Work management/GIS integration: Improves estimates, saves time

Work management/GIS integration: Improves estimates, saves time

Robert Cernich & William Morton Butler
Principal GIS Consultant
GeoData Solutions, Inc.
8620 Wolff Ct., Suite 250
Westminster, CO 80030 USA

There are many applications to be built around the GIS. Of all the applications to consider building, the application that will generate the greatest benefit, the biggest bang for the buck, is a Job Design System (JDS). If your company has a GIS or is considering building a GIS your plans should include a Job Design System.

Job design is part of work management. The definition of work management takes on a variety of meanings depending on the organization. The fundamental definition for work management is that it supports the process cycle for the construction and maintenance of facilities. The cycle begins with a request for work from a customer or an internal department. The work is planned, estimated, and scheduled. While the work is being performed, materials are distributed and labor is tracked. After completion of the work, property accounting and engineering, records are updated to reflect the actual fieldwork.

The work management process is tightly coupled to the maintenance of the GIS. GIS can provide significant benefits at many points in the work management process. When a job is initiated, it can offer access to an integrated set of facility records. During design, existing configurations of facilities can be altered and proposed facilities can be added. The design of proposed facilities can generate a bill of materials and a labor estimate. When updating facility records, the effort and time used for posting “as-built” information to the GIS can be reduced. In this paper we will focus on the benefits of developing a job design system in the GIS and the additional benefits obtained by integrating the job design system with an estimating system.

Job design system
The primary fi.mction of a Job Design System (JDS) is to provide designers with the tools to create a construction sketch, which can be issued to a construction crew. When a designer is assigned the task of providing service to the new customer, he or she will create the design in the GIS using the JDS. When the design is complete, the designer will estimate the cost of the job and. will print a copy of the construction sketch for approval by the customer. If modifications are required, the designer can make the modifications in the GIS, create a new copy of the construction sketch and develop a new estimate. When the design has been approved, a construction sketch can be issued to construction.

During the construction phase, the crew will indicate any field changes on the construction sketch. When construction is complete, the crew will return the “as-built” construction sketch to the designer. The designer will then modify the design in the GIS to reflect the “as-built” changes, change the status of proposed facilities to their existing state and update the GIS database. At this point, all users of the GIS have access to the new facility records. During the update process, all units of property, which have been installed or retired can be identified and passed to property accounting.

Benefits of a job design system
The development of a JDS can produce sizable corporate savings. Typically, a designer will draw up a design on a construction sketch. After the completion of construction, a mapping organization will update the permanent maps from information supplied on the “as-built” drawing. The process of copying information from “as-built” drawings to the permanent maps is susceptible to errors and companies with high growth rates typically have large mapping backlogs. With a fully integrated JDS, the actual design becomes the permanent record. The obvious benefits from this approach are:

The mapping function will be greatly reduced if not eliminated.
The accuracy of corporate records will be improved.
The mapping backlog will be eliminated.
Corporate records will be up to date and reflect the current “as-built” field conditions.
Units of property which were installed or retired on the job can be identified and passed to property accounting

The labor savings achieved in eliminating the mapping function will, in many cases, be offset by additional work that may be required during the design phase.

Drawbacks of a JDS
The development of a JDS in the GIS will have an impact on the current job design process.

When designing a job in the GIS, the designer must log into the system and go to or retrieve the geographic area for the proposed work. The amount of time required to perform this task will vary from platform to platform. In some cases the time is small but can be a significant portion of the total time required to complete a small job. For each proposed facility that the designer places, he or she must capture a variety of attributes. Many of the attributes being captured are not required for the job design but are required to support other applications. Additional steps may also be required to create the network connectivity model. When the construction for the job is complete the designer must log into the system, modify the proposed design to reflect the “as-built” field conditions, and update the GIS database. The total time required to complete the design from inception to the final update in the GIS may, in some cases, be more than what would be required if the job were drawn by hand or if a stand alone drawing package were used to create the design.

The additional time required in the job design phase may offset some of the savings realized from a reduction in mapping staff. The additional time required to complete a job design can also lead to problems during implementation. The designer must learn to use a new tool. It will take the designer time to become proficient with the tool. Once the designer becomes proficient in using the JDS it may still take him or her longer to create a job design. This could have a negative impact on user acceptance. Some of the complaints heard from end users in locations where we have implemented a JDS are: “we have to enter more information than what is required to produce a job design sketch”, “I can draw a sketch faster by hand”, and “the system is too hard to use”. Even though we have achieved some corporate savings by implementing a JDS, we have increased the workload of designers and user acceptance has been less than desirable.

To offset the investment of designer time specifying attributes and building the network connectivity, real time savings for designers can be achieved by integrating the JDS with an estimating system. This integration will also have a positive effect on user acceptance. By integrating an estimating system with the design process, a very important and real benefit for the designers can be achieved.

Integrating the JDS with an estimating system
Most utilities have some form of automated estimating system as a component of their work management process. It may be a stand-alone system or an integrated component. A typical estimating system contains a collection of compatible units and assemblies. A compatible unit is a collection of material items and the labor required to install a piece of equipment. The compatible unit may also contain the labor estimate required to remove a piece of equipment, the salvage value of the materials, labor rates, and the maintenance and capital account numbers. An assembly is a collection of compatible units.

To create an estimate using an automated estimating system, the designer creates design points for each location on the construction sketch where work is to be performed. The designer then selects the appropriate quantities of assemblies and compatible units which are required for at each design point and indicates the status or action (install or remove). The system calculates the labor, material, and salvage costs. Additionally, the system will generate a material list, and provide an accounting cost breakdown. This process can be time consuming and it can introduce errors. The accuracy of the labor estimate, material requirements, and accounting cost breakdown is dependent on accuracy of the information which is provided by the designer.

The integration of the JDS with an estimating system will eliminate the tedious process of selecting assemblies and compatible units that are required to build an estimate. Assemblies and compatible units can be determined by looking at the proposed facilities, facilities to be removed and facilities to be replaced in the GIS. The system can create the design points and select the appropriate compatible units. This is not as straightforward as it sounds. There is not typically a one-to-one relationship between facilities that are stored in the GIS and assemblies (and/or compatible units). Typically, the GIS will only store information that is required to support the current and planned applications. For example: an electric data model may have provisions to store information about the size, kind, and class for a pole. And it may contain information about the size, kind, configuration (e.g. cross arm, vertical), and the number of wires for a primary conductor but the system does not store specific pole hardware information which is required to obtain an accurate estimate and bill-of-materials. There are two solutions to this problem:

Additional objects can be added to the data model. Using the example above, a pole hardware object would be created. It would have the necessary attributes, which would assist the system in selecting the correct assembly for the desired type of construction or contain a list of valid assemblies that the designer could select before placing the facility.
Application code can be written, which will determine the correct assembly based on information contained in dependent facilities and corporate standards. If a new pole is to be placed and new primary conductor is to be attached to the pole, the correct pole hardware assembly could be obtained by looking at the attributes of the pole and primary conductor. For example: if a primary conductor containing 3 wires with “cross arm” configuration is to be installed and attached to a wood pole then the system can select the appropriate assembly for a 3 phase cross arm attached to a wood pole base upon the corporate standard. If different assemblies are used based on the angle and size of the conductor, than this information can also be determined by the application and used in the selection of the assembly.

The first solution requires very little additional application code. New objects are created to fill the gap between objects required for a construction sketch and the additional objects required for an accurate estimate and bill-of-materials. The disadvantage is the designer will have to place additional facilities during the design process. The placement of more facilities, with all of their attributes, will increase the time required to design a job. In some cases, the new facility maybe related to another facility and not have a graphic representation of its own. In the example cited, the pole hardware object could be related to the pole object. Since there is no graphic representation, the designer could forget to add the pole hardware object to the pole. This could be overcome with rules, which force pole hardware assignments for all poles. The danger with this approach is that the end users could perceive the system as being too complex and difficult to operate efficiently.

Another disadvantage is the amount of data that is being stored. Data that is only needed to create an estimate is stored in the GIS database. It could be argued that if, at some point in the fiture, an order is drawn to remove the facility, then the information would be available to create the removal estimate. This may have some merit, however, the cost of entering and storing the data may exceed any benefit. The data could be removed when the job is complete, however the cost of entering the data will have still been spent. The second solution requires very little change to the data model. It does require the writing of application code to determine the correct assembly or compatible unit for GIS facilities and related facilities that are not stored in the GIS. It may also require the creation of some additional compatible units and assemblies in the estimating system.

The amount of application code required is dependent upon the degree of automation desired. A reasonable goal is to develop an application that will generate all required assemblies and compatible units for a typical line extension, which is to be built under normal field conditions. A typical application would automatically create a design point at each point in the GIS where there are proposed facilities or facilities marked for removal or replacement. Assemblies and compatible units will be added to each design point based on the GIS facilities at the design point. Since, some jobs require the use of non-standard materials and additional labor adders, the application should provide a simple interface, which will allow users review the compatible units and assemblies and to add or modify compatible units or assemblies at each design point. Once the user is satisfied that the correct compatible units and assemblies have been assigned, the estimate and bill-of-materials can be generated. The estimate and bill-of-materials can then be passed back to the Work Management System for use by property accounting, budgeting, and materials management.

Benefits of integrating the JDS with an estimating system
The integration of the JDS with an estimating system provides an estimate and bill-ofmaterials for a design with a minimum of effort on the designers part. The designer does not have to key in compatible units, assemblies and quantities required in order to produce an estimate. The estimate is automatically generated based upon the design in the GIS. This eliminates the time normally spent creating an estimate. The accuracy of the estimate will also be improved. Typically, the estimate will be as accurate as the design. If the design is modified, the estimate can be regenerated which will also save time. Earlier we indicated that the implementation of a JDS could increase the amount of time required for a designer to develop a job design. With the integration of a JDS with an estimating system, the time required to produce an estimate is greatly reduced, which in turn reduces the total amount of time required to complete a job design through the estimating and materials requirement phase.

Conclusion
The development of a JDS in the GIS can provide corporate savings by eliminating the mapping function, it can improve the accuracy of corporate records, and it can provide up-to-date information for all users. It does have its drawbacks, however. A designer is required to enter attribute information, which may not be necessary for the design, but is required to support other GIS applications. This can increase the amount of time required to develop some designs. By integrating the JDS with an estimating system, an estimate can be automatically produced based on the design. This eliminates the majority of the time spent by designers in creating estimates, which reduces the total amount of time required to design a job.