GIS_Background_attachment.pdf

GIS & Engineering Records Document Management Support BOA BackGround

The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) plans to retain one (1) engineering design and/or information technology consulting firm to provide technical assistance in support of our services in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Enterprise Content Management (ECM) services, eBuilder, Primavera, and Autodesk Building Information Modeling (BIM) 3-D Modeling under a Basic Ordering Agreement (BOA). The contract is intended to support the standing GIS and engineering records programs and will generally provide resident and non-resident expertise when required.

Candidate firms must demonstrate capabilities and experience in the following areas.

• Providing state-of-the-arts GIS solutions for clients in the water/wastewater industry.

• Guiding clients in best practices of data conversion, migration of data, development of enterprise applications, customization of graphic user interfaces, and conducting training for both GIS and ECM.

• Identifying data gaps, analyzing accuracy of data, and recommending solutions for data quality control and data scrubbing.

• Providing enterprise GIS solutions, including linking enterprise GIS applications with asset management system (AMS), enterprise resource planning system (ERP), and customer accounts management systems (CMS).

• Building browser-based GIS applications using HTML and Java Scripts.

• Building applications and customizing desktop graphic user interface (GUI) on both ESRI and IBM’s FileNet platform.

• Expertise using ESRI Portal and ArcGIS Online.

• Expertise with running GIS and ECM solutions on Oracle and SQL Server databases.

• Solid experience with the use and maintenance of the utility network data model using ARCGIS Pro.

• Standard project management and construction management procedures and requirements.

WSSC’s GIS

WSSC enjoys an advanced enterprise GIS that uses current technologies to support GIS applications. Some aspects of this enterprise GIS include:

Technical Architecture: WSSC Water’s GIS primarily makes use the ESRI technology solutions and uses various ESRI products to meet the wide range of user requirements.

We are currently in the process of moving our whole backoffice environment to the cloud (AZURE) and getting away from on-site servers. WSSC Water is also in the process of migrating from Oracle to SQL Server as our primary relational database management system (RDBMS). We make use of the spatial database engine (SDE) component of ARCGIS Server to provide access to the GIS data stored in Oracle. Various web-based applications have become ubiquitous at WSSC and are the primary way most users consume our data. These applications have been developed in an extensible manner using the data service capabilities of ARCGIS Server though a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach that also links these applications with other enterprise technology products such as Filenet, our enterprise-wide content management system (ECM). Desktop users also consume data served through SDE in various desktop applications built on ARCGIS Pro.

GIS Coordination: The GIS and Engineering Records Section of the Engineering and Construction Department (E&C) is primarily charged with the maintenance and creation of our GIS data for water and sewer assets. Furthermore, it also coordinates data maintenance and updates from other groups of users throughout the Commission, consultants, and external agencies. All of these data sets are made available using SDE database connections and data services that are consumed by desktop users and web-based viewer applications. All of these servers, data services, web-based applications and desktop software licenses are managed and maintained by the GIS analyst and developers in the GIS Support Section of the Information Technology Department, who work closely with the E&C’s GIS and Engineering Records Section.

GIS Technicians, Specialists, Desktop Power Users/ Internal and Extenal

Viewers

E&C’s GIS and Engineering Records Section

WSSC Business Units/ Public Users

IT GIS Support Section

GIS & ER Section Manager

IT GIS Section Manager

WSSC GIS Coordination

Service Publishing, Application Development, Support

Analysis, Maps, Service DefinitionData Creation, Update, Maintenance, Business Support

Desktop/Power Users Engineers and others who use GIS software or analysis tools to do their work.

They usually have GIS expertise and attended desktop training

Viewers Use GIS applications to support their work through web-based viewing application, without much GIS background or desktop training

GIS Analysts, Developers

Web based viewer applications: The main web based application being used at WSSC include:

• EGIS: Our primary enterprise GIS viewer which is used by WSSC employees to interact with our water and sewer GIS data. It provides information about our pipes and other assets as well as supporting GIS data from our sister agencies, such as parcels aerial photography etc. EGIS is linked with other enterprise applications (Such as Filenet) providing access to engineering records, customer information, and work orders.

• WERI: A simplified version of EGIS for use by members of the pubic and contractors, primarily engineers and land developers who need access to our records.

Access to WERI is restricted and applicants are vetted through the Security Group prior to being assigned a user id.

• WSSC in Your Neighborhood: Provides a way for our customers and other members of the public to visualize where WSSC is doing field work. It provides contact names, progress of construction, and other information about each project.

• Agency Project Coordination: The Agency Project Coordination tool provides a way for WSSC, the counties and other utilities to coordinate paving projects by visually showing the location of planned and current projects. The application is built on ARCGIS Online, ESRI’s tools for Cloud based web mapping.

Data Maintenance: At WSSC our core GIS data layers for water and sewer in our GIS data model are built upon ESRI’s standard data model for the water and wastewater industry. We take full advantage of SDE’s data versioning, which offers robust solutions for handling, integrating and reconciling data changes from multiple users editing the same datasets simultaneously. The core water and sewer GIS data depicts pipes, point assets (such as hydrants, valves and manholes), and appurtenances (such as test stations, lamp holes, etc) that have been built or approved for construction. Both datasets are geometric networks that allow connectivity analysis for shutdowns in the water system and upstream and downstream analysis for the sewer system. Staff in E&C’s GIS and Engineering Records Section is responsible for all edits and other data manipulations to the core GIS data. In addition, the Section supports the GIS data editing needs of the Development Service Division by maintaining the currency of datasets depicting all developer planned projects working their way through WSSC for approval. Other users throughout the Commission also edit their own layers depicting planned projects for water and sewer replacements and relocations. The GIS and Engineering Records Section assists all groups in performing some quality control and in maintain data integrity through QA measures.

WSSC’s ECM for Engineering Drawings

IBM’s Filenet P8 Suite of products is the main solution used at WSSC for maintaining documents in an Enterprise Content Management System (ECM). Many different types of documents, such as financial and HR records are kept in Filenet, but of particular importance to this project is FileNet’s repositories for Engineering Records, which broadly includes as-built drawing, final design drawings, valve cards, service connections cards and many other types of documents. E&C’s GIS and Engineering Records Section maintain the indexing and updates on all engineering documents housed in Filenet using tools and workflows developed by staff in the Information Technology Department. The servers and services that support FileNet are also maintained by staff within the Information Technology Department who work closely with E&C’s GIS and Engineering

Records Section and IT’s GIS Support Section in the development of new repositories for engineering records, changes to the indexing schemas, and creation of new workflows.

Oher Pertinent products supported by the Section.

e-Builder Enterprise is a cloud-based and comprehensive Project and Program Management system that is used by WSSC staff and Contractors during the project planning and construction phases of most construction projects being led in-house. It is a fundamental tool for managing projects and communicaton between the Contractor, Subcontractors, Design Consultants and WSSC. e-Builder Enterprise includes extensive reporting capabilities to facilitate detailed project reporting in a web-based environment that is accessible to all parties and easy to use. Development of new workflows and implementation procedures within the e-Builder are handled by contractors and expert users with little or no support from the IT Department.

Primavera is an Oracle based Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) software that is used by WSSC staff, Consultants, and Contractors for Project Management, scheduling, risk analysis, resource management and collaboration.

The extensive integration capability of the software fuels the project information to other enterprise software such as GIS applications, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) and other reporting tools. Primavera is also capable to generate project health reports and Gantt charts to better understand the project needs. The development of new schedule layouts, scheduling, and cost/resource loading are being handled by the Contractors, subcontractors, Consultants and WSSC employees. The entire tool is hosted in house and it is supported by the WSSC IT department.

Potential Work to be performed under this BOA

At WSSC, we strive to maintain our GIS current and improve it by adopting industry standards solutions that will help us integrate our GIS data with other enterprise applications. The consulting firm contracted under this BOA will serve as a technical subject matter expert in support our projects as WSSC issues Task Orders in support of our goals. Examples of these task orders could include:

• Helping us migrate to newer industry standard data models that more seamlessly integrate and connect our facilities with our water distribution and sewer collection networks. These new data models could support not only connectivity but also 3-d visualization of our facilities.

• Provide recommendations for integration of BIM with CMMS and IWMS systems, and the associated business processes, standards and resources necessary to support this.

• Assist us in implementing best practices for water/sewer GIS and ECM solutions, including ESRI’s water and sewer utility data models and of-the-shelf tools that can help us improve our data, our data editing procedures and enterprise solutions for consumption of our data.

• Develop applications that are easily configurable using an HTML5/JavaScript platform. These applications could be used for field editing on a variety of mobile devices, desktop data editing, or browser based viewing by a broader community of users.

• As we perform upgrades to software versions and servers, we could enlist the help the consultant to help us plan and test to predict and overcome technical hurdles that such upgrades may present.

• Develop workflows for document handling in Filenet and/or e-Builder for the purpose of streamlining our operations and automating the way that projects and associated documents flow through our various business processes.

• Explore alternative and cutting-edge technology for mapping our assets. For example, use of drones for above surface assets, ground penetrating radar and other electromagnetic techniques that could be used to map underground assets;

building information modeling (BIM) using indoor use of LIDAR technology.

• Implement augmented reality visualization that can help us better and more informatively integrate our GIS data with document engineering records.

• Continue to support and enhance the central role that our GIS data plays throughout the enterprise as the system of record that initializes the creation of assets that feed into other systems of record.