12. The challenge for us was how to address the problem of setting up and
creating an embedded GIS capability that had GIS forced upon them by a
client. The company had very little GIS exposure let alone experience.
GIS was generally viewed as an unnecessary challenge imposed on them.
Their understanding of it was minimal and basically come down to
something that happened to survey data after it was collected.
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13. GIS is the real a get what you pay for experience there is huge benefits of
spatially enabling a business but convincing the finance team to spend
small amounts on an “unnecessary” expense is a difficult fight. We were
fortunate in that our client had a very specific data model and it was in the
ESRI platform which meant we were able to at least get some ArcGIS
Desktop licencing. A few GIS people were employed and unrealistic
expectations and deadlines then were imposed. Over the next few years
our GIS Manager was in constant fights with construction about why
deadlines weren’t why everything was taking too long. The spatial team
was lumped in with Survey and along with survey the construction team
didn’t really understand or like what both teams did. So to turn it around
we had to value add whilst maintaining our deadlines and not increase the
cost.
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14. The company’s reluctance to embrace GIS in the end came about from
significant collaboration with the survey team. We sat down and looked at
how our spatial data was passed through out the company. We didn’t have
to look far to find many areas we could improve if teams were willing to
embrace some change. The biggest by far was the survey teams change
to store and manage As2built data in native GIS format. We actually
migrated them from CAD and CSV files to a file Geodatabase. We also
stopped people utilising local hard drives and went to a single point of truth
for our data. This was a significant leap of faith and would not have been
possible without the support from within the survey team.
A lot of long nights later we simplified as much of the work as possible with
scripting and templates. There was a significant training gap as many of
the surveyors this was their first exposure to ArcMap but once they
transferred across many of them were amazed at how much easier it
really was. Other parts of the business started to pay attention as the As2
built data was becoming more and more useful it was becoming
something the our company could use and not just something for the
client. The time frames started to shrink as well now that data didn’t need
to reformatted and re2joined and reconverted as it transferred between the
different systems, this captured significant attention from the construction
team.
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15. We didn’t stop there looking a the rest of the company we educated and
taught engineers about GIS one of the largest frustrations from a
cartography perspective was maps that were being redrafted in PDF
editors to suit new purposes. A lot of this work was taken of the engineers
involved and products redesigned to achieve their goals. This expanded
the customer base and better enabled the sharing of information.
The single point of truth concept was a hard one for people to get on
board with as people were used to their stuff on their computers where
they liked it. However this solved a version control nightmare and once
this started the beginnings of spatial services were started. Initially we
were using layer files and Arc Explorer to share out the construction
design. This got people away from kml’s that they didn’t keep updated and
passed around.
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16. As we built significantly higher quality cartographic map templates it
reduced the timeframes for map production. Enabling us to further raise
the profile.
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17. We were then able to start getting greater quality faster to the people that
need it. Focusing the products on the needs of the end users, we took
time to chat to guys to find out what they actually needed. A lot of the time
they guys I spoke to simply had no idea I could help them. I found the pub
was the best location to have a chat, buy them a beer and it amazing the
information you can get out of them.
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18. My apologies I can’t show you the full details of what we have built. But we
have migrated to the an Arc Online system with ArcGIS server. The
company finally after two years of campaigning gave up on saying no to
an enterprise solution and they have never looked back. We give them a
taste and once they got over the initial shock it has always been more
more more. It has been a great learning experience both for the users and
myself. I did need to curb my own enthusiasm and keep up the
management of expectation which I did very poorly and kept saying yes to
that’s possible, as my customers selectively didn’t hear the I need time to
sit down and build that for you. The development stage has finally slowed
down and we are now looking at specific developments as the core
functionality is now rolled out.
Now I am looking at custom widgets now to do more than the standard
functions within ArcOnline.
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20. Standards based approach to align field and data practises (where
possible, flexibility required)
•Re2creating templates from scratch, to ISO standards, for use
throughout company
•Currently at least three variants of CAD templates being
used. All non2conforming.
•Aligning CAD templates with GIS templates.
•Creating documented style guide.
UAV’s – 8 months of chipping away. Final trial approaching.
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