Leveraging capital projects for GIS success
Rick Frymyer
Orlando Utilities Commission
6003 Pershing Avenue
Orlando, FL 32822
Abstract This paper will look at how the Orlando Utilities Commission was able to use
current work activities and capital projects to leverage the development of their GIS. The
cost to develop an enterprise-wide GIS can easily exceed the budget of an organization.
But by designing projects to include the collection of information that will be used in the
GIS, implementation costs and time can be greatly reduced. Specific examples will street
light inventories and joint use surveys.
Defining specific goals and objectives well in advance of implementing new GIS
technology or expanding your existing GIS technologies greatly improves the chance of
success. The earlier you begin to understand what you want the future GIS to
accomplish, the better you are positioned to identify opportunities to leverage against
future GIS conversion/data migration efforts and costs.
I am suggesting that opportunities are found when integrating GIS technology concepts
into engineering design, outage management and work management processes as well as
capital projects not related to GIS implementation, prior to ever starting your GIS
implementation project.
More often than not, the cost to implement GIS ends up far greater than the anticipated
budget you initially suggested to senior management for their “move forward cautiously”
nod and “come back later with more info” directive. This is a normal occurrence as we
try hard to avoid early “sticker shock”. And, in most cases, it isn’t until you are well into
the planning phase that you finally realize what your GIS scope encompasses and the true
costs associated to achieve it.
One should consider how technology can interface with your current business processes
and how daily work activities and projects can be used to leverage the development of the
GIS. By designing work processes and projects to include the collection and
maintenance of information/data that will be used in the future GIS, implementation costs
and time can be greatly reduced.
Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC) has made good use of this approach. Knowing the
ultimate goal was to develop an enterprise-wide GIS, OUC used two capital projects to
begin developing important, fundamental components of the GIS.
One of the initial goals of the GIS implementation was to combine information from
multiple drawing sets into the GIS database and eliminate the maintenance of redundant
data. OUC maintains seven different sets of AutoCAD drawings representing the OUC
electric distribution system. The drawing sets included over 4,400 maps and detail
drawings.
