Salt Lake City’s infrastructure management was disjointed across four departments using separate, incompatible software systems for decades. The Transportation, Streets, Parks and Public Lands, and Facilities groups operated out of different city buildings—and previously distributed work orders on paper through inter-office mail. To further complicate matters, each department had a unique set of asset management terminology they used to refer to similar things. These issues made it impossible to calculate accurate condition indexes, develop preventative maintenance plans, and communicate budgetary requirements to city leaders. Salt Lake City faced a dire need for operational cohesion and standardization when it came to infrastructure management.
“Their support team has been super supportive in everything that we’ve done. They actually try and implement the things that we suggest. I’ve never seen a company that actually is this responsive to ideas that their customers have. This has been the most effective way for us to perform asset management at a high level.”
By implementing OpenGov’s operations management software, Salt Lake City transformed a fractured, manual, four-system asset management process into a single enterprise platform. The digital transformation not only introduced an unprecedented level of technological cohesion within the organization but also facilitated the creation of a cross-departmental, collaborative approach to asset management among four city departments.
For example, previously Engineering would send an email to Streets indicating the need for surface treatment on a specific road. Streets would complete the work and send an email back to Engineering when the work was completed. There was no communication between the initiation of the work request and the completion of the work, leaving Engineering unaware of the status of the project until it was completed. Additionally, the true cost of the work performed was not systematically maintained or shared between departments.
Now, Engineering creates the task in OpenGov and assigns it to Streets. The Streets team completes the work and captures the labor and materials used. This automatically updates the Overall Condition Index (OCI) on the asset record. All teams have access to the status of the effort at any time.
Today, all four departments have a better understanding of the status of shared infrastructure assets and the ability to clearly communicate budgetary needs to city leaders. This improvement allows the city to strategically manage assets based on OCIs, rather than on perceptions of the biggest needs. With OpenGov, Salt Lake City can strategically manage assets using reliable data for the first time in the organization’s history.
IMPROVED WORKFLOWS
The four departments responsible for managing assets are now working together and uncovering efficiencies. Gone are the days of routing paper work orders through the mail. Today, the team creates and assigns tasks in seconds in Cartegraph.
CROSS-DEPARTMENT COMMUNICATION
Salt Lake City can now easily communicate between departments working simultaneously on the same asset. Before Cartegraph, employees simply wrote their work notes on paper and submitted the paperwork to office staff. Now, employees record their work and access the asset’s complete work history from their mobile devices. Most importantly, departments and internal work groups have both technical and personal relationships with each other.
DATA-DRIVEN BUDGETING
Salt Lake City staff no longer need to guess at the budgetary requirements for asset replacements and repairs as the OCI provides the data to support the need. They pull data from Cartegraph to communicate funding requests during budget discussions.
ELIMINATING LEGACY DATABASES
At one point, the Public Services team was relying on three different databases to manage their asset and work data. With the implementation of Cartegraph, they’ve eliminated those systems and the attached maintenance costs.
INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY
The city has seen a 55% increase in the number of tasks completed across its Facilities, Parks and Public Lands, Transportation, and Streets groups. The team attributes this to better data capturing and the ability to get more work done. They’ve also automated repeatable functions to streamline workflows for their end users and improve accuracy in the data being captured.
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