When Wales & West Utilities was founded in 2005, GIS was identified as a core business system, and work began straight away to create a bespoke, advanced GIS platform.  Built with Esri’s GIS technology, the resulting solution was ground-breaking.  It improved the availability of spatial data, led to the creation of new streamlined business processes and contributed to significant improvements in operational efficiency.

Two decades later, the same GIS system was still in constant use but in need of an update.  Rather than simply upgrade this custom-built solution, Wales & West Utilities decided to redesign the entire enterprise GIS platform to take full advantage of Esri’s modern, web service based, GIS technology, ArcGIS.  The business was particularly keen to use only ArcGIS capabilities in the build process, and no custom code, to simplify future upgrades.

Wales & West Utilities kicked off the project with a period of business process evaluation, to ascertain if users’ needs were still the same as they had been nearly twenty years before and identify new business requirements. The legacy ArcGIS platform had been highly innovative at the time of development, and it was important to the business that the successor solution be no less ambitious and transformative.

The in-house project team then built a new corporate geodatabase in Esri’s ArcGIS Enterprise solution that enables Wales & West Utilities to process and maintain 33 million records per month. To address complexities and historic inconsistencies in the business’s legacy asset data, the project team created a process in Microsoft SQL to correct errors before inputting the data into ArcGIS Enterprise, which meant that the new GIS platform was powered with more accurate spatial data.

Wales & West Utilities then built and rolled out over twenty process-specific apps using ArcGIS Enterprise—and more are in development. Although precisely designed to meet user requirements, the apps are all built using out-of-the-box app builders and the included widgets, with no custom code, which will make them easy to upgrade and maintain in the future. Several of the apps are integrated with the organisation’s SAP systems to create fully automated processes, such as costing for quotations or operation work order creation; others produce tailored outputs that can be issued directly to the Land Registry.

Chief amongst the new apps is the new-look Gas Viewer, the core mapping system used by all of the organisation’s 1,800 staff. Built using the Portal for ArcGIS component in ArcGIS Enterprise, this pivotal solution provides a single source of accurate, up-to-date data on customers, network assets and plans for new network extensions. Not just a simple new-for-old replacement, the solution delivers new capabilities, such as the ability to see, at a glance, if a property is on or off gas.

More efficient business processes
The migration to ArcGIS Enterprise has created more efficient business processes. In Connections Quotations Design, for example, tasks that used to take 45 minutes can now be completed in around 10. Bernard Murphy, Head of Strategy and Architecture at Wales & West Utilities, explains: “The implementation of ArcGIS Enterprise has unlocked tremendous value for the business, by making better data available in easy-to-use apps. Wales & West Utilities now has an advanced, modern and versatile mapping platform that is enabling the business to operate more efficiently.”

Improved collaboration between departments
As ArcGIS Enterprise serves up the same geospatial data to all of the organisation’s GIS apps and the core Gas Viewer solution, Wales & West Utilities can be confident that all staff are working from the same, accurate, up-to-date information, whatever they are doing. This contributes to improved collaboration between departments. The legal team, for instance, now has visibility of all new gas infrastructure planned, as soon as it is designed.

Rapid delivery of new business solutions
Using the many adaptable features of ArcGIS Enterprise, Wales & West Utilities can build new GIS apps, precisely tailored to the needs of users, in just days. For example, it has built an app that automatically notifies staff of changes in Ordnance Survey’s 13 million data attributes, so business data can be updated. “It’s so easy!” says Kieran Bourke, GIS Architect at Wales & West Utilities. “Our new ArcGIS platform enables us to develop new solutions quickly that have no custom code but are very bespoke to our requirements.”

Better informed decision-making
ArcGIS Enterprise enables Wales & West Utilities to use open source, third-party data in its apps and GIS services for the first time, which improves decision-making. For example, network designers can now see contaminated land and easily evaluate its proximity to project areas. Similarly, staff can see instantly if proposed new pipelines cross historical sites and make sure project quotations and schedules take into account the need to liaise with local historical and archaeological groups.

A scalable platform for the future
The new GIS platform will enable Wales & West Utilities to continually adapt and build new apps to meet future business needs. It is currently building mobile apps, using ArcGIS Field Maps and the Premium Feature Data Store in ArcGIS Online, which supports high-volume data workflows. These apps will enable field-based engineers to view network data and capture information on the move, further improving the efficiency of core business operations.