Enterprise GIS Drives Public Works Efficiencies in Northern Utah

In Logan, Utah, the Public Works Department (Logan Public Works) serves 55,000 residents and provides services for water (including culinary, storm, and wastewater), fleet, streets, facilities, and engineering groups. Faced with aging technology stacks, the department has recently found success by doubling down on its ArcGIS investment and consolidating technology stacks with a modern asset management system centered on geographic information system (GIS) technology.

The growth of multiple software platforms, processes, and technologies coupled with the evolution of regulatory standards, business requirements, and community needs over the years posed significant challenges for Logan Public Works in maintaining the desired level of infrastructure, health, and service levels for its stakeholders. Some challenges included outdated software, rigid interfaces, inability to access information in a timely manner, application sprawl, inflexible work scheduling, and crew management.

An assessment to examine and recommend a road map that supported Logan Public Works’ transformation to a modern footing was completed. The assessment’s key findings suggested consolidating several software systems and purposes into a unified platform. The platform would leverage the city’s investment in Esri’s ArcGIS Enterprise technology and eliminate redundancies, thereby streamlining operations.

Based on the assessment results, Logan Public Works staff identified ArcGIS Enterprise and Elements XS (built by Esri partner Novotx) as the foundational pillars of the city’s infrastructure technology platform. The technology provided the strategic footing needed for the department to embark on its modernization journey. Since the city had already deployed ArcGIS Enterprise with Portal for ArcGIS, adding Elements XS to ArcGIS software was seamless, given the ArcGIS software-centric architecture of the Elements XS asset management and permitting systems.

Using ArcGIS Field Maps, for example, has transformed the user experience. Logan Public Works staff now have a powerful visual context to interact with, which significantly reduces the time required to coordinate work activities involving multiple functional groups and business processes. Efficiencies have also been achieved in projects relating to capital improvement and instances where the need to minimize disruption to the public is of critical importance.

The visualization of work activities based on various criteria—including geographic areas, asset type, class and priority, task and crew assignments, capital investments, and asset condition—enables users to quickly produce dashboards and reports for optimized planning and decision-making. Further, the ability to easily map the operations of various systems and departments in a single visual interface has enabled users to configure and tailor the capabilities of Elements XS to align with their workflows.

Some of these workflows integrate ArcGIS with Elements XS (asset management) and Blue Stakes of Utah 811 (dig alert notification system), as well as city-specific processes for coordinating work encompassing multiple departments and vendors. The workflows also support seasonal activities such as snowplow scheduling or routing.

The modern, intuitive interfaces and configuration tools within the ArcGIS and Elements XS systems helped Logan Public Works staff manage the implementation with less apprehension among users during the transition from legacy systems. This enabled the department to win voluntary buy-in from users as they worked through the new-look software. 

Since the GIS-centric asset management system went live in March 2022, results were nearly immediate. The benefits are being realized by various groups within Logan Public Works, including streets, stormwater, water, sewer collection, facilities, and engineering. Staff and stakeholders can now better visualize work activities and maintenance costs by combining the spatial technologies of ArcGIS with the asset management tools in Elements XS.

Customizable workflows and interfaces have made it easier for mobile crews to capture data in an efficient manner. This has ensured timely action regarding response quality and interventions needed. Additionally, the workflows provide the operational inputs required for strategic asset life cycle management (asset condition assessment, preventive maintenance, capital improvements, useful life expectancy, returns from infrastructure capital investment, and service levels).

In particular, the ability for crews to create their own filters has allowed them to easily track task assignments and progress in a rich, visual setting. This has helped optimize field operations, resulting in better cost allocations and savings.

Building on the success of leveraging ArcGIS Enterprise and Elements XS to modernize operations, Logan Public Works staff plans to extend these efforts to include the following groups:

•         Engineering project tracking

•         Permitting and inspections

•         Fleet location tracking

•         Emergency response coordination, mapping and tracking