Communities everywhere demand safe, healthy drinking water, and protecting and preserving water resources is equally a high priority. The people of Dayton, Ohio, population 166,179, are no different. The city, birthplace of aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright, is located where the Great Miami, Stillwater, Wolf Creek, and Mad Rivers come together. With many other rivers and waterways passing through Dayton, it is often called "the city of bridges."

Although water seems abundant in and around Dayton, the citizens do not take it for granted. The Department of Water's mission is to provide high-quality potable water, wastewater treatment, and storm water services that meet or exceed all regulatory requirements and community environmental concerns in the most cost-effective manner.

The city had thousands of miles of pipe laid over the years, which it needed to put into a system that would help maintain these assets through scheduled assessments, preventive actions, and work orders. City personnel read reports, including one by the U.S. General Accounting Office, that stated implementing an asset management approach could help utilities make better decisions and improve relationships with regulators and ratepayers.

Assets, Assets Everywhere

Dayton recognized it had more than 30 years of asset inventory data contained in multiple formats, from paper as-built construction drawings and paper documentation to electronic CAD files and multiple GIS formats. For the system to work best, the city needed to get all the data in sync. It then began collecting all the water, sewer, and storm water asset data by obtaining the original paper engineering drawings and other documents and digitizing the networks into CAD files. It received DGN files from engineering firms once contracted by the city and had work crews in the field collecting GPS coordinates on manholes, pumps, valves, and other assets.

In the meantime, Department of Water personnel began to investigate their options, and after intensive review, the department decided to implement an asset and work management system by Esri Business Partner Hansen Information Technologies of Sacramento, California. The system, an ArcGIS extension called GeoAdministrator, was able to interface with ArcInfo for integrated editing, attribute synchronization, and linking geometry to inventory records within Hansen's computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) called Hansen for the Information Management System.

"We still had a lot of work to do," says Steve Hill, GIS analyst at the Department of Water. "We had CAD managing the geometry and attributes in one digital file format, GIS managing the same thing in ArcSDE, and operations entering asset information yet again into the asset management system."

Hill and his team postprocessed all the data using ArcInfo, connecting the dots, creating the networks, and simultaneously creating the inventory records in the asset management system that could then be used to schedule inspections, perform maintenance via work orders, and apply asset values.

"Initially, the staff investigated the option of relying entirely on data models and rules in the geodatabase when creating new assets on the map," says Hill, "but we found that our new asset and work management system already facilitated many of the models and rules we required for less cost than hiring a consultant and a full-time employee." The effort streamlined the process, decreased multiple file formats and multiple data entry, and improved efficiency overall.

"We had been looking for a complete solution like this for a long time," adds Richard Bailey, GIS analyst at the Department of Water. "Our drafting staff now does all the data creation in ArcInfo, and through GeoAdministrator, we are able to store the geometry in ArcSDE and all the attributes for the assets in Hansen for the Information Management System." Now, across the entire organization, crews tasked with repairs or scheduled maintenance can receive work orders, view the locations on a map, and get the job done quickly with the most information possible available to them at their fingertips. In so doing, the Department of Water has been extremely successful in streamlining work flow and saving money.

For more information, contact Steve Hill, GIS analyst, Department of Water, city of Dayton, Ohio (tel.: 937-333-2514, e-mail: Steve.Hill@ci.dayton.oh.us); Richard Bailey, GIS analyst, Department of Water (tel.: 937-333-2031, e-mail: Richard.Bailey@ci.dayton.oh.us); or Brian Wienke, Hansen GIS product manager (tel.: 916-921-0883, e-mail: brian.wienke@hansen.com).