Australian Water Management Review Vol 2 2013 | Page 21

“We chose to standardize our survey, CAD, GIS, and analysis software all on the Bentley platform, and this enabled us to reduce our costs and simplify data flow between applications” — Ian Tidy, GIS developer, Napier City Council
processing – the Council staff needed to work quickly and efficiently. “We started by reviewing everything,” said Tidy. “We looked at our data and our data maintenance policies and procedures. We reviewed all the CAD and GIS and asset management systems that we had, and we looked at competing products and we considered where we wanted to head in the future. “As a result of our review we choose to standardize our survey, CAD, GIS and analysis software all on the Bentley platform.” Napier City Council split the project into three phases. The Phase 1 build-out of WorkIT II was based on the water supply network. Phase 2 and Phase 3 will add the wastewater and drainage networks, respectively. Major pieces of existing software were replaced, including the GIS platform, infrastructure asset management system, and backend database. New software was configured based on data models for all of the city’s features, and in such a way that data could be repurposed to work with other software products. Aligning the data models for the asset management system and Bentley Water allowed for seamless data transfer when data was finally migrated to the new system. An Oracle database provided the single source of truth. Bentley Water and Bentley Map were used to maintain the data within Oracle. Bentley Geo Web Publisher provided web services for other applications to read the data in a number of file formats. Using a common data maintenance framework improved data flow between applications and enabled the management of data for all assets in a consistent manner. With Bentley products as the common framework, data was now reusable. Bentley Water was used to enforce business rules and prevent unauthorized staff from making changes to financial information. The Oracle database tracked data changes and managed a full audit of all changes, both spatially and non-spatially. As a result, every change was tracked back to the original change request, authorization, and paper documentation. Bentley Map was used as an alternative to the customized GIS product, with Bentley Water providing the additional tools required for managing connectivity between features. The flexibility of Bentley’s software allowed the project team to define features in as much detail as desired. Additional functionality required for managing financial information was initially developed by Bentley Professional Services, and further customized by Napier City Council staff. Standard Framework Simplifies Data Flow Council staff was able to meet all of their Phase 1 objectives, on time and within their modest budget. “Having a good specification and not changing it enabled our external developers to provide fixed pricing and this enabled us to stay within budget,” explained Tidy. Creating a common framework and using a widely used data format improved the flow of data between applications, eliminating the need for manual processes. This also reduced error-prone manual data entry. “We have improved data accuracy both in attribution and spatially, by using a common frame work for data capture and applying business rules against the data before it is updated or added,” said Tidy. Staff productivity was also improved, both by the new workflow, and by reducing the number of products staff need to perform their work. WorkIT II benefited every aspect of infrastructure asset management for the City of Napier. The project provided the software and data that asset managers required for performance modeling and monitoring. Designers received better design tools and more consistent data than in the past. Accountants and auditors gained access to a transparent and auditable financial process. And end users experienced a simplified work flow with access to a single authoritative data source. In addition, cost savings realized as a result of this project eventually will be passed along to residents in the form of more services. In addition to the completion of Phases 2 and 3, the next step in the evolution of infrastructure asset management will be movement toward 3D data, starting with storing features in 3D, and performing extrusions for visualizations and analysis. Bentley’s ELS Subscription Yields Return on Investment The Bentley SELECT Enterprise License Subscription (ELS) for Municipalities enabled Napier City Council to pay a predictable annual fee based on the city’s population size in order to gain access to the comprehensive product portfolio. This reduced the Council’s licensing fees, primarily because the custom GIS product was no longer needed, and gave the city access to more products and training at no additional cost. “The Enterprise License Subscription has enabled us to increase the range of products that we use, the number of licenses we deploy and we have done this without increasing our capital or licensing costs,” noted Tidy. “Last year w