Keeping hundreds of miles of roadway, water mains, and sanitary sewer at top performance presents a challenge for any city. But for the City of Novi, Michigan, Department of Public Services, managing these infrastructure and the needs of a rapidly growing community is easy and efficient with Cityworks, the proven and genuine GIS-centric management solution. As a result, the city has been able to save tax dollars by leveraging efficiency gains from the solution, without having to hire additional staff.
In the past ten years, the city’s population has grown by 16.4%. With this growth came increased demand on city infrastructure, along with the investment associated with the expansion of roads, water, sanitary sewer, and storm water systems servicing 55,000 residents and 3,000 businesses.
In May 2012, the City of Novi Department of Public Services went live with Cityworks Server AMS as the city’s first asset management system. Initially deployed to manage water, sewer, traffic signs, and road infrastructure, the department added storm sewer and non-motorized asset infrastructures to their Cityworks implementation in the fall of 2012. This year the city plans to incorporate its street tree inventory. Leveraging both a cloud-based ArcGIS Server (AGS) instance and on-premise AGS map services for Cityworks Server, the city was able to increase accountability and generate performance measures for its field operations and water and sewer divisions.
“Cityworks helps us accurately account for the cost of providing services our community members expect,” said Rob Hayes, City Engineer and Director of Public Services at Novi. “The system also enables us to extend the life of our roads, water, and sewer infrastructure by accurately representing operations expenditures while applying preventative maintenance practices.”
The City of Novi selected Cityworks after a five-year evaluation of the best asset management practices adopted by communities across the nation. The asset management team views the seamless combination of Cityworks with Esri’s ArcGIS as a significant business benefit for the city. Within a month of turning on the system (May 2012), city staff fulfilled more than 600 service requests and work orders. Presently, Cityworks Server is being used in six operational divisions, spanning three departments in two different locations over the city’s fiber network. Operations are nearly paperless, attaching documents to service requests and work orders, thereby improving communication between customer service representatives and field staff, who coordinate their activities.
“The value of leveraging our GIS across multiple service areas allows us to quickly and efficiently understand, respond to, and satisfy calls for over 110 types of citizen requests,” said Rob Petty, Chief Information Officer for the City of Novi. “This helps us advance the City Council’s goals to improve service delivery to our citizens while maintaining fiscal responsibility.”
“Helping communities do the same or more work with less resources is what Cityworks is all about,” stated Brian Haslam, President and CEO of Azteca Systems Inc. “As Novi has discovered, Cityworks provides the capabilities organizations need for an advanced and effective solution. While it’s been some time since we’ve seen news about rapidly growing communities in America, containing the cost of infrastructure maintenance is a simple fact that is here to stay. All local governments are faced with this challenge, yet those with the vision and commitment to leverage their existing GIS are meeting that challenge much faster and for a lot less money. This point is evident by the city of Novi receiving the prestigious Esri SAG Award at Esri’s 2012 International User Conference.”
