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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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