Few investments were made in information technology, and it was never clearly brought into one arena. The newly formed IT Department had nine workers to cover all aspects of IT: troubleshooting, desktop repair, phones, server solutions, website, GIS, and database administration.

The GIS became the tool to provide information for the City Council and Commission, enabling decisions to be made based on spatial data. The Police Department’s daily operational philosophy was driven by understanding recent trends in crime. The Municipal Utilities & Engineering Department needed a way to track and reference infrastructure. The Quality of Life Department, which handles daily operational activities (e.g., parks, tree trimming, street and sidewalk maintenance), needed to track and evaluate their workload on a regular basis and communicate this information effectively.

Departments began realizing the value of sharing data with each other.

Information began passing back and forth freely, facilitating better decision making and communication on many levels. Even so, we needed a better way to prioritize our resources, estimate inspection and maintenance costs, evaluate criticality, allocate labor and resources, and predict work demand for future development.

The IT Department was initially formed to help cut costs and improve performance. To this end, the department implemented an Esri Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) to reduce costs in our GIS deployment strategy.

The GIS served many of our strategic and operational needs, yet we saw ways that some operational and tactical needs could be better served.

We had server-level deployment and data warehousing, but we needed a work order solution that more fully leveraged this data. By implementing Cityworks, field crews no longer required printed maps and could improve on the existing data. All employees had access to the tools to better understand problem areas.

Cityworks made it possible for many new users to utilize and add value to the geographic data we maintain. We didn’t have to worry about new users editing a feature class directly. Cityworks protects data integrity by tying service requests and work orders directly to assets in the GIS and maintaining group- and user-level security for accessing data. Cityworks has also brought best practices, business intelligence, and improved workflows to our data collection. The GIS Division has limited resources, and it’s good to know it can move along with limited maintenance. In-house solutions require more development and maintenance, and frankly we didn’t have the time or resources.

As our budget diminished over the last couple of years, we have less staff and fewer resources in the field and in IT. As a result, our desktop replacement schedule has suffered. We found it less expensive to migrate to

Historic Mutual Orange District (M.O.D.) packing house building

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Server AMS because it changed where the computing power needs to be. We converted our existing desktop infrastructure into browser-based thin clients and deployed centrally through ArcGIS Server and Server AMS, eliminating desktop deployment times and user errors. Any networked desktops can now run the GIS and Cityworks.

need to know how their field staff is performing, and field staff need to be able to track aging infrastructure. We recently partnered with CitySourced to leverage citizen involvement for identifying problems in the field with smartphone apps, saving time taking customer calls and empowering citizens to be involved in a meaningful way.

The City’s biggest customer dissatisfaction was with our permitting process.

Permitting requires multiple tasks that reach across departments, increasing the probability of customers falling through the cracks. Because Cityworks proved itself a forward-thinking method of recording and reporting work order metrics, we were relieved Azteca was developing Server PLL (Permitting, Licensing, and Land). The same customer service staff used separate systems for work orders and permitting, so we were glad to move forward to replace the permitting system with an all-in-one work order and permitting solution by combining Cityworks Server AMS and PLL.

Cityworks doesn’t just have a measurable return on investment (ROI), it provides our City with the framework to measure and clearly communicate ROIs. Before implementing Cityworks, there was no centralized method for collecting and analyzing service levels and work volumes. Now we can plan action instead of trying to maintain reactions. Cityworks brings best practice experience to the table for our smaller municipality and has given us the framework to support enterprise-level business intelligence in local government.

For Redlands, the future depends on distributing the ability to collect and move important operational data efficiently between all levels of staff.

Administrators need to know and communicate the numbers, supervisors

The Fall 2011 issue of InPrint will contain a follow-up article on Redlands, highlighting their use of the CitySourced mobile citizen engagement platform. cw

Lincoln Museum (above) and Redlands Library (right)

Summer 2011

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Software

Cityworks 2010.1 and 2011: What You Need to Know

By George Mastakas, Executive Director, Enterprise Solutions, Cityworks | Azteca Systems, Inc.

What a great user conference! Many thanks to all of you that attended. I hope you found it beneficial and informative, but most of all, I hope you had a good time. We’re already looking forward to next year.

Those of you who attended the plenary session at this year’s conference will recall that I spent some time talking about Cityworks 2010.1 and 2011.

I’d like to summarize in this article because we know there are important decisions that have to be made when it comes to upgrading Cityworks. As an enterprise system, Cityworks touches many users across many departments, so it’s important to make the right decision for your organization.

What You Need to Know about 2010.1 As many of you may (or may not) know, Cityworks 2011 was released in May. This is a huge milestone because 2011 is the version that provides support for Esri 10.0, which we know many of you have been looking forward to. But it’s equally important to talk a little bit about 2010.1 as well because we know some of you may not be in a position to upgrade from your current Esri 9.3.1 platform. Since 2010.1 supports 9.3.1, it will continue to be supported. It will continue to receive critical bug fixes. In fact, we are currently undertaking an initiative to close functional gaps between Server AMS and Desktop. And to the extent possible, we will look to put some of those initiatives into 2010.1 as well. Cityworks 2010.1 has a number of new features including the new user-defined Inbox, the Dashboard (same as 2011), drag-and-drop calendar items, as well as a whole host of functional and performance improvements for Desktop, Anywhere, and Server AMS/ PLL. Those of you running version 4.5 or 2010, might consider placing 2010.1 in your development environment, especially if moving to Esri 10.0 and Cityworks 2011 is still a ways away.

What You Need to Know about 2011 Cityworks 2011 Server AMS is the most significant release since 4.5. That says a great deal because 4.5 was the first commercial release of Server AMS! And so it goes without saying that there are a few things to note….

As mentioned above, Cityworks 2011 runs with Esri 10.0 (sp1) exclusively.

From our experience, we’ve noticed the hardware specs for 10.0 are a little higher than those of its predecessor. This doesn’t necessarily mean you will need new hardware, but it is something to be aware of because, as the technology continues to evolve, it will require more substantial resources.

Related to Cityworks 2011 AMS and PLL, there is a brand-new Silverlight map. This means all computers accessing Server AMS/PLL must have the Silverlight browser plug-in (available through Windows Updates). With this plug-in, Server AMS/PLL is now able to leverage Esri’s Silverlight map editing tools, which are very rich and quite robust. But to realize all the benefits these tools offer, your GIS data must reside in SDE. 2011 also supports the optimized MSD map service, which may require some reconfiguration to your existing map services, to see the performance gains.

And there are a whole host of new features in 2011: the integration to OnBase Document Management; the Condition Assessment tool; dynamic Labor Costing, which calculates labor cost based on the type of labor performed; and the one that I think is most exciting, support of any Esri online map or image service.

So with all these changes and new capabilities, how would it be best to proceed? Well, we think it’s prudent to place 2011 in your development environment to start with. In fact, this should be the case with all of your software updates. Cityworks 2011 is a great piece of software, but it wouldn’t hurt to spend some time getting acquainted. The same goes for Esri’s 10.0.

Keep in mind that 2011 involves an upgrade to your Esri environment, so it’s important to see how other non-Cityworks users might be affected by that change. You might consider conducting some end-user testing as part of this effort—you’d be surprised how helpful it can be. I also recommend running through the upgrade process a few times for both Cityworks and Esri. This will better prepare you for when you do move the system into production.

Inbox work order status

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It’s also a good idea to engage us or one of our experienced partners to help you.

Cityworks 2011 is not rocket science, but some assistance might be in order.

Cityworks 2011 is available to anyone wishing to explore it further. Feel free to contact any of the customer or implementation support staff, and we will make it available to you through MyCityworks.com. cw

Inbox

®

The Trusted Integrator for Sustainable Solutions

Unlock your organization’s intelligence

AUTHORIZED BUSINESS PARTNER

Integrate your data Integrate your IT systems Integrate your workflow Integrate your business

Cityworks Server AMS implementation Map-based operations dashboards Sustainable asset management programs Contact Weston Solutions, Inc. Cityworks@westonsolutions.com (916) 865-2704 Summer 2011

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Cityworks Spotlight – Southwest Region

Global Water, Private Water Utility, User Spotlight — Q&A With Jason Bethke, Vice President, FATHOM™ – Global Water

Q : What type of challenges was Global Water facing prior to implementing Cityworks?

A: The entire industry agrees that water prices are going up. Whether due to water scarcity, power costs, treatment costs, infrastructure replacement, or regulatory mandates, water prices will continue to rise. As a regulated utility company operating in the desert, we are committed to our rate payers to ensure water is always available and is as affordable as possible. With the certainty of rising water prices, our only answer to maintain lower rates for our customers was to become more efficient. Cityworks was a perfect solution for our work order system foundation.

Q: Why Cityworks?

A: The other systems we looked into couldn’t match Cityworks unique GIS-centric feature set.

Global Water deploys its integrated approach, Total Water Management or ‘‘TWM’’ (which means managing the entire water cycle: water, wastewater, and recycled water), to conserve water and maximize its economic and social value. G March 2012 lobal Water uses TWM to promote sustainable communities in areas where it expects growth to outpace the existing potable water supply. We absolutely need to know where our assets are. We consider the asset management database which includes Cityworks, GIS, and other software as the third essential database for our utilities (customers being the first and consumption being the second).

Q: How is Cityworks utilized at Global Water?

A: Cityworks is the primary work order system within our enterprise utility master data management system. Every work order in Global, regardless if it is generated by the Customer Information System or the SCADA systems, creates a work order in Cityworks.

Additionally, Global Water is one of the few water organizations that recognize the benefit of live-field work orders, and we have the IT capacity to execute on our vision. We have been running Cityworks over aircards live in the field since 2009. As a result, operators use it for everything from timecard reporting and rounds, to the most complicated treatment system repairs. There is not a single piece of work that happens at Global without a Cityworks work order being generated first.

Q : How has Cityworks benefited the organization?

A: Global Water today runs with 49% less power, 65% less labor, and spends 90% less on operational costs than the industry average. We have transitioned from reactionary maintenance to proactive maintenance all the way through condition-based maintenance, and the results have been tremendous.

Q : Explain Global Water’s FATHOM program and how it relates to Cityworks.

A: FATHOMTM Utility-to-Utility (U2UTM) Solutions provides utility management systems for Customer Service & Billing, Advanced Metering Infrastructure, and Asset Management in a hosted software as a service configuration. Cityworks provides the GIS-based work order and asset management foundation within the FATHOMTM utility master data management solution.

We spent tens of thousands of hours perfecting our asset management solutions and utility best practice work order configurations. Through FATHOM, this state-of-the-art technology, including Cityworks and our utility-proven work orders, is now available to utilities across the U.S., risk-free and with little to no upfront capital. Cityworks is our work order management system of choice, and it appears in all of our product offerings.

Q : What future plans does Global Water have for Cityworks?

A: We continue to implement the newest features available in Cityworks and look forward to updating our configuration to Server AMS in the near future.

About Global Water Global Water Resources, Inc. (“Global Water”) is a leading, U.S.-based water resource management and technology company that owns and operates 14 regulated water, wastewater, and recycled water utilities. Global Water also provides technology-enabled services through its unique technology platform, FATHOMTM Utility-to-Utility (U2U™) Solutions. Initially developed by Global Water to support and optimize its own utilities, FATHOM is an integrated suite of advanced products designed to increase revenue, decrease costs, and bring heightened efficiencies to municipally-owned utilities. Learn more at www.gwfathom.com. cw

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Implementation Partners DIAMOND • Woolpert

PLATINUM

BRONZE

• POWER Engineers

• Burns & McDonnell • CH2M Hill, Inc.

GOLD

• Civic Engineering and Information Technologies

• Short Elliott Hendrickson (SEH)

• North Arrow Technologies

• Timmons Group

• NTB Associates

SILVER

• PACE Engineers, Inc.

• Jones Edmunds & Associates

• Strand Associates, Inc.

• Motorola

• VESTRA Resources, Inc.

• Rolta US

• Westin Engineering, Inc. • Weston Solutions, Inc. For a complete list of Implementation Member Partners, see www.cityworks.com.

International Distribution Partners

Summer 2011

• ESRI Canada

• ESRI Israel (Systematics)

• ESRI Costa Rica (Geotecnologias)

• ESRI S-GROUP Sverige AB, Sweden

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User Information

Positive Customer Experience

By Steve Thomas, Executive Manager, Customer Support, Cityworks | Azteca Systems, Inc.

I routinely read articles on customer support methods to identify ways to improve our technical support. I recently read one reporting on the top 10 companies known for customer service. Most of these are familiar names in conversations about quality service: Nordstrom, Southwest Airlines, FedEx, and UPS. Some of the key policies that place them in the top ten are keeping their websites simple and easy to navigate, compensating employees well, supplying the necessary tools enabling employees to provide an immediate solution, doing what’s best for the customer, hiring nice people, and alerting customers about issues that may affect them. These top companies work hard to be more responsive by empowering their employees to make necessary decisions as well as tracking and analyzing their services.

Like corporations with top customer service marks, we continually endeavor to improve our customer support. We consistently add new white papers, reports, and knowledge base articles to our MyCityworks.com user website for our clients and business partners. We hire courteous, conscientious, hard-working individuals who communicate well and understand both GIS and Cityworks, so they can readily answer questions and find solutions to reported issues. Our customer support representatives are empowered to make their own decisions but may also forward issues to myself or others in the company if necessary.

We also use our software (both Cityworks Desktop and Server AMS) to log calls and emails, search for similar problems at other client sites, enter comments about issues and resolutions, submit work to other employees, and track our interaction with our customers with a series of reports. We also utilize customer satisfaction surveys to track what you think of our service. This system gives us real-world experience to improve our service to our clients.

A recent Consumer Reports article about the top customer service “gripes” identified some problem areas for many customer service departments, such as confusing automated phone systems, inability to talk to a person, rude representatives, and ineffective solutions.

Over a year ago, we changed our phone system to provide a direct customer support number, (801) 990-1888. The automated system connects you to your regional representative. If your representative is unavailable, you are notified and given the option to contact another rep. Our representatives excel at researching problems and can access a wide variety of resources while working with a caller to determine the cause of an issue. Our goal is to allow you to easily contact the representative familiar to you. As the company continues to grow, we periodically adjust regional boundaries and add new customer support representatives.

We regularly receive emails praising the efforts of our representatives. Recently we received this comment: “I wanted to let you know that Kyle was a huge help and without him I would have been in trouble. The support he provided was top notch! He was always available via email, phone, and through GoToMeetings. I really appreciate all the support he provided, and I can’t express how thankful we are to have him as our support person.”

We have received similar comments about each of our regional representatives.

At our recent user conference, numerous clients expressed gratitude for the support they received. We’re pleased with our team of competent professionals who are committed to ensure every contact results in a positive experience for our customers. cw

Survey results with 10 being completely satisfied

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S u p p o r t R egions

Customer Support Direct Phone #

801.990.1888

Summer 2011

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MyCityworks.com

By Greg Walters, Customer Support Representative, Cityworks | Azteca Systems, Inc.

C i t yworks 2011 User Co n f e r e n c e MyCityworks has a webpage dedicated to the Cityworks 2011 User Conference. Log in to MyCityworks.com and navigate to the Resource & Download Center > User Conferences > 2011.

Similar to the 2010 User Conference site, the workshop reference guide allows you to hover over the workshop title to see a description of the session. New for 2011! We recorded the audio portion of every presentation and then added the audio recording to the PowerPoint presentations. The final product is a video (in lieu of a PDF) which can be viewed by clicking on any of the workshop titles. Send me your feedback and let me know what you think of this new format.

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I d eas – Enhancement R e q u e s ts Wayne Hill revealed Ideas during the plenary session of the 2011 User Conference. Ideas was created to allow users to submit new ideas (enhancements) and review, vote, and comment on existing ideas. This new site allows Cityworks employees to hear what the users want and why they want it. The development team can then review the ideas and prioritize the enhancements based on reviews and comments. Users can also follow any idea or category to see new comments or changes in the idea status.

To access Ideas, log in to MyCityworks.com and click on Ideas.

Ideas can be added for the following categories:

Server AMS/PLL

Designer

ou id y kn ow?

IDEAS

D

Desktop/ Anywhere

Web Services

Add-Ons Web Sites

All ideas can be voted on, but you can vote only once, although you can change your vote at any time. We encourage everyone to not only vote, but to share your thoughts about the idea in the comments section. cw

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2 0 11 Pre-Conference Tr a i n i n g U p d a te Earlier this year, Cityworks staff, Cityworks users, and business partners traveled to St. George, Utah, for the largest pre-conference training to date.

Eighty-five people attended the five pre-conference training courses over a two-day period. Thank you to each of the pre-conference training attendees who helped make this year’s training such a great event. If you have any suggestions or recommendations for the pre-conference training, please contact John Jarnagin, Cityworks Educational Services Manager, at (jjarnagin@cityworks.com). Any feedback is appreciated.

U p coming Training Even ts S e rver AMS Administrati o n T r a i n i n g This course covers best practices for the installation, configuration, and implementation of Cityworks 2011 Server AMS. Topics covered in this training include: SQL Server database tasks (database creation, roles, users, logins, and permissions), ODBC set up, Cityworks Server AMS installation and creation of the Server website, basic Designer components (service request/work order/ inspection templates), securities and permissions, and Server AMS set up in Designer. Attendees will also learn the basic functionality of the Server interface (inbox, service request, work orders, inspections, event layers) and all other core subjects related to Server AMS. • July 26 – 29, 2011 at Cityworks | Azteca Systems company headquarters training facility in Sandy, UT. • August 29 – Sept 1, 2011 at Cityworks | Azteca Systems company headquarters training facility in Sandy, UT.

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S e rv e r P L L A d m i n i s tr a t i o n T r a i n i n g This course caters to Cityworks business partners and City administrative staff responsible for ongoing setup and management of Server PLL (Permits, Licensing, and Land). The course covers the configuration of Server PLL permits, cases, and licenses, including software installation, user management, permit/case/license template configuration, workflow setup, fee configuration, custom case data fields, and basic reporting. Attendees will also learn the integration points between Server AMS and PLL, as well as how PLL utilizes the GIS. Throughout the course, Azteca’s training staff will share sample workflows and data from existing clientele as well as best business practices in Server PLL configuration.

• September 20–23, 2011 at Cityworks | Azteca Systems company headquarters training facility in Sandy, UT. Course fee for either of these Server training is $2400.00/person which includes all related training documentation, use of a computer, and certificate of completion.

Register online at www.mycityworks.com/cityworkscampus and select the Live training option.

Please visit the Cityworks Campus website to view training options; get information on courses, prices, and scheduling; or register and pay for a training course. If you have visited the Cityworks Campus, but could not find a course that would benefit you, or if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact John Jarnagin, Cityworks Educational Services Manager at jjarnagin@cityworks.com. cw

InPrint

T i p s & Tr i c k s

NEW—Cityworks Server Plug-In Tool

By James Oliphant, Software Developer, Cityworks | Azteca Systems, Inc.

Cityworks 2011 Server features the new tool plug-in framework. Utilizing this API, users can create custom tools which extend functionality of the server map.

These tools may consume existing map data and data from outside sources. This means the user’s own logic and ideas can be a part of Cityworks Server. Here are two plug-in examples using map and outside data. cw

CompassCom add-on application to Cityworks 2011 shows the location of the client’s vehicles.

OnBase add-on application to Cityworks 2011 easily locates documents from the OnBase System.

Summer 2011

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Cityworks News

First Annual Cityworks Reporting Competition One of the most effective ways to extract your valuable Cityworks data is utilizing a reporting engine like Crystal Reports or SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). Many Cityworks clients have Crystal or SSRS gurus on staff.

To encourage these valuable skills and reward these hardworking individuals, we developed a fun event for clients and business partners to participate in.

This year Cityworks sponsored the first of what will be an annual report writing competition at the Cityworks User Conference in May. With a surprising 20 contestants and over 30 report submittals, the Cityworks judges (Becky Tamashasky, Industry Practices Manager; Brian Chadwick, GIS Support Manager; and Reed Hayes, Senior Customer Support Representative) had a difficult time narrowing down the winners.

The winners of this year’s competition are as follows:

• Best/Most Complex Report: 1st William Cowart – Macon Water Authority, GA 2nd Thomas Bulone – St. Cloud, FL 2.5 James Boergers – St. Johns County Utilities, FL 3rd Janet Brinker and Gina Bohn – Oakland County, MI submitted by Eric Hrnecek (Woolpert) • Most Unique Report: 1st Dawn Fletcher – White House Utility District, TN 2nd Cindy Hintze – Coon Rapids, MN 2.5 Pattie Clayton – Danville, VA 3rd Sandy Aragon – Ft. Collins, CO

Best/Most Complex Report: 1st William Cowart – Macon Water Authority, GA

Most Unique Report: 1st Dawn Fletcher – White House Utility District, TN

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• Best SQL Report: 1st Kyle Tjelmeland – Topeka, KS submitted by Eric Hrnicek (Woolpert) 2nd Carrie Shockley – Bozeman, MT • Best Visual Report: 1st John Stewart ESRI Canada submitted by Slobodan Knezevic 2nd Ellen Prendergast - Palm Bay, FL

Competition Organizer Chris Brussow, Cityworks Client Relations Rep Western Region, said of the contest, “We were very excited to see so many participants in the first year of the competition. The quality of reports was better than I could have imagined. I am excited to see how this contest will grow in the years to come.”

All of the reports submitted for the competition are now available on mycityworks.com (Resource and Download center/reports) for review and use. For information on Crystal Reports for Cityworks training, please see the mycityworks.com Campus. cw

Best SQL Report: 1st Kyle Tjelmeland – Topeka, KS submitted by Eric Hrnicek (Woolpert)

Best Visual Report: 1st John Stewart – ESRI Canada submitted by Slobodan Knezevic

Summer 2011

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Exemplary Cityworks User Award!

Cityworks congratulates Will McDowell, Business Systems Analyst at the City of Jackson, Mississippi, as the first recipient of the Exemplary Cityworks User Award. This award will be given and acknowledged at our conference each year in recognition of the Cityworks user who best demonstrates a positive contribution to the Cityworks User Community. His friendly and pleasant attitude was noted by all Cityworks staff who met him at our User Conference and worked with him professionally. Upon hearing of this honor, he stated, “Being recognized like this is enough to make me blush.”

His infectious laughter and outgoing nature are enjoyed by all who associate with him.

Congratulations, Will!

Congratulations to Recipients of 2011 Cityworks User of the Year Award!

Cityworks congratulates the recipients of the 2011 Cityworks User of the Year Award in recognition of GIS-Centric Excellence and Leadership, presented at the 2011 Cityworks User Conference. Award recipients included: • Cucamonga Valley Water District, California • City of Delaware, Ohio • City of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

• Palm Bay, Florida • Waterford Township, Michigan

The Cityworks User of the Year Award recognizes organizations for their GIS-centric vision and practice which enables them to meet a variety of goals and objectives in asset management, permitting, licensing, and more. These five award-winning organizations consistently demonstrate high levels of increased efficiencies and measured performance. Cityworks is very proud of these users’ accomplishments, as well as many others throughout the user community.

Cityworks President and CEO Brian Haslam presented the awards at the plenary session of the Cityworks User Conference on Monday, May 16, 2011. “We have an amazing user base, and the group of clients awarded this year’s Cityworks User of the Year Award are as good as they get,” Mr. Haslam said. “While it is difficult to pinpoint just a few, those selected are definitely lighthouses in our user community. We want to recognize and extend our appreciation to these organizations. They have demonstrated outstanding GIS-centric techniques and capabilities, and we are thrilled they have fully taken advantage of Cityworks robust, powerful technology combined with Esri’s leading ArcGIS software.” cw

The following individuals received the award on behalf of their organizations: (top row) Mike Bolger, Janet England, and Sharon McDonald, City of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada; Carl W. Solden and Terri Biederman, Waterford Township, Michigan; (bottom row) Ellen Prendergast and Crystal Phillips-Mustain, City of Palm Bay, Florida; Darron Poulsen, Cucamonga Valley Water District, California; Perry Mickley, City of Delaware, Ohio.

Saco, Maine, Public Works Presented Asset Management Excellence Award Cityworks extends its congratulations to the City of Saco, Maine, a Cityworks client, for receiving the 2010 “Asset Management Excellence Award” from New England Water Environment Association (NEWEA).

The award was presented to Saco’s Public Works Department for their commitment and ongoing efforts in asset management at NEWA’s annual conference held in Boston, January 2011.

“Cityworks is the keystone for Saco’s asset inventory and maintenance tracking,” said Michael Bolduc, Director of Public Works. “The program has allowed us to build our asset management program and provide better service delivery and lower costs to our customers.”

To view the full press release, visit www.cityworks.com. cw

Howard Carter, President of NEWEA, and Doug Howard, City of Saco

Cityworks Raises Awareness and Funds for Trichotillomania through User Conference Putting Competition The Cityworks 2011 User Conference included a fundraising event at the user appreciation dinner and social at the Entrada Country Club at Snow Canyon, in St. George, Utah. Cityworks hosted a 3-putt combination golf contest to raise money for the Trichotillomania Learning Center (TLC) and encouraged those present to participate. TLC is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to ending the suffering caused by trichotillomania and other Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs), including hair-pulling and skin-picking disorders.

The event generated over $3,000 for the organization, based in Santa Cruz, California. In addition to raising funds, Cityworks President and CEO Brian Haslam, also met his goal to raise awareness. A number of those present at the event personally thanked him for holding the fundraiser, with several revealing they or a loved one suffer from BFRBs. Several individuals also shared that they had never known the behavior had a name or that others suffered from similar

Summer 2011

conditions, and spent years struggling with guilt and self-imposed labels. They now have newfound knowledge and hope.

“The highlight of the conference, the thing I will always remember, was talking to those individuals and realizing we, as a company, had personally made a difference in their lives,” Haslam said. “I’m so thankful we were able to raise awareness as well as funds for TLC, an extraordinary resource and support for those affected by these disorders.”

To learn more about TLC and BFRB disorders, visit TLC’s website at http://www.trich.org. cw

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11075 S. State Street, Ste. 24 Sandy, UT 84070

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

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