1Spatial Australia: Finding FME

Finding FME
Leon Bowers, Lendlease

Hi!
I’m Leon Bowers, GIS Manager,
Lendlease
I’m also a
 Dad
 Surfer
 Formula 1 tragic and;
 A new FME user!!

We’re going to start today with
a little story…

Finding FME
We’re about to go on a journey… I will tell you a
tale of ETL discovery. Will it have a happy ending?

Once upon a time
In a land before FME…

There was a
GIS
professional
who thought he
knew about
data and
transformations
(oh how wrong he was)

He had heard of FME, but
really had no idea of its true
value.

Why?
As a long time ArcGIS
user, he knew all the
manual processes to
get the result he
wanted. Were they
efficient?
No, but ignorance is
bliss.

His previous
experience
included:
 BD for ESRI Australia
 Engineering and
design consultancies
 Hyder Consulting
 Golder Associates

As an ESRI Australia BDM, he
naturally sold Data Interop as
the answer for anyone wanting
to do data transformations.

In Engineering
and Design
consultancies,
the challenges
included:
 Dealing with CAD
data on a daily basis:
 Regular design
changes
 Survey CAD data
 Differing quality of
geometry and
attribution

In Engineering
and Design
consultancies,
the challenges
included:
 Engineers
 Spreadsheets
 Unmanaged KML
 CAD
 Everywhere

In hindsight, he
was lost, and didn’t
even know it…
Manual processes
ruled supreme.

He joined Lendlease
to build a GIS capability

Suddenly…
There was the
opportunity to create a
complete spatial
infrastructure from
scratch.
So what would this new
infrastructure look like?

But there was still
a problem
How would he deal with all that CAD data…

There had to be a
better way than…

So before
budgets were
set and the
solution locked
in, he went
exploring
Knowing nothing of
FME, he watched every
FME Channel YouTube
video he could (an
excellent use of
company time).
www.youtube.com/user/FMEchannel

So before
budgets were
set and the
solution locked
in, he went
exploring
He downloaded a trial of
FME Desktop to have a
play
(with varying success)
Then…

He phoned 1Spatial,
who took him further
along his journey.
With their guidance
they were able to
show that…

The final piece of the
puzzle had been
solved!
And everyone lived…

A little about my
role
 Joined Lendlease in
2016 to build a GIS
infrastructure
 Using the Kingsford
Smith Drive (KSD)
Upgrade project as
the initial purpose
 Will take GIS across
the entire
organisation

Kingsford Smith Drive Upgrade
 KSD is a 3.5km road upgrade from 4 – 6 lanes
 Includes construction 15m into the river
 Is the first Lendlease Engineering project with
internal GIS implementation

KSD Data
Main data types:
 CAD
 Imagery (Nearmap)
 Live data
Primary sources of
data:
 Our Designers
(Jacobs)
 Our Survey team
 Third party services

Data challenges on KSD
 Daily > Weekly CAD data updates
 All data imported to SDE before publishing
 Varying quality of data received
 High resolution imagery requirements

FME on KSD
We started using FME for Nearmap mosaics
 Extremely impressed with the speed and
stability compared to an ESRI workflow
 Ability to write ECW
 Ease of use was immediately apparent

Next, we got
some help
Moving into vector
based data was a little
harder.
Adrian helped us with
workspaces for:
 Survey import
 Live weather data

Survey Import
Knowing where sub-surface utilities are is critical.
Our survey import workspace simplifies the CAD to
GIS cleaning and transformation of this data.
Layer attribution quality is a major issue and the
workspace has been rewritten many times.

We run this each week -
and sometimes modify it each week…

Live weather data
 KSD has a live weather station on site
 Weather data is updated to a website every 5
minutes
 The dashboard display provided by the
instrument manufacturer is not user friendly
 We use FME Server to poll an API and submit
weather data into our database for analysis,
display and archiving

We access the xml data via url

This workspace runs on FME Server

FME for Western Distributor
Lendlease were involved in a tender design and
submission for Melbourne’s Western Distributor
project, which required many GIS deliverables.
 First round of submission late 2016
 Heavy GIS involvement to compile land
availability plans and associated data
 Completely manual processes resulting in very
late nights and too many kebabs.

Round 2 of
submissions
were required
Feb 2017
There had to be a better
way of compiling land
availability plans.
After getting more
comfortable with FME, I
knew it would be the
answer.

Working smarter
The challenge:
 Ever changing data up
until the last day of
submission
 Deliverables that relied
on the analysis of many
different datasets
 Terrible data (geometry
errors everywhere)
The solution:
 A suite of FME
Workspaces
 Updated data could be
plugged in anywhere in
the process and the suite
of workspaces run again.

The result?
 Sanity!
 Confidence in
delivery
 Being able to
programmatically fix
terrible data
 Responsiveness;
and
Not a single kebab was
consumed.

FME for Gateway Upgrade North
Long highway upgrade with many challenges
 Underground and overhead services
 Environment constraints and sensitivities

FME for Gateway Upgrade North
Current work in progress.
 Excellent data quality
and consistency
 Excellent opportunity
to use the power of
FME Server
Need to solve:
 The risk of hitting
services during
construction
 A lack of
time/resources to
dedicate to the project

The answer
 An automated
process for Survey
team to upload the
latest survey
 Reliance on FME
Server to process
and update the
project SDE
database
 No effort from me.

Where are we
heading?
How do we want to
use FME?
?

FME Server
We’re putting a lot of focus on FME Server.
We believe it has fantastic potential to change the
way we handle data in the organisation.

Automation
 Automating anything
and everything
 Shifting legwork
away from GIS staff
 Self serve data
upload procedures
 Smart ‘behind the
scenes’ workflows

Integration
 Using the ability to
read and manipulate
third party API data
to our advantage
 Using FME Server to
solve ETL problems
where direct
integration is not
possible
 Increase the non-
spatial data focus

Exploration
 Turning unknown
files (documents,
photos) on our
network into usable
and accessible
content
 Creating registers of
previously siloed
information

Lessons learned
Mixed with some free advice

1. FME is amazing software
It’s saved me on more than one
occasion

2. Buy enough licenses for your staff
We have more on the way but the
struggle to get a license is real!

3. FME will move up
your windows start
menu
I rely more and more
on it each day. I’m
enjoying finding new
ways to use it and
relish the challenge of
a new workspace.

4. Find out all the things FME can do
beyond conversion – particularly with
FME Server.
There’s functionality of FME I’m really
looking forward to using.

5. The pricing of FME, for the power
and functionality you get, is brilliant

6. Don’t stop at desktop.
FME Server will take your
productivity to another level.

7. Get training to understand the main
concepts
Once you have a basic understanding,
your learning curve will be steep and
quick but your effectiveness will astound
you.

8. Get training to understand the main
concepts
Use the knowledge and experience of
someone else to take you towards FME
enlightenment!

Thank you!
Leon Bowers
leon.bowers@lendlease.com

1Spatial Australia: Finding FME

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