Mapping Better Asset Management

The Central Regional Wastewater System is one of the largest treatment plants in Texas, and its owner, the Trinity River Authority (TRA), wanted to be able to identify work order locations spatially and provide its employees a spatial reference of work order location.

It needed a system to link work orders on a map.

Additionally, the information about maintenance work had to be incorporated into an overall CAD base file, which was difficult to keep up to date.

So, Freese and Nichols’ asset management and treatment teams worked together to develop a geodatabase that integrates the plant’s enterprise work order software with TRA’s geographic data.

To populate it, one surveyor and one engineer surveyed more than 2,000 plant assets — from valves to fittings to light poles — in just three months.

The new geodatabase provides a single repository for GIS data, where it is intuitively organized by process, making it easier to maintain.

The outcome has been greater efficiency: TRA can now focus its maintenance efforts more effectively and prepare better for emergencies.

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