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home > media > user spotlights > fulton county, georgia
Fulton County, Georgia
Cityworks Key to Department’s Success and Enhanced GIS
The Challenge
Previous to implementing Cityworks for their asset maintenance management, the Department of Public Works at Fulton County, Georgia committed to choosing the right tool for its move from an antiquated paper work management process to a fully automated/integrated CMMS. Key to adopting a new system, the County’s process approach involved future CMMS users in evaluating all business processes. Management and future users and operators reviewed many CMMS products looking for a solution that would fit their target business processes rather then having to alter their processes to fit a product. After extensive review and selection process, these individuals chose Cityworks as the solution that fulfilled their expectations as a user-friendly and powerful system that would build on and strengthen their existing GIS.
The Solution
Fulton County’s Public Works Department selected Cityworks as part of an enterprise solution that features integration between Cityworks, Advanced Utility Systems’ (AUS) CIS Infinity®, and Tele-Works’ Interactive Voice Recognition® (IVR) software. Cityworks builds on the Department of Public Works’ existing ESRI® infrastructure geodatabase, which houses the asset inventory data. This is a key element in achieving the County’s goals of delivering a higher level of service through improved work order and asset management and is consistent with the County IT Department’s strategic plan to broaden and enhance the use of GIS in the County. Cityworks is the only fully-integrated maintenance management solution that directly utilizes the geodatabase in real-time, from initiating work and connecting assets with spatial data to displaying the total cost of ownership with the accompanying projects, resulting in the effective use of the GIS and an overall improvement of the GIS data.
Results
To the County’s water and sewer maintenance crews, warehouse users, and administration and support staff, Cityworks means they keep doing what they are doing, only doing it better, and fulfilling the goal of providing a higher level of service to the customer. The new system has empowered 30+ users with new knowledge and capability for managing critical resources. Having access to customer history, maps, and resource information provides field workers the tools they need to assess and mitigate problems in a timely and cost-effective manner. Also, being able to access relative data and not rely on senior workers for information gives them motivation to enter data and keep it clean and accurate.
As work history and historical data are critical to improving work processes, Cityworks provides Fulton County Public Work’s a system where data is used from customer setup through service activities, troubleshooting, and after-hours calls, allowing users to perform both reactive and preventative asset maintenance. The County’s integration with Storeroom, the Cityworks warehouse inventory system, further enhances the repair and replacement of materials, contributing to the preservation of assets in problem areas.
Chris Browning, Assistant Director at the Fulton County Department of Public Works, remarks, “Cityworks allows us to manage our business effectively and efficiently without changing our processes to fit the software. We will have a fully integrated system specifically developed for the management of utilities that is easily configured to match our way of doing business.”
Fulton County Inventory staff use Cityworks Storeroom to manage material quantities in their warehouse as well as on their service vehicles. Chosen as a subcontractor to AUS, VELOCITIE developed an interface to transfer customer account and work order information between CIS-Infinity and Cityworks. The Cityworks side of this interface is implemented using SQL Server Integration Services and makes use of stored procedures and triggers at the database level, resulting in a seamless interface for users. The interface allows CIS-Infinity service orders to initiate work orders in Cityworks. Once closed, the work order’s status and other relevant information are transferred back to CIS-Infinity. Cityworks users can view CIS Meter information from within the Cityworks Anywhere application. Information is read directly from the CIS database, which holds the master meter information data.
With substantial and sustained improvements in hand, the County is looking to expand Cityworks into new areas of the organization, such as the Department of Transportation for managing streets, signs, and pavement maintenance activities.
About Fulton County
Fulton County is the core county of the Atlanta metropolitan area and the most populous in the state of Georgia with the 2008 Census Bureau estimate of 1,014,932 residents. The county’s total area encompasses 535 square miles and is located in the Georgia Piedmont near the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains with the Chattahoochee River forming its border from the northeast to southwest. The twentieth century has seen Atlanta, and thereby Fulton County, become the leading distribution center for goods and services in the southeastern United States as well as a major national financial and telecommunications hub.
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