How Cobb County Water System Used Technology Integration to Solve GIS Data Integrity Issues and Improve Asset Management Operations

Cobb County Water System (CCWS), in Marietta, Georgia, distributes water to more than 190,000 residents and businesses, manages 2,900 miles of water main, and operates and maintains approximately 2,500 miles of sanitary sewer lines. In 2007, IBM Maximo technology was adopted for asset and work order management in the utility's geographic information system (GIS). In need of a solution that would integrate Esri ArcGIS with Maximo, CCWS decided to upgrade Maximo and implement Maximo Spatial.

Cobb County Water System wanted to integrate Esri ArcGIS and IBM Maximo data to leverage more asset information in ArcGIS. After more than a year of unsuccessful Maximo Spatial implementation attempts, CCWS gave up on the idea of integration. Despite engineering several adjustments to the utility's ArcGIS and Maximo environments, Spatial was not able to complete the full runs or sweeps of CCWS's designated assets.

By 2020, CCWS's Esri ArcGIS and IBM Maximo systems were almost a decade out of sync. Maintenance and work were happening in the field but weren't being reflected in both systems. With systems out of sync, staff weren't able to close out 1,600 work order and maintenance requests, which complicated reporting. With neither system up-to-date, hours were wasted trying to locate information or create records that already existed.

With no integration, CCWS needed a new solution—one that worked. Having previously worked with Geonexus Technologies CEO Skip Heise and CTO Jeremy Wolfe, CCWS staff knew Geonexus offered a solution they could trust. In 2020, they decided to implement the Geonexus Integration Platform for integrating ArcGIS with Maximo.

Instead of assigning only one team—ArcGIS or Maximo—to learn and administer the Geonexus tool, it was decided that the two teams would share admin duties, significantly speeding up the implementation process. Plus, because the Geonexus Integration Platform is run and owned by organizations as a citizen integrator-enabled tool, the approach helped two admins get up to speed with the tool. 

Geonexus is a software company focused on helping asset-intensive organizations operate more efficiently and solve complex business problems using enterprise technologies. The company's mission is to ensure the integrity of an organization's data by providing a continually supported, easy-to-use, proven platform for system integration. This includes connectors for Esri ArcGIS, IBM Maximo, and more.

With Geonexus software running weekly syncs of data between ArcGIS and Maximo, CCWS finally has up-to-date data in both systems. Every time a sync is run, the Geonexus tool produces data quality reports identifying any duplicates, discrepancies, and more, so data issues can be resolved quickly.

"The greatest testament I can give [Geonexus] is, as [intended], we finally took the handoff. And I think it happened very organically. It was really one of those 'lightbulb goes off' [moments], which I know is the goal of Geonexus—to get you to a point, hand you the tool, and you administer it."—Jeff Campbell, Technical Applications Manager, Cobb County Water System

This sync and reporting workflow alone has solved data integrity and data quality issues that arose while CCWS was running unintegrated systems. CCWS staff are now slowly working through those 1,600 work order requests to close them out of the system. Ultimately, a six-week implementation was reduced by two weeks due to the tag team effort. The tool was implemented only recently, but with less manual entry and less possibility of human error, Cobb County Water System is already seeing productivity and efficiency gains.