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home > media > user spotlights > holland, michigan
Holland, Michigan
City Reaps Benefits of Cityworks Self Implementation
The Challenge
The Holland Board of Public Works (BPW), a community-owned enterprise, provides water distribution, wastewater collection, and electric distribution to the City of Holland and the greater Holland area. Holland BPW distributes water to more than 12,000 customers and processes wastewater from 10,500 customers. Before implementing Cityworks Holland tried several maintenance management applications, including commercial products and in-house development efforts, but nothing seemed to work well. They incurred problems with security, multiple users, data verification, and GIS connectivity to name a few. Clearly a change needed to be made.
Robert Humphrey, Programmer/Analyst at the City of Holland, recognized the benefits of a cost-effective system that could integrate fully with their ESRI GIS software. Beyond the cost of the software, it was also clear they would need to install the system themselves to keep implementation costs low and under control.
The Solution
Holland BPW began a self-implementation of Cityworks at the beginning of 2005. Implementation was completed entirely in-house, and after only four weeks Cityworks was up and running. BPW staff assessed and converted existing data and trained operations crews. Though primarily aimed at keeping costs down, self-implementing afforded them a unique opportunity to gain a thorough understanding of how the system functioned and what it could provide. According to Ellen Taub, City of Holland Technology Director, “Self-implementing a new software product presented a unique opportunity to gain a comprehensive understanding of how it worked and what it provided.” By the end of June of 2005, the software was fully integrated into the organization’s existing GIS.
The implementation effort included a significant upgrade to their Microsoft SQL Server database and data migration from their legacy systems. Robert Humphrey, Programmer/Analyst at the City of Holland, stated, "Assessing and converting existing data was the most time-consuming part of the implementation. This and training were the biggest efforts during the implementation. Training new staff took time and consideration as staff migrated from the old system to the new software.” Though they did utilize phone support, the organization did not require on-location assistance from Azteca. In the end, the self-implementation process was a success and achieved the goal that Holland BPW had set to save money through the process of implementing Cityworks.
Results
The Holland BPW Water/Wastewater Services Group utilizes Cityworks for scheduling and tracking preventive and reactive maintenance to the water distribution system and the sanitary sewer collection system. Operating and maintaining over 230 miles of public water transmission and distribution mains and over 190 miles of public sanitary sewer mains to service over 13,000 individual customers, all asset records are maintained through Cityworks. Furthermore, there are over 2250 public hydrants, 2700 main valves, and over 4000 public sanitary manholes that are inspected and maintained.
Soon after implementation, the water and sewer service crews also began using Cityworks to manage their cyclical work orders. Expanded use of Cityworks is enthusiastically anticipated. Cityworks has become an integral part of maintaining water and wastewater utilities at Holland BPW. GIS has come to play a prominent role in servicing Holland’s community.
Bob Humphrey, Programmer/Analyst at Holland BPW, stated, "Work order management has become a great asset for monitoring and scheduling system maintenance, as well as providing work orders. Cityworks efficiently handles the scheduling of periodic maintenance and cleaning, and the tracking of service calls for main breaks, backups, and other reactive problems."
About Holland
Holland is located in the western region of the state of Michigan. Known for its Dutch heritage, historic windmill, and annual tulip festival, the city was founded in 1847 by Dutch immigrants along Lake Macatawa near Lake Michigan. As of the 2000 census, the city’s population was about 35,000 with an urbanized population of about 95,000 and a large percentage of citizens of Dutch ancestry.
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