Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council was no stranger to Esri’s geographic information system (GIS) technology. Indeed, it had been using solutions from Esri UK for over twenty five years. The organisation was now in the process of migrating to Esri’s ArcGIS, to give it access to new, more versatile web- and cloud-based GIS services. It realised that this pivotal technology upgrade had the potential to significantly transform the way in which it used GIS to deliver services for citizens.

Given the vital importance of the new GIS platform, Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council recognised that it would be beneficial for its GIS specialists to receive ArcGIS training. It wanted to ensure that it had the skills in-house to optimise its use of the new GIS platform, but, like all public sector organisations, it had a limited training budget. Consequently, it feared that the costs associated with paying for employees to travel to a training venue and providing overnight accommodation would make the training course prohibitively expensive.

The council was already familiar with Esri UK’s on-site training courses, a pragmatic option for organisations looking for a more cost-effective way to train up to twelve employees. It liked the idea of being able to receive training at its own offices but, as it only planned to train three members of staff, it didn’t think this would be feasible. Then the Esri UK training team mentioned its ‘Invite a Neighbour’ programme, a scheme that makes it easy for GIS teams to invite other nearby businesses to join their on-site courses and share the costs and benefits of local, cost-effective training.

Through its participation in a networking group, ‘Hampshire GIS’, Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council was able to quickly establish that there were GIS professionals at other public sector organisations locally who were also interested in receiving ArcGIS training. Esri UK helped liaise with these organisations and handled all of the necessary course administration, maximising convenience for Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council as the host business.

Held in a meeting room at Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council’s offices, the two-day course provided valuable instruction in how to use ArcGIS Server and ArcGIS Online to create a range of different web services and publish maps on the web. Twelve delegates from seven different organisations attended, and the experienced Esri UK trainer brought all the course materials and exercises pre-loaded on laptop computers.

Cost savings for multiple organisations
The shared approach to training enabled seven public sector organisations to reduce the costs associated with training. Robert Curtis, the GIS Systems Administrator at Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council, says, “When the cost of the course fees, avoided travel and accommodation for three delegates is taken into account, we estimate that we reduced our anticipated training expenditure by over £1,600. The other attending organisations would have made similar savings.”

Reduced carbon impact
The course also enabled the participating councils to minimise their impact on the environment. “At a time when councils are trying to make cost savings and lessen their carbon footprint, the ‘Invite a Neighbour’ training concept really makes sense,” says Curtis. “It enabled us to reduce our training costs, avoid unnecessary expenditure on accommodation and minimise our carbon impact by shortening journeys.”

Greater convenience for delegates
As the training was held at a location not far from any of the participating organisations, delegates were away from their offices for no longer than was absolutely necessary, without wasting any personal time. “When I did a different training session previously, I had to give up my Sunday afternoon to get there in time for Monday morning and didn’t get back until late on the Wednesday evening,” Curtis recalls. “With this course, no-one had to give up their free time, as it was much like a normal working day.”

Improved services for citizens and employees
Most importantly, Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council now has the new GIS skills it needs, enabling it to commence the next chapter in the story of its long use of Esri GIS technology. Initially, the council plans to use the new features and capabilities of ArcGIS to redevelop a number of internal and external map viewers that will provide employees and the general public with improved access to local information.

Inspiration for the future
Curtis believes that the course helped to strengthen the local network of Esri users and gave everyone the opportunity to collaborate more closely with local government colleagues facing similar challenges. “As the other course participants were all people we knew, who worked for similar public sector organisations, the training course gave us a great opportunity to share ideas,” he says. “We have gained both the inspiration and skills to advance our use of GIS in the future.”

Epping Forest District Council has a multifaceted vision for the future. It wants to support the development of the local economy, build new homes and meet the often challenging needs of citizens, while protecting the green belt, conserving the character of local communities and keeping the council tax low. The council knew that if it was to achieve these goals, it would need to invest in new technologies and look for creative ways to transform its processes. Indeed, it stated in its Corporate Plan 2015-2020: “We want to embrace modern technology and innovation as we strive to improve the quality and efficiency of our services.”

For many years, the council had been using an assortment of different geographic information system (GIS) packages, from multiple suppliers, but felt constrained by the lack of flexibility and functionality that this mixed approach offered. So, in 2015, to support its Corporate Plan, it decided to replace all its legacy GIS solutions with Esri’s ArcGIS platform. “ArcGIS gave us a lot of options, at a time when we needed to embrace new, more innovative ways of working,” says Andrew Gardener, GIS Officer at Epping Forest District Council.

Within just eight months of deploying ArcGIS, the council’s small GIS team of three people had delivered a staggering array of new GIS apps and services, including:

• Customised web maps for council departments, displaying data relevant for different teams of employees in a format that is easy to access and understand
• Public-facing web maps, allowing citizens to use mobile devices to more easily access information on everything from the locations of polling stations to road closures along the route of the Tour de France
• Mobile apps showing field-based employees the quickest routes between jobs and enabling them to collect data electronically
• A centralised store of geo-spatial data and a single GIS platform for sharing ‘one version of the truth’ throughout the entire organisation.

“The fact that we introduced all this in the first eight months demonstrates just how easy it is to work with ArcGIS,” says Gardener. “One of the main advantages of ArcGIS is its flexibility and the wide range of components included in the platform as standard, which make it quick and easy to develop many different apps and services.”

Gardener and his colleagues have been particularly impressed by the ease at which they can develop new solutions for users of smartphones and tablets using ArcGIS. He says: “ArcGIS gives us mobile GIS apps that we can just pick up and use. It has enabled us to create user-friendly mobile solutions that start to save money, improve our efficiency and deliver better information to citizens straight away.”

Epping Forest District Council is now gaining extensive benefits from its use of ArcGIS and delivering on its corporate vision.

Better services for citizens
With the development of its new web maps, Epping Forest District Council can now make better information accessible to the general public, including information that wasn’t publically available previously. For added convenience, citizens can also access this information direct from their smart phones and tablets, from any location. The council’s web maps have been well received by local citizens; a new Waste Collection Date web map received over 10,000 hits in the first fortnight alone.

Greater efficiency in council processes
ArcGIS has contributed to significant improvements in the efficiency of key council processes. For instance, it has been used to create a mobile GIS for field-based surveyors, which enables them to check and record the condition of waste bins, bus shelters and other assets far more quickly. The automated solution converts spreadsheets with lists of daily jobs into a time-efficient route; displays this journey (and job details) on the surveyors’ smartphones; and allows asset data to be collected electronically, removing the need for subsequent data entry.

Sustainable cost savings
The efficiency improvements are expected to translate into sustainable long term cost savings, which will help the council to maintain its low council tax bands. The council no longer has to print out paper maps to give to its mobile surveyors and also saves on fuel, as surveyors take the most direct routes between jobs. In addition, citizens who use the online maps to ‘self-serve’ information may not need to call the council, which will dramatically reduce the cost of customer contact.

Well-informed decision making
Employees across multiple departments now rely on intranet-based maps to gain all the information they need to process planning applications and much more besides. “Everyone has a customised GIS, with the precise layers of data they need to do their jobs,” Gardener says. “Consequently, it is much easier for employees to make quicker, more informed decisions and deliver a better quality service for citizens.”

Sompo Canopius is a global insurance business, with operations in the UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Bermuda, US and Singapore. Every year, it underwrites billions of pounds worth of business with domestic, commercial and reinsurance customers on every continent. Consequently, it needs to be able to collate, analyse and, critically, understand vast amounts of information about potential natural catastrophes at millions of separate locations all around the world.

“Today’s insurers can potentially access huge volumes of data about hazards and risks from numerous organisations, but trying to distil all this Big Data down into something that underwriters can use on a day-to-day basis is quite challenging,” says Rob Porter, Head of Catastrophe Research at Sompo Canopius. “We wanted to create an online app that would make it easy for anyone in the company to view and interpret up-to-date catastrophe data, about anywhere in the world, on demand.”

Sompo Canopius worked with Esri UK’s Professional Services team to create its app using Esri’s ArcGIS Online solution, incorporating live disaster feeds. Named CatNav, the app is accessed via the company’s secure intranet, making it available to all of the company’s 600 employees in offices around the world. “ArcGIS Online is an exceptional tool for bringing maps and spatial data to a wider audience, especially people who have not used technical GIS products before,” says Porter. “It is highly intuitive and straight-forward to use.”

Now, underwriters can access CatNav when talking with customers or brokers, enter an address, and immediately see accurate information on localised hazards such as flooding, as well as more wide-ranging risk factors including hurricanes and earthquakes. Employees can also use CatNav to view and better understand the accumulation of insured properties in specific areas or, in the event of a natural disaster, easily see which insured properties are at risk.

Esri UK helped Sompo Canopius to integrate CatNav with back-office systems and databases, using Esri’s ArcGIS Server solution and Python scripting, to facilitate a number of automated workflows. For instance, now, when a new insurance policy is accepted, maps of the underwritten locations are automatically generated by ArcGIS and attached to policy documents, with no time delay or manual intervention.

CatNav is delivering a range of commercial advantages for Sompo Canopius including:

Well-supported underwriting decisions
Underwriters are now better informed about perils and natural hazards at all global locations and can ensure that potential risks are accounted for, every time. “Good underwriting is at the very foundation of how insurers make money,” says Porter. “ArcGIS Online supports underwriters, enabling them to make the right decisions about which policies to offer, at which price, to make the company more profitable over time. It gives the business greater confidence that underwriters are underwriting policies appropriately.”

Greater understanding of exposure to risk
Using CatNav, senior managers can better monitor the business’ exposure to risk, as catastrophes unfold. For instance, during a significant wildfire incident in Alberta, Canada, the organisation consumed data from NASA on the spread of the fire and used ArcGIS to monitor the risk to insured properties. “With ArcGIS Online, we could make near real-time information on the spread of the wildfires and the proximity of insured locations accessible to all our global employees,” Porter recalls. “There was a lot of media hype about the disaster, but ArcGIS Online enabled us to identify properties at risk and allay management concerns about the likely extent of any claims.”

Sound business management
Sompo Canopius also relies on CatNav to help monitor the level of accumulated insurance in specific regions and form sound business strategies to minimise overexposure to risks. “Global insurance is a highly competitive market,” says Porter. “CatNav helps us to ensure the business is appropriately diversified. The app helps us to make the right commercial decisions to achieve competitive advantage.”

Significant internal productivity gains
ArcGIS saves a significant amount of time for Sompo Canopius, partly because of the automation of key map production workflows and partly because the GIS team no longer has to respond to ad hoc requests for catastrophe maps. Previously, it took two or three hours for a GIS specialist to produce a pdf map showing a particular hazard or risk scenario at a certain location; now staff can see a map of whatever location they want, instantly.

More responsive client service
Staff can respond more quickly to client enquiries, because, in most circumstances, they no longer have to request information on potential risks and wait for it to be supplied. “They often don’t have to refer queries back to risk specialists, saving anything from a few hours to a whole day,” Porter estimates. “This helps us to provide a better quality of customer service.”

The South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive (SYPTE) is responsible for driving the development of the public transportation network in South Yorkshire and making information about bus, rail and tram services available to over 1.3 million people. The organisation wanted to introduce new information services for passengers, to encourage greater use of public transport. However, at the same time, it also needed to reduce its operating costs, urgently and sustainably.

To address these challenges, SYPTE decided to radically change the way in which it operated, by creating a single customer relationship management (CRM) platform that would centralise all of the organisation’s customer data, systems and processes. It planned to use this CRM not only to support all internal workflows, but also to transform the delivery of customer services via an integrated online customer portal

SYPTE has been a customer of Esri UK for over 20 years and immediately recognised the importance of including geographic information system (GIS) technology at the heart of its customer portal. With support from Esri UK, the organisation used Esri’s ArcGIS Server and JavaScript API for ArcGIS solutions to create a series of GIS web services. It then integrated them tightly with the new central CRM, built on Microsoft Dynamics, to allow two way communications between the customer-facing map views, back-end databases and internal processes.

Named MyTSY (Travel South Yorkshire), the customer portal now allows passengers to access an interactive online map and enter their postcode to find their nearest public transport stops, the best routes and service times. They can also click on the map to initiate communications with SYPTE, such as to report damage at tram stops or request new bus stop locations. The mapping interface has been designed to work on mobile devices, giving passengers the ability to use the customer portal anywhere and at any time.

“GIS is an essential part of MyTSY,” says Saad Masood, Senior GIS Analyst at SYPTE. “It allows people to navigate easily to the areas they know, visualise routes, plan their journeys and have greater confidence in public transport.”

Improved information services for customers
The integration of ArcGIS into the customer portal provides passengers with an easier and more convenient way to access travel information or contact SYPTE. The use of GIS is also helping SYPTE to deliver a new range of more personalised services for its customers. For example, commuters can view the interactive online maps to easily find and record their regular routes and bus stops. Then, when they leave work, they can simply use their smartphones to see exactly how many minutes away their next bus or tram is or see if there are any delays on the route. “People are often quite shocked that they can do this!” Masood admits. “It’s a great example of how GIS helps us to provide improved services for passengers and deliver a better customer experience.”

Reduced cost of customer contact
The MyTSY customer portal provides a much more cost-effective means of distributing travel information and handling customer enquiries than SYPTE’s network of travel information ‘shops’ in towns and cities around the area. “ArcGIS has helped us to change the way that people interact with us and enables us to deliver better customer services, more cost-effectively,” Masood says. “Reductions to SYPTE’s budget necessitated the closure of our physical shops and the organisation had to think about how to deliver information services effectively and sustainably. MyTSY has allowed cost savings of £400,000 in the first year. We expect the annual savings to be even higher in future years.”

Quicker resolution of issues
The online mapping capability plays a key role in helping SYPTE to resolve customer issues more quickly. For example, members of the public can go online, search for a specific bus stop and click on the map to report vandalism or damage to the shelter. This report is then automatically submitted to the relevant team, along with the correct location reference and the specification of the shelter, so that repairs can be initiated more promptly. When other passengers go online, they can see that the damage has already been reported and add comments to the existing record, but they cannot create an entirely new report for the same incident. This improves efficiency, as employees are no longer responding multiple times to the same issues.

Increased passenger numbers
Over time, SYPTE aims to improve customer satisfaction and increase the patronage of public transport. “By utilising Esri’s ArcGIS technology we are making it easier for passengers to plan their journey and make informed choices about available travel options,” Masood says. “Our aim is to encourage a modal shift to public transport services to reduce congestion and improve air quality.”

WSP Group plc is a global management and engineering consultancy. Whether designing, building or maintaining roads, bridges or civic amenities, knowledge of the built and natural environment is essential to their business and that of their clients.

When planning new road links, staff need to know the location of existing transport routes and centres of population; when designing new amenities, they need to know what environmental constraints might exist. The challenge was to make this information readily available to support staff in their day-to-day role.

Previously, WSP had a single data repository (including Ordnance Survey, NAVTEQ and demographic data), but used two different Esri tools for working with it: ArcIMS for around 100 non-specialist users, and ArcGIS Desktop to provide advanced functionality to around 300 specialists. WSP wanted to make data available to all 2,800 employees, irrespective of location and level of GIS expertise. Consequently, any new system had be intuitive and easy-to-use.

Esri’s ArcGIS Server was identified as the best solution, partly because the Flex API (Application Programming Interface) in v9.3 makes it easy to create customised mapping applications, combining web services from ArcGIS Server with other web content, for delivery over an intranet or the web.

In addition, WSP chose Google Maps API Premier to provide access to background mapping and Google AJAX Search API for location finding.

Within four months, WSP developed a corporate mashup called iGIS to deliver GIS services to its UK employees. It integrates Google base maps and location services with the WSP’s geographic data assets and the powerful geo-processing capabilities of ArcGIS Server, which makes many terabytes of data instantly accessible across the entire UK operation.

The result is a user-friendly mapping application that allows users to perform such tasks as query population statistics by area, undertake proximity searches, sketch site boundaries and print maps on demand.

Adoption was rapid (760 staff in the first fortnight and more than half the 2,800 UK staff within months) and the benefits too.

Data and functionality previously available to a few specialists is now available to all, taking GIS to new areas of the business. The intuitive iGIS interface, coupled with standard templates for figures and plans, has enabled GIS novices to produce high quality work for clients, including simple site location plans, analysing the demographics of an area, or undertaking complex spatial searches.

What previously took hours to pull together is now available in a fraction of the time, which is important in a business where many projects are charged on an hourly basis. iGIS allows WSP consultants to arrive on site with better knowledge of likely ground conditions and to offer a quicker, lower cost and higher quality service to clients.

ArcGIS Server has revolutionised data management: by having a central online data catalogue, WPS has saved money by eliminating unnecessary duplication and monitoring group spend more effectively to negotiate better rates.

Directors at WSP have been very impressed: “This is an exciting development of our GIS capability, which will materially improve the speed and efficiency of the delivery of a wide range of our project technical activities, calculations and presentation material,” says Mike Sheehan, Director, WSP Group. “iGIS helps to keep WSP competitive and stand out in the marketplace.”

Driven by positive feedback from staff and high demand, WSP plans to expand iGIS in the UK by adding further datasets and functionality and to roll it out globally across the entire group.

Recent improvements include adding new environmental and cultural heritage datasets and there are plans to add a geological map library catalogue showing where paper-based mapping has been purchased and where it is held.

In addition, WSP plans to use ArcGIS Server to develop value-added services for clients, who will be able to access their own data, analyse the results, drill down into layers of information and print their own maps, all via a secure login.

Westminster City Council has the busiest planning authority in the whole of the UK. Every year, it receives over 12,000 planning applications and needs to carefully manage the balance between residential, commercial and retail property to help maintain central London as a sustainable and successful city.

The council’s Evaluation and Performance team is required to survey the progress of planning permissions annually, in order to produce monitoring reports on changing land use patterns. This survey typically used to involve printing maps and forms and completing them by hand, on building sites, in all weathers. Inevitably, unnecessary inaccuracies and time delays occurred in transposing the hand-written notes back into the council’s IT systems.

When the department was reorganised, the team realised that a new survey approach was needed urgently. “The number of people in our team had reduced from five to four,” says Chris Lawrence, a spatial analyst at Westminster City Council. “However, at the same time, the number of planning applications that we needed to assess had increased by nearly 17% to 1,760.”

Westminster City Council has been using geographic information system (GIS) solutions from Esri UK for many years. Using the council’s existing licence for Esri’s ArcGIS platform, the team was able to take advantage of Esri’s ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Collector App to create a new mobile data collection solution. It then borrowed tablet computers from other council departments, enabling it to get up and running for almost no capital cost.

The new mobile surveying solution was introduced in the summer of 2015, allowing surveyors to plan their routes around London and complete their surveys electronically for the first time. At each site visited, surveyors selected from a range of symbols, such as green flags, to indicate if projects were progressing as anticipated. When the tablets were connected to Wi-Fi, the survey data was transferred almost instantaneously to ArcGIS Online, allowing colleagues in the office to monitor the surveyors’ progress.

This resourceful use of mobile GIS within the council has led to significant benefits including:

Surveyor productivity improved by 20% 
The tablet-based GIS is far easier to use than paper copies of maps and forms. Consequently, the council’s surveyors were able to gather data more quickly and plan optimum routes around the city to avoid duplicated journeys and wasted time. “ArcGIS made a huge difference to our productivity,” Lawrence says. “Whereas we used to be able to survey an average of 50 sites per day, per person, we can now survey 60 sites per day, per person.”

Project duration reduced by 1.5 months
Using its new mobile GIS solution, Westminster City Council was able to undertake the 2015 survey with four surveyors in just two months; previously, it had taken five people three and a half months to complete. This achievement is all the more noteworthy considering that there were around 250 more sites to survey this year than in previous years, as Lawrence points out. “ArcGIS Collector App enabled us to survey 17% more sites, with a 20% smaller team, in nearly half the time,” he says. “It has definitely contributed to cost efficiency savings for the council.”

Greater accuracy and accountability
As the surveyors’ observations are recorded digitally, there is less likelihood of inaccuracies occurring when notes are transposed from paper forms to the council’s database. Consequently, the quality of the council’s statutory reports is improved. In addition, the mobile GIS makes it easy for the team to look back, see who visited which site and when, answer any queries and validate the survey information.

Faster manipulation of data for reports
The versatility of ArcGIS Online enables the council to easily export its survey data into Excel spreadsheets and also extract shape files showing map images which can be easily embedded into its statutory reports. “I don’t have to manually compile spreadsheets anymore,” says Lawrence with enthusiasm. “The data component of our annual report took just a week to complete this year, rather than a month in previous years.” The Evaluation and Performance team is now looking at Esri’s story map templates and investigating ways to use them to further improve the quality its statutory reporting in the future.

Peter Kohler, GIS lead at Westminster City Council commented, “This mobile app is an excellent example of how ArcGIS allows corporate GIS teams to provide business users with the tools to do innovative, time- and cost-saving work. Projects like this help to deliver a high return on the council’s investment in GIS.”

The primary role of the highways maintenance department at Worcestershire County Council is to improve public safety on the roads by maintaining the public highways. During periods of exceptional flooding, violent storms and heavy snowfall, its job becomes not only more difficult, but also more critical.

In one particularly bad flooding incident, the army was called upon to work alongside the council and other emergency services to help deliver sandbags and clear debris from roads. However, not everyone was familiar with the county and coordinating activities was a huge challenge. “It became obvious that we needed a single, web-based system for sharing highways information with multiple different agencies and making up-to-the minute information available to the general public in emergency situations,” recalls Elwyn Williams, Highway Maintenance Officer at Worcestershire County Council.

The council had been using Esri’s ArcGIS platform as its enterprise geographic information system (GIS) for over 15 years and already had all of the software and skills it needed to build a solution for the highways maintenance department. Initially the prototype application was introduced within weeks; more data and solution enhancements were then added over subsequent months. “We deliberately adopted an agile development approach, so we could quickly start using the new GIS,” says Mark Smith, GIS Programme Coordinator at Worcestershire County Council. “ArcGIS gave us an ideal platform for rapid application development and enabled us to create a bespoke solution – for no additional cost other than our time.”

Named the Highways Maintenance Emergency GIS (HMEGIS), the solution brings together over 30 layers of data and, for the first time, makes them visible on interactive maps all in one place. Internal data such as emergency sign deployments, fallen trees, closed bridges, grit bin locations and high risk campsites is consolidated with data streamed from external sources, including live feeds from riverside webcams, maintenance vehicle locations, actual gritting routes, customised river warning levels and weather forecasts.

HMEGIS has a number of innovative features including an alert panel that scrolls across the top of the screen, so that all operatives can instantly see and react to the latest emergency situation. The solution also has a ‘rewind and replay’ tool that allows managers to look back at past emergencies and see, at a glance, which assets and resources were deployed where, and when.

Improved public and personnel safety
Worcestershire County Council now has a single system for recording incidents such as fallen trees, enabling it to co-ordinate a faster response. “We can send the most appropriate people, with the right equipment, to the locations of greatest need, so that situations can be dealt with properly and quickly,” says Elwyn. “By enabling us to put out emergency signage or close a road more promptly, our ArcGIS app helps us to save lives.”

Significant resource and cost savings
While each emergency situation is totally different, Worcestershire County Council will inevitably save money by using HMEGIS to: deploy the nearest vehicles to incidents; locate assets quickly; and avoid duplicating the work of other agencies. “At times when significant emergencies like floods or heavy snowfall occur, we estimate that our GIS app will help us to make considerable cost savings through improved logistical and operational efficiencies,” says Elwyn, while emphasising that, “The real benefits in terms of accidents avoided and lives saved cannot be financially quantified.”

Better multi-agency coordination
The ArcGIS app is now being introduced to partner organisations, starting with the Highways Agency. Eventually access will be extended to multiple third parties including district councils, the Environment Agency and the fire, police and ambulance services. “HMEGIS will make the same ‘here and now’ picture available to everyone,” predicts Elwyn. “We will be able to talk with confidence about the same location, avoid duplication and ensure we are all optimally deployed to minimise public risk in emergency scenarios.”

Continuous improvement of emergency plans
HMEGIS was originally designed as an operational tool, rather than a management tool. However it is proving invaluable to the council’s highways maintenance department and emergency planning team, who use it to inform the development of new emergency response strategies. Using the slider tool, employees can refer back to and learn from previous situations and use this knowledge to improve the council’s effectiveness in future incidents.

More efficient customer service
When members of the public phone the council, call centre agents can use HMEGIS to provide immediate feedback and up-to-the-minute information about road closures. Similarly, if the council receives a freedom of information request (such as how often was a specific bridge closed), employees can use the GIS slider tool to easily look back in time and respond promptly. In the future, the council plans to further improve its customer service by developing a public version of HMEGIS that will enable everyone to see the latest information about road closures online.

Yarlington Housing Group (YHG) provides affordable housing across the South West of England, owning and managing over 9,000 properties in Somerset, Devon and Dorset. Working closely with local authorities, the group provides homes to rent and also offers Government-funded schemes to give people the chance to buy their own home. Based in Yeovil, YHG employs over 300 staff and was established in 1999 through a Large Scale Voluntary Transfer.

YHG wanted to create a new corporate geographic information system (GIS), from which the entire housing association would benefit. By combining data from Housing Management, Asset Management, Workflow Management Tool, Repairs and Services, the company-wide GIS would give a complete view of the business and deliver valuable new insights in order to make informed strategic decisions and for users to quickly access and view information collated from a range of disparate systems in one central location.

With no previous GIS at YHG, the group had already decided to use Esri UK’s ArcGIS as its new GIS platform, but needed the most suitable Ordnance Survey (OS) data to underpin it.

“Embarking on a GIS project with such far-reaching implications meant expectations were high, so we needed the best approach to source our OS data,” explained Chris Reed, GIS Administrator, Yarlington Housing Group. “Customer service, housing specific knowledge, data quality, efficiency and costs were the main drivers behind our search for a supplier.”

After examining the market, YHG concluded that Esri UK could meet its OS data needs and offer other invaluable benefits.

For our initial phase of the implementation, YHG selected a combination of OS OpenData services, OS mastermap and OS 1:25 000 Scale Raster for its base map data but recently updated the raster data to VectorMap Local following Esri UK’s recommendation. Delivered in file-geodatabase format and already set-up to the group’s specific scale, style and projection criteria, the new data was supplied optimised and cached for their GIS.

“While VectorMap Local was more expensive, we felt it presented better value for money for the organisation. It provided a greater level of flexibility by having a number of different map styles and had all the benefits of vector data, such as the ability to carry out analysis, feature integration and calculations. We were also able to take advantage of a three year contract providing a year’s cost saving compared to an annual agreement,” explained Chris Reed. “Esri provided the OS data in the correct format for our GIS and its bespoke service meant data arrived just for the area we needed, with the correct cartographic layer .mxd files, styled to our requirements.”

At no additional cost, Esri UK also provided a cache of the base-map data, geo-coded property lists and online data services such as OS OpenData, already pre-cached and in the correct format.

“Esri UK’s data consultants are experts in the housing sector and could therefore recommend and supply the most appropriate OS data,” said Chris Reed. “But it was the extra services they offered included in the price that made their solution most attractive. The team is very accessible and quick to help with any queries and we’ve built a strong working relationship.”

Another factor in YHG’s decision was that it already had a contract with Esri UK for the GIS software. Being able to deal with the same supplier for its OS data made the whole process easy and straightforward.

Selecting Esri UK’s OS data solution has saved the Yarlington Housing Group’s GIS team a significant amount of time and effort.

No extra work was needed to convert or load the data, match tiles or create the desired symbology, as Chris Reed explained: “The Esri approach presented a seamless OS dataset ready for use, resulting in an efficient integration into the GIS. We were up and running in a fraction of the time compared to buying the data on its own.”

Another major time saving has been realised from the map cache. Previously, when YHG had first received its OS Raster data and master maps, creating a cache had taken them several days due to the caching process and processing issues. Now the team simply load the cache into their GIS and it becomes live the same day, with the GIS performance levels that users demand. The cache will also play a vital part in future plans for new web and mobile-based GIS services.

“Overall, the new approach from Esri UK has saved the organisation approximately 2 weeks of development work,” stated Chris Reed. “We no longer have to convert data, geocode properties, create symbology and build a cache, allowing us to focus on developing functionality, data and services that our users require.”

All of Yarlington Housing Group’s OS data needs were met by Esri UK along with the additional value-add offered by their data consultancy services. Data updates are now also provided on a six-monthly basis via ftp download.

“Esri UK has an in-depth understanding of the housing market and sourcing OS data from them has cut significant costs from the whole GIS process,” concluded Chris Reed. “The total solution has cost us the same as other vendors were quoting purely for the data, so we achieved great value for money.”

Formerly part of National Grid, Wales & West Utilities (WWU) is a regulated gas distribution business with around 34,000 km of gas distribution pipelines, covering a sixth of the UK, and serving 7.4 million people. Every year, WWU repairs and replaces over 400 kilometres of gas pipeline to ensure its safety and reliability. In addition, they actively compete with other infrastructure providers for new connection contracts.

Maintenance and new connections use similar design and build processes, so WWU wanted to improve competitiveness and efficiency by streamlining these processes, building on a strong foundation of integrated systems.

Phil Pike, Head of IT explains: “One of our main goals was to reengineer the business processes that we had inherited from National Grid and create more automated, end-to -end processes. We saw GIS as an important tool in helping us to achieve this goal.”

Paper-based processes were slow and prone to dual entry, mismatched data, poor data quality and delays. Designers drew new networks and any changes in the field – such as rerouting around trees – were marked by hand and sent to head office to be digitised and loaded onto a GIS solution. “As a result, our asset information was always six months out of date. This was something that we were committed to changing,” observes Pike.

An integrated approach, facilitated by GIS, had the potential to improve customer service and the accuracy of quotes, in an increasingly competitive market.

WWU has achieved significant improvements in operational efficiency with its integrated approach to Design and Build, created in partnership with Esri UK industry specialists, using the ArcGIS Server.

Designers now enter their plans directly into the central GIS, giving all staff a clear, accurate and up-to-date view of the current and future network. “Using the ArcGIS design layer is like putting a piece of acetate over a hard copy map and marking the new pipe route on that”, explains Nick Hancock, Senior Business Analyst. “The designs created in ArcGIS become the graphical representation of the work that we are going to undertake. When the repair work or new installation is completed, we simply select ‘adopt new’ in the system and the replacement designs become actual plans. All our central records are immediately updated.”

To quote for new connections, staff scan housing development drawings and geo-reference new properties. Designers can easily identify the nearest mains and digitally design the new pipe infrastructure, which can be automatically exported into network sizing software to accurately define the dimensions and attributes of the new scheme.

Integrating ArcGIS with the SAP back office system creates further efficiencies: when plans are approved, ArcGIS automatically triggers the creation of assets and work orders in SAP. Time-saving and intuitive features, such as favourites lists with pre-set attributes for common tasks, ensure the system is easy for users.

The greatest benefit of the integrated approach is the undeniable improvement in operational efficiency.

“We used to have to go into the back office system to create each separate work order,” recalls Hancock. “The interfaces with SAP save an enormous amount of time and effort. As soon as we hit the ‘plan approved’ button, all the necessary work orders and central records required by our back office systems are automatically created in SAP.”

Because plans are entered directly into the central GIS system, there is no need for plans to be digitised after the work is carried out: maps are more accurate and up-to-date. “The new process is much closer to real time and cuts out months of delay”, says Pike.

New connection quotes are delivered quickly, consistently and professionally. “We can effectively provide standard quotes for non-standard installations,” says Hancock.

The company’s customers also benefit from the new Design and Build process. WWU can attach electronic copies of plans to records in its customer relationship management (CRM) system. “Everyone has visibility of the design and this improves our ability to provide good customer service,” says Hancock. “As soon as a project is approved, we can very quickly activate the job in the system and offer a customer appointment at an early date.”

WWU plans to continue to extend this integrated approach to include mobile ArcGIS for field engineers, so that the Design and Build process becomes truly end-to-end.

Wales & West Utilities is a regulated gas distribution business with around 34,000 km of gas distribution pipelines located in Wales and the South West of England. Covering a sixth of the UK, Wales & West Utilities serves an area with a population of 7.4 million.

Wales & West Utilities was founded in 2005, when a consortium acquired the gas network for Wales and the West Country from National Grid Transco. Initially, the newly autonomous utility rented IT systems from its former owner, but it was keen to be independent as soon as possible.

It set about a huge programme of IT investment. “GIS was seen as a mission critical system that we needed to put in from the outset, to replace functionality provided by National Grid,” explains Phil Pike, Director of IT & Procurement.

However, the company didn’t just want to replicate the National Grid systems, it wanted to streamline processes enabling it to operate more efficiently. “From an IT systems perspective, we were starting with a blank piece of paper,” says Pike. “This gave us an opportunity to start from scratch with streamlined and centralised systems that would minimise our total cost of IT ownership.”

The company recognised that it would be more cost effective to have one GIS for the entire organisation and searched for a solution to meet the needs of its entire business. “Virtually everything that we do requires an understanding of where our pipes and other assets are located,” explains Pike. “We felt that it was important for us to be able to make clear, accurate and up-to-date information available throughout our organisation in a graphical and user-friendly format.”

Wales & West Utilities selected Esri’s ArcGIS Server solution. “We wanted an off-the-shelf product that was tried and tested in the gas sector,” says Pike. “We had aggressive timescales for implementing the new GIS solution, so strong gas industry experience and existing gas-specific functionality were extremely important for us.”

Wales & West Utilities gained a single joined-up view of its business assets and operations; easily accessible to desktop, intranet and field based users. It is now possible for accurate asset information to be shared easily between teams. For example, a designer in the new connections business can see which pipes the maintenance team are planning to repair or replace. This helps to cost and plan extensions to the gas network. Customer service teams can view accurate maps of pipelines to help them respond to customer enquiries. The company can react quickly to emergency calls and easily identify precise locations of leaks and outages improving public safety

ArcGIS Server is also delivering innovative new functionality to support network design. Designers can create plans for new connections and replacement pipelines directly within the central GIS. “If we didn’t have this integrated design and build capability, much of this process would be done manually on paper,” explains Nick Hancock, Senior Business Analyst. “The plans would then have to be digitised after the new pipes had been laid, which takes much longer.”

ArcGIS Server has been incorporated into the company’s wider IT environment. Wales & West Utilities uses SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for its back office systems and has integrated a number of key processes across the two solutions. “ArcGIS and SAP are tightly coupled,” says Pike. “The flow of information between the two systems is very effective.”

The availability of centralised, up-to-date asset information has led to the creation of new streamlined business processes, and the new GIS-enabled design and build capabilities have contributed to tangible time and cost savings.

“We now have a single, common view of our asset information, in a graphical format, and this creates operational efficiencies across multiple different areas of our business,” says Pike. “The deployment of a centralised GIS solution formed a key part of our business improvement programme. This IT transformation programme was seen as a key business enabler and has contributed to overall efficiency savings worth several million pounds.”

In the company’s management and administrative functions, improved availability of up-to-date data enhances reporting and supports high level decision making. ArcGIS is used to prepare and present information for regulatory compliance and health and safety audits.

ArcGIS has made it easier for the organisation to share information with third parties, such as other utility companies. “If a local electricity or water provider is undertaking essential repairs on a certain street, it will need to know exactly where our pipes are to ensure the safety of its engineers and the public,” explains Hancock. “Because designs are created in ArcGIS and there is no time delay between pipes being laid and maps being digitised, we can provide maps to third parties with more confidence in their accuracy.”