In the housing sector, the importance of clear business insight cannot be understated. Whether organisations want to improve the cost efficiency of their property maintenance programmes, respond more effectively to customer needs or identify the development opportunities that are most likely to gain planning permission, they need a detailed understanding of their homes, land, customers and communities.

Red Kite Community Housing wanted a more efficient way to improve the accessibility of information about the 6,700 homes that it owns and maintains in the district of Wycombe. It was unable to easily determine the ownership of property boundaries, or even locate the nearest grit bins, without having to find and refer to often disparate records. This reduced the efficiency of day-to-day operations and the ability to easily and flexibly devise and implement business improvement schemes. It therefore decided to deploy a geographic information system (GIS) to give employees more information about land assets, as well as reveal business insight to inform new strategies.

Red Kite Community Housing selected Esri’s ArcGIS Platform after visiting Esri UK’s annual conference. “We didn’t want a software solution that was bespoke to the housing industry, as we felt this might constrain our ability to innovate in the future,” says Jessica Horwitz, Insight Team Leader at Red Kite Community Housing. “We wanted a solution that would give us the flexibility and the advanced technology to drive improvements to our business for many years to come.”

After receiving training from Esri UK, Red Kite Community Housing began using Esri’s ArcGIS Desktop initially to digitise its paper records, add layers of business data and plot the locations of adjacent features such as lamp posts and telegraph poles. It then made interactive maps available, using ArcGIS Online, to at least one employee in every business department, including the call centre and the field-based neighbourhood team. These users can now see everything from property boundaries to the locations of play areas, at a glance, from their desktops or mobile devices.

Subsequently, employees within the insight and business teams began to use ArcGIS Desktop to interrogate and analyse the newly collated asset information, to gain a deeper insight into homes and land, as well as new business opportunities. While Red Kite Community Housing has only been performing GIS analysis for a few months, on specific projects, it is already evident that the new business insight will prove invaluable in helping the organisation to improve the efficiency and quality of its services for customers.

Insight for improving business efficiency 
ArcGIS Online has replaced cabinets of printed maps and ledgers, creating time savings in multiple business areas. In the ‘Relationship Stem’, the first point of contact for customers, it might previously have taken several hours for a member of staff to respond to a boundary issue, but queries can now be answered in as little as a few minutes by simply checking a web app. In the future, Red Kite Community Housing plans to analyse maintenance requests and the sequencing of repair jobs to reduce travel time, look at service demand and use this intelligence to shape the service it offers.

Insight for reducing operational costs
Through the use of ArcGIS, Red Kite Community Housing has found parcels of land that it was maintaining but didn’t own, which has opened up conversations with the local authority about maintenance costs. It can also now produce development site plans and documentation to support Access Permits in-house, rather than paying outside agencies to generate them, which contributes to further ongoing operational cost savings. Moving forwards, when new contracts like grounds maintenance come up for renewal in the months ahead, the organisation will be able to provide contractors with more accurate land measurements, leading to fewer assumptions and more competitive tenders.

Insight for informing development planning
In a key business initiative, Red Kite Community Housing is using ArcGIS Desktop to identify areas of land suitable for development and narrow down the search to plots of land of the right size, in the best locations, taking into account potential to work with other third party adjacent land owners. Red Kite Community Housing will also be able to consider the ongoing time that will be required to manage new development opportunities as part of the business case. “ArcGIS is revealing strips of land, previously not identified as having development potential, and unlocking new revenue opportunities for the business,” Horwitz says.

Looking ahead, Red Kite Community Housing plans to use ArcGIS to gain insight into other areas of its business by analysing customer satisfaction surveys, home turnover, geo-demographics and rental income and turning this data into actionable intelligence. Horwitz concludes, “Our continuing use of ArcGIS for analysis will give us added insight into important issues and help to inform new business strategies.”

The joint venture company Connect Plus Services works on behalf of Highways England, as part of a DBFO (Design, Build, Finance and Operate) contract comprising all motorways and A roads within Highways England’s Area 5 network around Greater London. As well as maintaining this 228-mile road network, the company has a legal obligation to protect the natural environment, a challenging requirement that also involves monitoring and improving approximately 15 km² of soft estate on roadside verges.

Connect Plus Services has been using geographic information system (GIS) technology ever since its foundation in 2009, when it was awarded the 30-year M25 contract by Highways England.  The company’s Environment Department selected Esri’s ArcGIS to meet Highways England’s EnvIS (Environmental Information System) data requirements and improve the quality and quantity of environmental asset data available for the M25 network. It drew together a diverse range of data sets, from on-site surveys and street-view video to water drainage reports and public rights of way data, to build up a valuable and informative picture of the natural environment under its stewardship.

In addition, Connect Plus Services took advantage of ArcGIS Online & ArcGIS Server to create a Corporate GIS for the visualisation of operational data. Using this platform, the company can make its rich environmental data accessible to all employees, across all departments, via a secure, intranet-based map viewer.  This solution not only displays environmental and asset-related information on an intuitive mapping interface; it also puts basic GIS capabilities in the hands of all employees, enabling them to conduct analysis on demand, to help them make better decisions.

More recently, the Environment Department has used the ArcGIS Collector App to create a versatile mobile GIS solution, integrated with internal systems, that removes the need for surveyors to rely on paper maps and survey forms. Field-based employees enter their survey findings into mobile devices, from the roadside, and the data is automatically and securely transferred directly into Connect Plus Services’ central systems, without any need for further manual data handling.

ArcGIS now plays a key role in helping Connect Plus Services to meet its environmental obligations more efficiently. The advantages include:

Reduced adverse environmental impacts
Employees use ArcGIS to make more informed decisions about how to mitigate any potentially damaging environmental consequences during and following activities such as essential road maintenance.  “It is vitally important for us to ensure that due consideration is given to the environment in everything we do,” says Jennifer Banks, GIS Specialist and Environmental Assistant at Connect Plus Services.  “ArcGIS has become a critical tool in helping us ensure that the ongoing maintenance of the M25 has minimal adverse impacts on the environment.”

Improved schemes to protect native species
In a range of environmental improvement projects, Connect Plus Services is using ArcGIS to help it proactively conserve protected species and enhance environmental assets.   For instance, the company uses ArcGIS to analyse third-party land that lies adjacent to the soft estate it manages, to determine whether it is feasible to use the roadside verge to create ecological corridors.  As Graham Lee, Environmental Manager at Connect Plus Services, explains, “It is possible to use the motorway verge to enhance ecological connectivity, by joining areas of species-rich grassland so that pollinator species can move more freely within the landscape.”

25% more productivity in the field
Using the mobile GIS solution, the organisation’s environmental inspectors can complete surveys in the field in significantly less time, as they no longer have to record their environmental information on paper, then re-enter it when they get back to the office.  “We have cut the amount of time we spend on surveys and post-survey data entry by up to a quarter,” says Lee. “As a result, we can perform more inspections of the soft estate, more quickly and in greater detail, to meet the growing needs of the business.”

More cost-effective tenders
Connect Plus Services is making ongoing cost efficiencies by giving sub-contractors more accurate plot information relating to grass cutting, weed control and vegetation removal activities.  “When we go out to tender, we receive more competitive prices from contractors, as they have more accurate information about the areas of land we expect them to work on,” Lee says.

Better data, shared more easily with partners
Finally, Connect Plus Services can now continually enhance and more easily share its data.  For instance, new data on environmental assets, collected by mobile surveyors in the field, can be easily submitted quarterly to Highways England, for inclusion in its Environmental Information System (EnvIS). As Banks observes, “Working with GIS data in apps such as Collector streamlines the digital data hand-over process because our client, Highways England, also use an Esri GIS system to store, view and analyse information.”

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is the country’s largest nature conservation charity, inspiring everyone ‘to give nature a home’. As a registered charity, it has a responsibility to its supporters to ensure that every donation it receives is wisely invested and fully optimised so that the organisation can help protect wildlife and the places where it lives.

For many years, the RSPB has used geographic information system (GIS) technology from Esri UK to help it map and understand complex factors, ranging from migration patterns to diminishing natural landscapes. The organisation has full access to ArcGIS, through its license agreement, but realised that it wasn’t exploiting all of the advanced capabilities. It was keen to explore how it might make more optimal use of ArcGIS to create public-facing education resources, improve the efficiency of surveys in the field and raise the profile of key campaigns.

To meet these aspirations, the RSPB engaged a highly skilled Embedded Product Specialist (EPS) from Esri UK. As an expert in ArcGIS , the EPS was able to quickly set up ArcGIS Online for the RSPB and start not only designing, but also delivering a range of GIS apps and solutions. Embedded with, and managed by, RSPB staff, she became a highly valued member of the organisation’s GIS team for three days a week, over a twelve week period.

The EPS worked on a range of specific projects including:

• The authoring of StoryMaps to showcase RSPB projects, particularly the adventures of Lazaros the Egyptian Vulture (map) and a Turtle Dove tracking exercise (map)
• The deployment of Collector for ArcGIS and Survey123 for ArcGIS for bird monitoring and habitat mapping in the field using smartphones
• The creation of an ‘ArcGIS Workspace’ on the RSPB’s internal portal, populated with best practice documentation and resources
• The delivery of training courses, lunch-time knowledge-transfer sessions and other initiatives to improve the skills of the RSPB’s in-house team
• Recommendations for how to further extend the use of ArcGIS and innovate with GIS

The RSPB gained significant value from its appointment of an EPS. The long-term benefits include:

Greater return on GIS investment

With the support and guidance of the EPS, the RSPB is now gaining an enhanced return from its existing investment in ArcGIS. “GIS is a very fast-moving field,” says Adrian Hughes, Head of GIS Technical Services at the RSPB. “Having a specialist from Esri UK as a part of our team helped us realise what is possible with the latest ArcGIS technology. We are now making far greater use of ArcGIS to support our conservation, education and fundraising activities.”

Enhanced in-house skills and knowledge

Critically, the EPS brought up-to-date skills and knowledge to the RSPB and passed them on to members of staff, boosting their own competencies. She delivered a range of training courses, as well as focussed one-to-one, webinar and lunchtime sessions to help RSPB staff learn about, and put into practice, the latest capabilities of ArcGIS. She also led best practice and ‘tips and tricks’ discussions and created invaluable learning materials for the RSPB’s ‘ArcGIS Workspace’.

 Accelerated project delivery

In one project, the EPS used Collector for ArcGIS and Survey123 for ArcGIS – two tools that are included within the ArcGIS – to create a mobile survey solution for the RSPB. The app is now being used by volunteers to collect data about an endangered seabird, the Little Tern, in the field on smartphones. “With the hands-on involvement of Esri UK’s specialist, we delivered this mobile survey solution in half the time that we might otherwise have needed to develop it in house,” Hughes says.

Improved citizen engagement

In another initiative, the EPS developed Story Maps to make RSPB data engaging for members of the public. For instance, the Story Map about Lazaros the Egyptian Vulture reached over 40,000 people via the RSPB’s social media channels and prompted positive responses from RSPB followers. Hughes notes, “The specialist showed us how quickly we can create captivating content to help engage the public and convey the urgency and importance of our conservation work.”

A platform for innovation in conservation

Particularly in the areas of web and mobile GIS, the EPS inspired the RSPB team to innovate. For instance, the EPS helped to test a drone-to-map solution that will, in the future, enable the RSPB to collect vital habitat data more cost effectively. Summing up, Hughes says, “Without doubt, our appointment of an EPS has helped us realise just how much we can do with GIS to support the vital work of the RSPB now and in the future.”

Every year, a staggering 190,000 tonnes of rubbish are generated by households and businesses in the City of Westminster, enough to fill the Royal Albert Hall 26 times over. With the two main contracts for the recycling and disposal of this waste coming up for renewal, the council’s cleansing department wanted to make absolutely certain that it selected suppliers who could offer optimum value for taxpayers’ money.

With growing congestion on London’s roads along with high fuel costs, the council realised that travel time to and from vehicle depots, waste treatment sites and recycling facilities was a significant factor influencing the cost of waste disposal services. So, in its tender documents for the new contracts, it wanted to encourage bids from contractors who had sites within a short drive-time of the centre of the borough.

The key challenge for the cleansing department was how to accurately measure drivetimes for its waste collection vehicles, on busy streets, and along hundreds of alternative routes, at different times of the day. The council initially approached a firm of transportation consultants, which quoted £20,000 to undertake a drive-time analysis project. However by consulting the council’s internal geographic information system (GIS) department, the cleansing department realised it had an alternative means of addressing the challenge, using existing resources.

Westminster City Council has been using solutions from Esri’s ArcGIS platform for many years and the GIS team had recently begun to explore ArcGIS Online. Following a conversation with the council’s cleansing department, Peter Kohler, GIS lead at Westminster City Council, used ArcGIS Online and network routing data for central London to put together an initial proof of concept, based on the average drive-times of cars.

Next, the council’s GIS team incorporated GPS data from its waste collection trucks, which gave it the actual, average speeds of its own vehicles, at different times in the day. It then worked closely with the cleansing department to analyse the data and produced a map (in web and pdf formats), showing a 35-minute drive-time boundary from Marble Arch, the centre of the borough. “ArcGIS Online makes it extremely easy to adjust and produce maps, so the cleansing department could experiment with different drive-time limits and drive-time boundaries at little cost and in little time,” Kohler says.

Westminster City Council has now embedded the ArcGIS Online map into its tender documents for new waste collection contracts and is giving favourable consideration to bids from contractors with sites within the delineated 35-minute drive-time area. This focused procurement approach is delivering significant benefits including:

Evidence-based decision making
With its new insight into the optimal operation of waste collection vehicles, the council can set meaningful criteria for prospective new contractors and make appointments based on facts. As Kohler says, “ArcGIS Online is helping Westminster City Council to make evidence-based decisions and ensure the most effective use of public funds in the management of waste services.”

Value for money for taxpayers
By appointing contractors with the closest sites, Westminster City Council can minimise the cost of fuel and employee time, and ensure that contracts represent the best possible value for taxpayers’ money. Jarno Stet, Waste Services Manager at Westminster City Council, explains: “The cost implications of selecting contractors with waste treatment sites with unacceptable travel distances could add up to £6 per mile. When this figure is multiplied by the number of miles travelled every year, the number of vehicles we operate, staff labour and overtime cost, the total annual avoided cost could be as much as £2 million.”

Fast insight into complex challenges
ArcGIS Online gave the council a fast and flexible solution to its challenge, enabling it to find the answers to its drive-time question within the tight timescale of the procurement process. “To the waste collection team, this was a very difficult and complex question to ask and they were expecting it to take a long time and cost a lot of money to get an answer,” Kohler says. “Using ArcGIS Online I could turn around a detailed map in minutes for an expenditure of around 30 pence in user credits.”

Return on annual investment in GIS
Whereas external consultants had quoted £20,000 to perform drive-time analysis, Westminster City Council was able to complete the project itself, using its existing licence for ArcGIS Online and the skills of in-house staff. “With the consultancy fee savings from this one small project, we have paid back the council’s entire GIS software spend for the year,” estimates Kohler, adding that, “ArcGIS will continue to add immense value across many of similar projects in other departments in the months ahead.”

In 2014, Transport for London (TfL) embarked on a £4 billion investment plan that encompasses hundreds of separate projects to improve the capital’s roads, tunnels, bridges, pedestrian areas and cycle paths, over a period of at least ten years. This will completely transform the surface transportation network in London, making it fit for the increasing demands of a growing population and deliver healthier streets for all.

To ensure the success of this highly ambitious programme, the organisation recognised the need for one single, central source of information that would provide a clear, up-to-date picture of which schemes were taking place, where and when. It was vital for the success of the plan for multiple project teams to be able to collaborate to coordinate simultaneous projects, balance numerous priorities and minimise public inconvenience.

Rather than just develop a stand-alone, web-based geographic information system (GIS) application to meet its immediate business requirement, TfL decided to first develop a corporate, server-based GIS platform and then build its web applications on that foundation. This well considered, far-sighted and undoubtedly strategic decision multiplied the benefits from TfL’s GIS investment exponentially.

TfL developed its enterprise GIS platform, known internally as GIS-as-a-service, using Esri’s ArcGIS, with support and specialist advice from Esri UK. It then used Esri’s web application templates to build an internal, intranet-based web application called the Surface Playbook that enables employees to view 400 plus layers of project and asset data on interactive street maps. Subsequently, TfL has released an external version of the Surface Playbook for London borough councils, which displays data layers that are directly pertinent to road network improvements.

Internally, Surface Playbook is being used by over 2000 employees, from multiple different teams in the Surface Transport division, as well as other sections of TfL. The external version of the Surface Playbook is now available to all TfL stakeholders including London Boroughs, GLA, Utilities and Highways England. Users of both solutions can select a location on the interactive map and use the time-slider tool to view all current and planned schemes or works at different points in time. Then, they can simply click on the map to access asset and other project information, all from one place, for the first time.

Better informed decision making
Surface Playbook brings together information previously held in different systems and departments, in mixed formats, and makes it accessible to everyone. Consequently, teams can make better informed decisions about where and when to carry out works, to avoid duplicated effort and speed up the completion of planned schemes. “Surface Playbook provides a comprehensive picture of our road network, assets, current works and projects in one place, giving employees the best information from which to make important planning and operational decisions,” says Fiona Clowes, GIS Lead at TfL.

Improved operational efficiency
Employees save time as they no longer have to check multiple systems and manually collate information or send information requests to other departments. Likewise, they don’t have to request specific maps from the GIS team and wait for them to be produced, as they can self-serve all the maps they need from Surface Playbook and use them to collaborate more easily with colleagues. Employees in boroughs can also use the external Surface Playbook to strategically plan road network improvements and coordinate and collaborate with TfL, further extending the benefits of the GIS to stakeholders.

Less disruption for road users
Ultimately, by helping to ensure that projects are well planned and coordinated, the Surface Playbook will help TfL to minimise the impact of improvement works on the travelling public.

A platform for future aspirations
The creation of the enterprise GIS platform has transformed the way that the whole organisation views spatial data, as Clowes explains. “GIS has gone from being a desktop application used by a single team to being a fully-embedded enterprise-wide IT system, available to the entire business.”

Most significantly, the GIS platform has paved the way for TfL to introduce many more applications that will add value for the business in the months and years ahead, in areas such as CCTV, road work permits and other line of business apps. “ArcGIS has enabled us to create a flexible, scalable and sustainable foundation for the future,” Clowes comments. “ArcGIS is already transforming our business and will continue to support the business to deliver high quality data to users to assist with their decision making and facilitate collaboration and coordination opportunities long term.”

National Grid plc is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the world. It owns and operates gas distribution assets, which deliver energy to millions of homes and businesses right across Great Britain and the North East USA.

In an industry that is heavily monitored and increasingly competitive, the judgments of the regulator are of utmost importance. Ofgem’s comparator ratings of National Grid’s Gas Distribution business had fallen significantly behind those of its UK peers. Furthermore, National Grid’s customer satisfaction statistics in this division were also lower than both its own expectations and the industry average.

These factors together provided National Grid with compelling evidence of the need for change in its Gas Distribution business. The company wanted to urgently improve its standing with Ofgem, but it also had to start to prepare for the new challenges it would face in the future.

Pete Massey, Director of the company’s Gas Distribution Transformation Programme, explains: “We were not performing as strongly as our peers in the industry, but this wasn’t our only concern. We saw that the world was changing to be much more customer focused, more innovative and cost-conscious. This new world that we were moving into was going to be even more challenging and would stretch our capabilities to the limit, so we knew that we had to transform.”

As a core part of its business transformation, National Grid took the radical decision to reduce its business systems from forty to four to create a simplified, standardised and integrated systems landscape. National Grid had been using Esri Geographic Information System (GIS) solutions for many years, and this was the only solution carried forward to the new IT environment. Here, Esri’s ArcGIS software was integrated with the SAP Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system, the SAP Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) and Syclo mobile applications.

The organisation recognised that Esri’s ArcGIS technology was the most intuitive way for users to work with network asset information, so it decided to make mapping technology accessible to the majority of its 5,000 UK employees, including its customer call centre staff and mobile engineers. “Most of our activities are location based, so we could see we needed to get more of our processes on digital maps and make GIS capabilities accessible to employees right across the business,” Massey says.

National Grid has succeeded in fundamentally changing the way that it works. It has redesigned many of its most critical business processes, to significantly improve cost efficiency and employee productivity. National Grid estimates that its entire transformation programme will deliver a cost saving of £35 million per year. “The use of GIS is a key part of this saving and provides new insights into our asset and business performance,” Massey says.

Previously, National Grid created designs for network extensions and replacements on paper and then manually generated the corresponding work orders. Now, engineers design new networks directly on maps in ArcGIS, and the work orders are produced automatically from these digital designs. “We have reduced a complex nine-step business process to six integrated stages, which improves our efficiency,” says Massey. “Our new integrated process also enables us to improve the accuracy of our cost estimates and cost tracking, create more precise network designs, make planned network changes more visible to the entire business and reduce the likelihood of manual errors.”

The use of ArcGIS on portable computers enables National Grid’s mobile engineers to locate assets and jobs much more easily and work more productively. If the ‘as-built’ infrastructure differs from the network plan, data capture technicians can easily mark up any changes on the asset map while in the field. These changes are sent automatically to a central quality assurance team and, from there, asset updates are fed directly into SAP. “The whole process is much slicker and a lot more efficient,” says Massey.

The integration of GIS with SAP eliminates data duplication and inconsistency and makes more accurate asset information accessible to support decision making. Highly intuitive, the GIS design solutions and simpler business processes have been a hit with employees.

National Grid is now considering the creation of online mapping solutions and GISbased ‘apps’, enabling consumers to more easily check the status of works in their neighbourhoods, book appointments and report faults. These new customer services, together with the efficiency and process improvements already achieved, are expected to lead to higher Ofgem rankings, stronger performance against industry peers and rising customer satisfaction.

The £15 billion pound Crossrail project is delivering a new railway for London and the South East of England. Europe’s largest infrastructure project, it encompasses 42km of tunnels and 10 new stations. The finished railway will be an accessible route of 40 stations from Reading and Heathrow in the west, through central London, to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east.

A project on this scale requires a geographic information system (GIS) to record and manage the ever-changing inventory of assets and many simultaneous programmes of work. Crossrail’s existing GIS needed to be updated to ensure it was fully compatible with modern browsers and operating systems. The proposed new solution also needed to be more time efficient and offer the cutting-edge capabilities needed.

Following a thorough competitive evaluation, Crossrail Ltd entered into an Enterprise Licence Agreement (ELA) with Esri UK. With support from Esri UK’s Professional Services team, it then used Esri’s ArcGIS to develop an integrated suite of server-based, desktop, web, mobile and 3D applications in 14 months. The organisation now uses:

• ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Server to prepare data and perform spatial data analysis
• Portal for ArcGIS to make comprehensive, up-to-date information available to employees, designers and contractors via a secure intranet
• ArcGIS Mobile and ArcGIS Collector App to allow field-based personnel to see and correct the locations of assets, using mobile devices
• ArcGIS 3D capabilities to deliver three dimensional visualisations of facilities and their surroundings
• ArcGIS Online and Esri UK’s Open Data Portal to publish selected content for the general public, media and third parties

Crossrail also elected to use Esri UK’s Data Service, which streams Ordnance Survey background mapping and other contextual data directly into Crossrail’s corporate GIS. The use of this service has rapidly improved the quality of background mapping and reduced the need for time-consuming data management, saving several hundred hours of effort per annum.

ArcGIS has given Crossrail the flexibility to innovate and introduce valueadding GIS services over time. The first of its new solutions are already delivering benefits for the business, such as:

Increased employee productivity
Crossrail’s Asset Protection Engineers now use an ArcGIS-based app to help them produce ground movement reports in response to claims where settlement issues have potentially arisen. The engineer can use the app to select, collate and present all of the information required, resulting in up to 80% less time spent on the report.

Effective estate management
The responsibility for construction sites passes from one contractor to another in different project phases. By using a temporal slider tool in ArcGIS, employees within the organisation can easily see which contractors are responsible for which parcels of land at any one time. The solution therefore improves understanding of liability and reduces the risk of unauthorised occupation over a multitude of construction sites, avoiding unnecessary delays and cost overruns.

More cost efficient operations
In another initiative, Crossrail is using ArcGIS to model facilities in 3D for the first time and prepare an invaluable 3D asset record for the new station operators. The 3D capabilities of ArcGIS have enhanced the understanding of the relationships between assets and facility spaces, enabling them to be maintained more cost efficiently. Infrastructure Managers can also identify and analyse issues on the ground with greater understanding than before.

Improved safety and security
When Crossrail’s employees survey construction sites they use the ArcGIS Collector App on mobile tablets to check the exact boundaries against land records, and enter any observations or on-site variations. Crossrail can then ensure that hoardings are correctly placed to secure sites and help keep the public separate from the works taking place on site. The 3D mapping of stations may also prove critical in the future for helping the station operator.

Clear communication with external audiences
Using ArcGIS, Crossrail can easily share data about its routes, assets, tunnels and stations with third parties, the general public and the media. In the future, the organisation plans to make it possible for partners, such as Transport for London, to consume its data as web services or gain secure access to Crossrail’s central GIS portal. This approach will not only improve collaboration with partners; it is expected to also decrease the time that Crossrail spends managing content for third parties and reduce the risk of decisions being made on the basis of out-of-date information.

“Everybody matters” according to Wiltshire Council’s well publicised mission statement, and it is this fundamental principle that undoubtedly guides and shapes public services in the county. Like all local government organisations, however, Wiltshire Council has to balance its desire to improve its services with the omnipresent pressure to reduce costs. It also has to consider the environmental impact of its services and minimise its carbon footprint.

The highways team within Wiltshire Council was keen to adopt more mobile working practices to help it deliver a top quality public service more efficiently, and sustainably. The team was working from paper maps in the field and a great deal of time was spent travelling to and from the office, as well as transferring data from paper records to IT systems. Inevitably, data inconsistency issues arose occasionally, and the council didn’t want to risk key decisions being made on asset information that was out-of-date or inaccurate.

Wiltshire Council had been using geographic information system (GIS) technology from Esri UK for the last four years and had an Enterprise License Agreement that gave it unlimited access to Esri’s ArcGIS platform. Therefore, there was no need to invest in any additional software. Matt Rudd and Lauren Wilson from the Spatial Information Team hadn’t developed mobile apps before but, following a one-day JumpStart training programme delivered by Esri UK, they had all the skills and confidence they needed to implement a new mobile GIS.

The solution the council developed specifically for the highways team runs on Samsung tablets and comprises three ArcGIS Collector Apps – drainage, fixed assets (benches, railings, bollards etc.) and play areas. It also includes four supplementary ArcGIS Online Viewer Apps for street litter, grounds maintenance, street cleaning and winter maintenance.

Twenty four highways employees now have access to the mobile apps to identify and plan the areas they wish to survey. Then, once they are at those locations, they use ArcGIS Collector to collect information about specific assets on their tablets, take and save photographs, update records and log changes in the condition of assets as necessary

If highways employees are working in areas with 3G coverage, their asset updates are instantly conveyed to the council’s central GIS. However, when they are working in locations where the mobile signal is poor, such as on Salisbury Plain, their updates are saved on the tablets and synchronised later. Julie Seddon, Solutions Manager for Spatial Information at Wiltshire Council, believes that this capability is critical for successful mobile working. “Wiltshire is such a rural county that offline functionality is absolutely key,” she says.

The Head of Local Highways and Parking Services, Adrian Hampton, calculated that use of the mobile GIS would lead to a £30,000 saving per year on petrol and other travel expenses, as employees no longer have to make so many journeys between the office and the field. Time savings and other process efficiencies contribute a further £24,000 cost reduction, creating a total annual saving of £55,000 or £275,000 over five years. “This is an exceptional result, considering that the highways mobile solution cost just £250 to create in staff time,” says Seddon.

Within months of rolling out the highways solution, it became clear that this practical app could revolutionise the way in which many different council teams worked. The Spatial Information Team therefore started working with other business units, such as emergency planning, and expects to roll-out mobile GIS apps to further teams during the year. The potential five-year savings for the council could therefore increase further in the near future.

Wiltshire Council has yet to calculate the carbon savings that it will achieve from more extensive use of mobile GIS across the unitary authority. However, it is already clear that the reduction in unnecessary journeys and petrol usage will have an important benefit for the environment.

Most significantly, the council has been able to improve its public services, alongside achieving cost and carbon savings. Employees in the highways team can spend more time in the field, managing the conditions of assets, so citizens benefit from better quality amenities like play areas and cycle railings.

Broken equipment can be identified and isolated promptly, so public safety is improved, and the council less exposed to risk. Seddon explains: “If we can proactively capture information about the condition of assets and instigate repairs more quickly, we can reduce claims and safeguard our communities.”

Finally, the highways live master data captured in the field can be shared with all GIS users via ArcGIS Desktop, LocalView Fusion or ArcGIS Collector within the council. “With one central source of master data, we now have up-to-date, accurate drainage and highways asset information that everyone in the council can rely upon,” Seddon enthuses. “This improves our decision making and, ultimately, the services we deliver to the public.”

Sovereign Housing Association has extended its use of GIS in a strategic, enterprise-wide initiative that is transforming core business operations. Now, the organisation can deliver more responsive customer services, better understand the needs of its residents and plan more strategically to build new homes.

Sovereign manages and maintains more than 38,000 homes across the south and south west of England. Already one of the UK’s largest housing associations, the organisation aims to grow to 50,000 homes by 2018, to help address the critical shortage of affordable property in this part of the country. It is, however, often difficult to identify suitable development sites that will pass the scrutiny of planning authorities, so Sovereign has to be able to work closely with local councils to facilitate its growth plans.

The housing association currently has more than 80,000 residents in its properties and strives to deliver the best possible services to enable these people to live comfortably and happily in their homes. To consistently achieve a high standard of customer service, it needs an accurate understanding of its residents’ needs and concerns, as well as efficient operations so that it can respond quickly and effectively.

Sovereign had been using geographic information system (GIS) solutions to manage spatial data for some time, but, in the year of its 25th anniversary, it took the strategic decision to exploit the powerful analysis capabilities of GIS more extensively as part of a wide-ranging business transformation programme. It selected a comprehensive suite of solutions from Esri’s ArcGIS, including ArcGIS Server Enterprise Advanced, ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Online, 3D Analyst, Spatial Analyst and Network Analyst and began to apply GIS to pressing business challenges.

At the same time, the organisation decided to extend GIS capabilities out to the whole business, aiming to train 500 employees across all parts of its business by summer 2015. With support from Esri UK’s professional services team, Sovereign built a GIS-based web app to deliver accurate information about properties, assets, land and residents to employees working in all departments ranging from housing services to the customer call centre. Available via the company’s secure intranet, this solution gives everyone in the business instant access to up-to-date business information, all in one place, in an easy-to-use interactive map-based format.

The enterprise-wide use of ArcGIS has begun to transform the way in which employees work and will deliver long-term benefits for the organisation, as Andrew Bradley, GIS manager at Sovereign, explains. “ArcGIS is adding value right across our business and will continue to do so for years to come,” he says. “It will enable us to plan and build new homes, work efficiently and deliver better services for residents.”

Sovereign employs its new ArcGIS solutions to conduct analysis and gain a deeper insight into business issues and tenant needs. For instance, the company collected data on the incomes and living costs of its residents, at all of its different locations, and performed GIS analysis to ascertain the impact that the government’s new ‘benefits cap’ would have on residents over a period of 5-10 years. When the findings were displayed on a digital map with a time lapse slider, the effects of the new policy became clear. “We could see a wave of impact coming out of London over time and identify easily where and when different types of households would start to struggle,” says Bradley. “ArcGIS is a very powerful tool, helping us to better understand and respond to our residents’ needs.”

ArcGIS enterprise is proving particularly beneficial for Sovereign’s strategic asset management group, a team tasked with identifying and qualifying development opportunities. It has successfully used ArcGIS to pinpoint locations where Sovereign-owned land lies adjacent to under-utilised council-owned land. It then uses ArcGIS Online to share this information with councils and commence negotiations about mutually-beneficial new housing projects. Bradley recalls: “When we first used ArcGIS Online in a meeting to highlight potential development sites to a team from a local council, their jaws dropped. It was incredible. ArcGIS has opened up a whole world of opportunity and will certainly help us to achieve our planned growth.”

Now, if residents contact Sovereign with an enquiry about a boundary, employees can quickly check on the Intranet-based GIS and often clarify issues instantly. Previously, such boundary enquiries had to be passed on to the company’s legal team, and responses could take up to 21 days according to the company’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). “Our employees are empowered with information that they simply didn’t have before,” Alice Rhodes, GIS Analyst at Sovereign says. “Customers get accurate information much more quickly.”

Finally, ArcGIS is enabling Sovereign to improve its operational efficiency, as all employees can share information much more easily. They no longer have to send emails from team to team requesting data and waste time chasing up further details. Instead, they can simply look up the information they need straight away and work more productively.

Argent is a leading property development company. In 2008, it joined forces with London & Continental Railways Limited and DHL Supply Chain to form the King’s Cross Central Limited Partnership (KCCLP) and embarked on one of London’s largest ever mixed-use development projects.

In the heart of London, adjacent to busy King’s Cross and St. Pancras rail station lies 67 acres of brownfield development. By 2020, the area will accommodate 50 new and reused buildings, up to 2,000 homes, 20 streets and 10 public squares, providing a modern environment where some 45,000 people can work, live and study.

Argent is responsible for the development and asset management of this ongoing transformation. Over twenty project managers are working together with a wide range of contractors and consultants, using shared services and facilities in close proximity.

One of the challenges faced by Argent and KCCLP was how to manage large amounts of asset information – and indeed how to communicate this information to different stakeholders within KCCLP and Argent, as well as external partners, contractors and stakeholders.

Argent called in consulting firm GeoEnable for advice on how to overcome its asset and project management spatial challenges, as part of a wider initiative to improve information management. GeoEnable identified how geographic information system (GIS) technology could play a key role in the solution, alongside new internal business processes.

Argent had a basic desktop GIS solution, which no longer met the needs of the business. Director of GeoEnable, Steven Eglinton, says: “Argent possessed asset maps and plans, but needed the technical capability to share this asset information and the ability to keep pace with constant changes in asset data during the many project phases.”

GeoEnable deployed Esri’s ArcGIS Desktop solution in conjunction with ArcGIS Online for Organisations, Esri’s cloud-based GIS service. Used together, these GIS solutions allow Argent to create dynamic, interactive asset maps locally, and then share them with team members via the intranet. Users can view high level plans of the entire site, or drill down to individual roads, pipelines or buildings and click on the maps linked to the project management database.

Most Argent employees use a web browser to access ArcGIS Online from their desktops. However, a small but growing number employ customised web apps to access the same capabilities from their smart phones and tablets, while away from the office.

ArcGIS Online provides a complete, accurate record of all assets involved in the King’s Cross development, both installed and planned, and this information is accessible to everyone in the organisation from planners and surveyors to board members. Every week, projects progress and new contractors arrive; all this data is regularly updated in the GIS, so everyone has access to the same accurate information. “It is easy for everyone to get asset information instantly, whenever they need it,” says Argent’s GIS Manager Lilia Wydra.

ArcGIS Online includes a ‘phasing tool’ that enables users to look forward and see how the site might look at different points in time. This feature plays a critical role in helping Argent to make high-level business and financial decisions, as well as project-level decisions. “The asset information that is accessible via ArcGIS Online influences many decisions we make, from how to plan on-site logistics to when to start marketing new homes, offices and retail outlets,” says Wydra. “GIS is a strategic asset management tool for business planning as well as site management.”

At present, the web-based GIS solution is accessible to Argent and KCCLP employees and a limited number of consultants to KCCLP. The company is also working with external consultancies and construction firms on the development site. GIS has significantly improved KCCLP’s ability to collaborate with third parties and helps to ensure that everyone involved in the King’s Cross development is properly informed.

One of the key advantages of having instant access to shared asset information is that it helps to improve record keeping and phasing. By accessing time-aware information users can easily access what is proposed, when contractors are working on site and clearly see when projects are due for completion. This allows better planning and identifies potential clashes. This is a particularly important issue on large projects like the King’s Cross development, where many different organisations are working together in close proximity.