Over a nearly two-year project duration, vital operations data for the organization’s three largest sites was migrated into an Enterprise GIS system hosted in the cloud. Transferring this critical data to an advanced geospatial format unlocks many new capabilities while greatly improving efficiency, safety and quality for facilities operations.

The company had been actively building capabilities in ArcGIS to support its strategic vision of process optimization and sustainability for operations within its facilities engineering division. One key goal was to help maintenance staff quickly access the information needed to maintain the facilities and perform planning activities. Applications we helped with include:

• Electrical outage management.
• COVID-19 space planning.
• Water main break response.
• Safe and efficient site navigation.
• Roof inspections using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Maintaining reliable electrical service is critical for the client, which is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of high-value products.

The information about the electrical system at one of the company’s largest campuses included many disconnected, non-georeferenced CAD files, making it difficult to plan and manage electrical system improvements.

The CAD files were consolidated into a single view, providing access to the entire 5-kV network within an intuitive web application. This application allowed facility managers to isolate a given electrical feeder or building to determine outage impacts, search and locate assets, view linked asset photos and drawings, and perform upstream and downstream tracing of the electrical network to identify outage impacts.

The enterprise GIS system has created a variety of benefits, including better space planning and space utilization, improved safety for operations personnel and visitors, enhanced asset management, and a more comprehensive campuswide view of utility assets, enabling more effective planning and management of utility outages.

The safety, efficiency and cost savings benefits of this data conversion and GIS system implementation are continuing to accrue for this major manufacturer.