{"id":450482,"date":"2023-04-26T15:31:11","date_gmt":"2023-04-26T15:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uat.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/blog\/?post_type=blog&p=450482"},"modified":"2023-04-26T15:32:36","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T15:32:36","slug":"from-cad-to-gis-work-management-and-asset-management","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/blog\/articles\/from-cad-to-gis-work-management-and-asset-management","title":{"rendered":"CAD to GIS\u2014Work Management and Asset Management All in One Place"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kelly Bobki, GIS Supervisor, Water Engineering, and Phillip Brown, PE, MSCE, Civil Engineer<\/em><\/p>\n\n

The Kansas City Board of Public Utilities (BPU) provides safe, dependable water and electric services across Kansas City, Kansas. As a nonprofit public utility, we are fully committed to serving our customers and the community as a whole. It’s more than simply providing a service. It’s a commitment to a better quality of life. The Water Department provides water to 55,000 customers. The water system includes 6,700 fire hydrants; 13,000 water valves; and over 963 miles of water pipe.<\/p>\n\n

Legacy Solutions and Paper-based Workflows<\/h2>\n\n

Our legacy system contained tiled maps in AutoCAD drawing format, which contained a geographic information system (GIS) database on the back end. The tiled AutoCAD drawings split at the centerline of a road, and there were over 600 drawing files. We had a disconnected system. Finding assets in the field was a challenge for the field crews. Work management consisted of providing field crews with a sheet of paper listing an address or assets and what was to be done to the assets. The papers would sit on someone’s desk, or get lost in routing, and some never made it to the office from the field. BPU needed a better system for tracking and managing data.<\/p>\n\n

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ArcGIS brings data from multiple systems together, improving collaboration and workflow management.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Modernizing and Making Data Accessible<\/h2>\n\n

We spoke with several vendors throughout our selection process and visited others at trade shows and conferences to help determine which would be best for our Water Engineering Department. Engineers in the department had used Esri in the past at different jobs, and after seeing some demonstrations, we decided this would be the best fit.<\/p>\n\n

BPU implemented Esri’s ArcGIS and created an internal GIS site for all departments to access. ArcGIS enabled us to store all data in one location and pull in legacy data from older systems. We now had all data at our fingertips, displayed on useful maps.<\/p>\n\n

During our GIS conversion, we also wanted to give our crews the ability to access and update the data in the field so we would no longer have to rely on paper.<\/p>\n\n

Internally, we created our GIS websites using Geocortex and ArcGIS Online. We started with our field work order map and concentrated on our distribution system first. Since our GIS conversion six years ago, we now have all water departments accessing GIS sites. These include the following:<\/p>\n\n