Work orders and GIS in the field: quantifying cost savings at the city of Arlington, Texas
Julia J. Hunt, P. E.
Information Services Manager, Water Utilities
City of Arlington, P.O. Box 231, Mail Stop 01-0203
Arlington, Texas 76004-0231
Phone: 817-459-6604
Fax: 817-459-6626
E-mail: huntj@onramp.net
Robert W. Finkle
President
IT Nexus, Inc., 10129 W. Dartmouth, Suite 9304
Lakewood, Colorado 80227
Phone: 720-962-0595
Fax: 720-962-0561
Business Drivers at Arlington Water Utilities
Like many utilities, the City of Arlington's Water Utilities Department automated the front office
component of its work order system. The system issues and manages utility work orders using a
mainframe application - but the flow of information between the field and the front office was
still a paper process. It was recognized that allowing field crews to access and closeout work
orders from the field could achieve meaningful cost savings. But the City of Arlington requires
that all expenditure decisions of this type be clearly cost justified.
The City is an efficiently run municipal organization and proud of the fact that it operates at one
of the lowest staff-to-citizen ratios in its geographic region. Arlington Water Utilities strongly
embraces these values and the utility is run much like a private sector organization.
In part this is due to the utility's concern about the growing national trend toward privatization of
public utilities. During the 1990's many public water companies found their governing boards
and councils accepting offers from large private sector companies to take over the jurisdiction's
water and sewer operations. Their selling point is significantly reduced costs to the public - a
highly effective argument when a jurisdiction finds the cost and staff ratios of its utility
operations are significantly above national averages. Arlington Water Utilities is acutely aware of
this trend and is focused on continually improving operating efficiencies and customer
satisfaction as their best defense against privatization.
The focus at Arlington Water Utilities on using computers to achieve efficient operations is also
due to the Director and Assistant Director of the utility. They represent the "new generation" of
water utility managers - individuals who recognize that information technology is an important
and necessary tool for advancing the efficiency and effectiveness of utility operations.
Arlington's Work Order Problem
Even when computers are used to manage the generation and analysis of work orders, issuing and
closing out work orders can be a highly manual and paper intensive process. This is because
work order automation often stops at the front office and rarely extends the automation into the
field. Under these circumstances, work orders are printed out from a mainframe application and
given to work crews who must manually record on each work order the work performed. Work
Order crews then have to sort the work orders into geographic routes. As work is completed and
recorded in the field, paper floods back to the front office and all the hand written information
must be entered into the computer. Even a medium sized utility will issue thousands of work
orders a month. At the City of Arlington, over 5,000 work orders are issued each month for meter
services alone. This amounts to a great deal of time spent printing, routing, filling out and dataentering
work order information.
Arlington Water Utilities had only automated the front office component of is work orders. And
its managers had to deal with a range of problems directly resulting from the high degree of
manual record keeping that the front office system required:
- Backlog of Work Order "Close-outs": completed work orders were stacking up
awaiting data entry. At any one time the Utility's Work Order Clerks would have 2 to 4
weeks of work orders (as many as 4-5,000) that had not been entered to the mainframe
database.
- Increased Costs for Overtime Pay: to overcome the backlog, the Utility found itself
routinely paying overtime wages to get the data entered to the mainframe.
- Lost Work Orders: due to the reliance on paper, work orders and work order close-outs
were being lost, resulting in the need to re-issue work orders or the loss of valuable data
on work order completions.
- Poor Customer Service Response: because customer calls were not immediately
entered to the computer, customer services representatives were unable to respond to
customer calls in a timely manner.
- Delayed Performance Data: the Utility's managers were complaining because one of
their primary management tools - statistics on the number of work orders completed and
the status of open work orders - was not providing needed information on a timely
basis.
- Loss of Confidence: the Water Utility managers were increasingly loosing confidence
in the mainframe system and its ability to support their management of field operations.
It was clear to Water Utility management that a solution to these work order problems had to be
developed. Upon examination of the problem, it was learned that the issue was not with the
mainframe work order application, but with the work effort associated with the manual flow of
information between the front office and the field. It was decided to continue the use of the
mainframe work order application and to automate the information flow between the field and
the front office. This would be done by implementing a Mobile Data Communications System
that allowed computers in the field to access the mainframe using a wireless (radio frequency)
network. The field computers would provide field staff an ability to retrieve and enter work order
information and to view and query digital GIS maps.
Justifying New Technology
To win approval for extending work order automation into the field by implementing a Mobile
Data Communications System (MDCS) the Water Information Systems Manager had to analyze
the current environment in order to prepare reasonable estimates of potential savings and the cost
of the proposed solution.
