Water Utility Operations Go Digital in Growing Southern California City

Ontario is one of Southern California’s fastest-growing cities. Ensuring that its residents have access to clean reliable drinking water and efficient wastewater services is the mission of the City of Ontario Municipal Utilities Company (OMUC).

Until recent technology upgrades, the management of some 626 miles of potable water pipelines, 448 miles of sewer pipes, 3.4 miles of force mains, more than 9,500 active maintenance holes, three lift stations, and 58 miles of underground paths for recycled water relied on outdated updates and printed atlas books each year.

OMUC had long used Esri geographic information system (GIS)  software strategically, utilizing the latest advances and applications to support the city's rapid growth and development, including the 8,000-acre planned community Ontario Ranch. OMUC staff knew the agency would need to undergo a digital transformation for Ontario to truly be considered a premier community in Southern California. 

“For us to do that, we have to be able to leverage the technology that's available to make our work processes more efficient and meet this growth,” explained Dennis Mejia, an engineering manager at OMUC. “With the scale of development in Ontario Ranch, for example, it has been challenging to keep up with it, documenting the infrastructure that goes into it. The atlas books quickly get outdated. We needed a system that more efficiently documented the information and made it available to all staff.”

And that’s exactly what the city has been doing in recent years, digitizing operations and embracing web-based GIS tools to maintain essential services for city residents.

Historically, OMUC relied on a printed 500-page atlas book containing all the hand-drawn data and maps—which have since been digitized into GIS—associated with the city's water, sewer, and recycled water systems. Throughout the year, staff would update, modify, or replace systems, leaving handwritten notes in their atlas books to reflect the changes. These notes would then be reflected in the hard-copy book for the following year. This manual process was also applied to active construction sites, with the atlas book being updated with new pipelines after they were constructed.

“This method of printing books yearly was not efficient in terms of informing staff of new pipelines once they were installed or of other changes in the field,” said Ivan Sanchez, GIS engineering assistant at OMUC.
 

After attending the Esri Infrastructure Management & GIS Conference in 2022, Sanchez returned with ideas to digitize the recordkeeping process using GIS web applications and hosting the atlas book online. This digital process would need to be able to incorporate all the unique nuances, notes, and experiences field staff had recorded in their personal atlas books and provide an option to collect that data. 

“We understood that these books were very important to the operations team. Many still use their printed copies," explained Sanchez. "So the idea was to host this book on a website, where staff could see live data being populated. As soon as I put in a new pipeline, they could see it. And if there were an emergency, they would know what valves to shut down.”

This solution also required inputting information from various sources like computer-aided design (CAD) files, record drawings, and handwritten notes that each user had added to their printed atlas book. Further, Sanchez hoped that by creating this digital system, staff could also create other web applications and sites that would be useful to operations, such as tracking current and ongoing construction sites.

With this goal in mind, OMUC staff reviewed the atlas books and maps they had been producing and considered which ones could be converted to a GIS web application.
 

Previously, the city scanned all the existing record drawings, files, and books to digitize the atlas book and add GIS attributes to it. Using ArcGIS Pro—a single-desktop GIS product for 2D, 3D, and 4D data visualization; advanced analysis; and authoritative data maintenance—in conjunction with ArcMap, OMUC staff updated GIS data in the Spatial Database Engine (SDE) and generated large-scale maps. 

Staff then used ArcGIS Online, a cloud-based software product for creating and sharing interactive web maps, to create the new OMUC Water Atlas, making it accessible from any device. This enabled field operations staff to use ArcGIS Field Maps to access the atlas and capture data such as field notes.
 

The digital transformation has helped facilitate warranty inspection walks the process of evaluating newly installed water and sewer mains for construction deficiencies. Previously, staff maintained handwritten notes to document observations and had to follow up a year later. Employees tasked with warranty inspection walks and plan verifications are now able to use Field Maps to document any issues. They can snap a picture, put in a comment, and indicate the location. This creates a visual history that stays in the database until the problem is fixed.

“There was a little bit of a learning curve and transition since many of our [long-standing] staff have been relying on paper documentation,” said Mejia. “But once we had the hardware and tablets in place, they embraced the digital format because they realized the capabilities and advantages this had over the paper format.”

By using a web-based mapping software product like ArcGIS Online, OMUC staff could also visualize the data collected from field personnel as interactive dashboards and web maps. Other applications that are being explored and developed include visualizations that track active construction, atlas updates, sewer herbicide treatment, construction and maintenance repairs, utility statistics, lead and copper rule compliance, and capital improvement projects. 

Resources like the capital improvement projects dashboard are shared internally and externally to promote project alignment, reduce redundant work, and facilitate efficient planning. The web maps in the dashboard extend to the active construction program, allowing staff to report any activity within the new development areas and existing parts of the city. Using Field Maps, staff can report and track active pipeline installations, occupancy releases, warranty walk inspections, bacterial samplings, and miscellaneous field notes.
 

By transitioning the water, sewer, and recycled water atlases to a digital format, OMUC has reduced costs for printing new atlas books each year while also increasing efficiency. Staff can now make project updates directly through mobile applications, allowing them to review changes within seconds and respond to emergencies quickly and effectively. Field staff across each of OMUC’s main programs have embraced both web and mobile GIS applications to complete an array of operational tasks while maintaining the department's geospatial data. Moreover, GIS web and mobile applications have allowed OMUC staff to maintain a consistent stream of near real-time updates and share results that can be tailored to different audiences through maps, reports, charts, and tables, delivered in printed or digital format.

Moreover, data on maintenance and repair is centralized and presented in dashboards. OMUC staff can better observe the city and understand when pipelines were constructed and what materials were used. This lets them prioritize renovations as well as observe the evolution of the city over time. This will support OMUC’s implementation of asset management programs. 

"This is what maps do—you create them to tell a story,” explained Sanchez.

OMUC’s vision is to have a full view of construction projects across the city and continue expansion of the utility systems with these geospatial technologies. This will help staff complete operational tasks and track billable projects with contractors. OMUC staff can observe contractor progress, ensuring that services and time match.

According to Mejia, the team’s current goal is to further improve processes and training, ensuring reliable data that can be used in the future. "This started as a record of our infrastructure, but it has become a team effort as we expand into other operations in our department. We [the engineering and IT groups responsible for maintaining the geographic information systems] are only as good as the data we produce, which means making sure our processes are solid and that we continue to have buy-in from all of our stakeholders responsible for populating it.”