Fall NEARC 2024

The City of Woburn, Massachusetts needed to migrate from a third-party work order management solution that they had been relying on for water and waste waster operations and maintenance (O&M) tracking. The previous provider was divesting, and the City was looking to make better use of the resources already at their disposal in ArcGIS Online. Weston & Sampson was contracted to develop in that environment a comprehensive solution for the full work order lifecycle from generation through assignment and tracking and finishing in summary report generation. This was particularly important to the O&M strategies of their water department which is responsible for weekly and monthly tracking of statistics on their water quality for reporting to state regulatory commissions. Weston & Sampson proposed and implemented a system based in ArcGIS online that synthesized the complementary platform components of ArcGIS Online, Field Maps, Experience Builder, Work Force and Survey123. Bringing all of these together in a single total solution that allowed their water department to create work orders for specific tasks such as daily treatment rounds, sampling, meter changeouts, hydrant flushing, service line installation, meter reads and more and then deliver the assignments electronically to users in the field, track their status collaboratively, and output automatically formatted reports for submissions to the requisite state agencies. The solution was constructed based around the existing schemas of the previous solution to allow for easy porting of historical data and was also designed to accommodate easy expansion to other departments notably the sewer department and to incorporate MS4 compliance through the integration of stormwater O&M forms later.