Northern Kentucky Sanitation District No. 1 Integrates Maintenance Management and GIS

Northern Kentucky Sanitation District No. 1 Integrates Maintenance Management and GIS

By Joel Knight, P.E.
GBA Master Series, Inc.
8900 Ward Parkway, Kansas City, MO 64114

Absract

In 1995, the Sanitation District No. 1 of Northern Kentucky was charged with maintenance of a collection system encompassing more than 1,100 mile of interceptor sewer and main trunk line. Previously, the district, which is located in the Cincinnati, Ohio metropolitan area maintained only about 100 miles of sewer line.

Their search for a replacement of the existing system involved implementing a system that would complement ESRI’s ARC/INFO. They sought a package to track customer calls, work orders, inspections and asset information, which would also tie to GIS. The district underwent a series of data conversion projects to complement the transition to their new system. Data came from several legacy sources and had many format discrepancies. To jumpstart the implementation of the new software system, they entered approximately 30,000 work orders or five years’ history.

Utilizing the functionality of the new system and comprehensive digital data and maps enabled district personnel to perform historical system analyses and develop comprehensive work routines based on GIS and asset inventory.

In 1995, the Sanitation District No. 1 of Northern Kentucky was charged with maintenance of a collection system encompassing more than 1,100 miles of interceptor sewer and main trunk line. Previous to that time, the district, which is located in the Cincinnati, Ohio, Metropolitan area, owned and maintained only about 100 miles of sewer line. Their primary role in the area was one of leadership as individual cities within the district owned and operated their own systems. The smaller cities would turn to the district for resolution of larger, more difficult problems. The added responsibility meant the district had to find a better way to manage their maintenance processes.

Searching for a replacement of the existing system included the goal of integrating maintenance management with a Geographic Information System (GIS). The district was already using ESRI’s ArcView and ARC/INFO. They wanted a package to track customer calls, work orders, inspections and asset information, which would tie to GIS. The Sanitation District serves approximately 300,000 customers in a three-county area. On average, they expect 35 to 50 customer calls per week, and anticipate 200 calls during above-normal wet weather events.

Until 1995, work orders generated from customer requests as well as routine preventative maintenance were hand written and filed away. The District used a variety of paper processes, spreadsheet applications, and word processing documents to store system information. Their already developed GIS was used to map and analyze the system, but it was not linked to a maintenance management software system.

"What we needed was a comprehensive computerized maintenance management system that would tie all of this information together so it could be used by all of their departments," explained Tom Braun, Information Systems Manager for the District. Their final software selection was based on the software’s interface and integration capacity, which would fit their current needs, but would also provide additional functionality to accommodate future development of the system. They based their selection criteria on several features of the software; an advanced customer complaint tracking system, a work order and resource utilization program, as well as a sanitary sewer and storm sewer inventory and inspection system. A additional complementary GIS application provides necessary GIS functionality for the collection system and maintenance personnel. The program includes out-of-the-box tracing tools for the sanitary sewer and storm sewer systems, which can be employed to locate a blockage causing multiple backups or assist in locating sources of illegal dumping in the storm sewer system. A tracing tool also provides a fast, intuitive way to delineate flow basins for flow monitoring programs.

In addition to the real-time tracing tools and locate functions, district personnel were interested in performing historical system analyses. Pin maps of sewer odor problems, sewer backups, or frequent flooding problems could potentially help prioritize repair and preventative maintenance. Additional cleaning schedules could be developed based on areas of the map showing high grease accumulations or root growth. All of these features have provided district personnel with the tools necessary to effectively meet their infrastructure management and GIS needs.

A software feature called subsets provides a communication link between the database software suite and ESRI’s ArcView. Subsets provide advanced filtering capabilities against the infrastructure and work order management databases and allows the data to be viewed within GIS, while providing spatial filter functionality to users creating work orders and routine maintenance schedules within the maintenance management software database. Combining the two uses for subsets to more efficiently schedule work provides ultimate functionality. District maintenance supervisors can easily locate features requiring maintenance; view those features in GIS; and, then limit the selected set to a specific geographical area to create a work order for a crew’s daily work. Data Conversion

The Sanitation District was using a legacy database to maintain the asset information, and ARC/INFO to create and maintain the sanitary sewer maps. The newly selected database software application replaced the legacy databases with Microsoft SQL Server databases and augmented the GIS capabilities by adding ArcView with a specific GIS application for maintenance and collection system personnel.

The first task was to merge the existing data sources including the sanitary sewer coverages and the legacy databases. "We discovered a lot of manhole identifier discrepancies while merging our data," explained Braun. While in the field, the crews were using the legacy program to track asset information, but manhole numbers were not validated, so they were able to enter inaccurate manhole identifiers. The identifiers themselves were usually close to being correct, but the formats of the numbers were inconsistent. The numbers included leading zeros, leading spaces, dashes, slashes and other characters as well as occasional misspellings. By comparing permutations of the numbers in the legacy databases with the accurate values in the sanitary sewer coverages, the district was able to correct the legacy databases. Once these two data sources were synchronized, data was populated into the SQL Server databases using the ARC/INFO coverages to create the initial sewer network. General asset information from the legacy database was imported as well.

The newly selected software database application was then installed at the Sanitation District’s site, and the District started the task of entering work order history. Today, Sanitation District No. 1 has input almost all the data from the last five years of operations into the software databases. "We kept one person busy just looking up history on paper documents," commented Braun about internal procedures from the past. Now, historical information is readily available simply by selecting or identifying an asset from the software program.

Collection Systems Integration

To take advantage of the software features now implemented on site, the district took on the huge project of converting and manually entering details from about 30,000 historical work orders. Once the initial data was entered in the system, district personnel were able to recreate routine maintenance work using the specific GIS application. "Now we have the flexibility to schedule work by drainage areas," said Braun, explaining how the maintenance management software application has provided the tools necessary to effectively manage the system’s work orders. The subset functionality available in the specific GIS application allows district personnel to select and assign basins to routine maintenance work orders. Scheduling work directly from a map allows more efficient resource utilization by centralizing the work performed. Once work is completed, this work history is available to all the software database users through ArcView or the rest of the database application suite. The program provides a complete history of each line, all the work performed on the line, and a list of all of the equipment used to complete each task.

GIS Integration

While the work history was being entered the GIS Department was working to improve their maps. The Sanitation District shares data with several partner agencies. The original planimetric maps were created from aerial photos taken in 1985 and projected on the Lambert Conformal Conic in the Kentucky State Plane NAD 1927 coordinate system. The sanitary sewer maps were digitized on top of these planimetrics. Recently, the partner agencies decided to move to a more accurate coordinate system from the Albers High Precision GPS Network (HPGN) revisions to NAD 1983. With storm sewer mapping projects pending, the district decided that implementation of the new software database application would be a good time to make the conversion. Coordinate corrections were made in ARC/INFO, and the GIS Department used a toolkit of the specific GIS application to update the databases with the new coordinates.

The toolkit is a map maintenance utility shipped with the specific GIS application. It is an ArcView extension adding flexibility to map maintenance. The software allows users to update a map and a database from several different data formats including drawing interchange files (DXF), shapefiles, and GPS unit outputs. Data quality checks are built into the map maintenance utility. They ensure the data being transferred is reasonable, valid, and does not modify previous GPS submissions.

Entreprise Wide Usage

In addition to the GIS and Collection System departments, other public works professionals associated with the agency utilize the software on a read-only basis. "They can easily get to the information they need," Braun concluded, "They don’t have to be computer literate or a technowiz to use the software and view information."

The Future

"I’m sure we are not using (the software) to its fullest potential," said Braun, "right now we are just trying to input the inventory data and determine procedures for rehabilitation." As more information is collected through the maintenance management software database and complementary sewer management software applications, Sanitation District No. 1 will improve its ability to assess sanitary sewer rehabilitation needs, find and correct problem areas, and improve work efficiency.

In addition to sanitary sewer systems, the Sanitation District has acquired the software application for storm systems to track storm sewer inventory and maintenance. Currently, the Sanitation District is working with local contractors to conduct a detailed inventory of the storm sewer using GPS technology. The District also plans to purchase additional software applications to track fleet and equipment to enhance management of fleet operations and to track equipment maintenance and inventory.