Seth Whitney is the GIS Coordinator at the City of Chestermere in Alberta, Canada, and explains how his municipality has used GIS to help further their asset management capabilities.
Understanding the current condition of assets, such as roads, is a crucial component of building a strong Asset Management Plan. The City of Chestermere built an inventory of relative road conditions, with the help of MuniSight’s software and technical services, based on GIS technology.
Prior to MuniSight, Chestermere’s roads function was using the US Army Corps of Engineers methodology to visually assess road deficiencies. This was originally an effective but very manual process, which included having to fill out paper forms in the field and administrative staff entering the data into an excel spreadsheet. The original process was effective for a number of years, but became cumbersome and inaccurate due to the rapid development in the City of Chestermere, resulting in multiple data entry issues, lost forms and time wasted. The City needed a new process that could gain greater efficiency, and accuracy, by leveraging proven technologies.
The City’s Public Works department approached the GIS department to help them streamline their road condition assessment process. The GIS department created a roads condition assessment layer in MuniSight based on the paper form from Public Works, and with assistance from MuniSight’s technical team, was able to create a road assessment workflow that prompted inspectors to complete road condition information in a pop-up dialogue box in MuniSight. Inspectors were able to fill out 13 road deficiency types (i.e. rutting, transverse cracking, etc.) based on a score between excellent and poor. Inspectors could simply enter the rating directly through Munisight using a laptop in the field or at the office.
Based on an aggregate score, from the 13 different deficiency types, the City was able to view relative road conditions in MuniSight, enabling them to prioritize maintenance planning accordingly. The City’s Roads Manager could easily identify roads that needed to be prioritized for maintenance by reviewing the map in Munisight. By leveraging Munisight’s technology & expertise, Chestermere was able to gain tremendous amount of efficiencies using GIS technology.
