2011 Cityworks User of the Year Award Recipients

Cityworks, the leading provider of GIS-centric management solutions, congratulates the recipients of the 2011 Cityworks User of the Year Award in Recognition for GIS-Centric Excellence and Leadership: Cucamonga Valley Water District (California), City of Delaware (Ohio), City of Kitchener (Ontario, Canada), City of Palm Bay (Florida), and Waterford Township (Michigan). The awards were presented at the 2011 Cityworks User Conference held last week in St. George, Utah.

The Cityworks User of the Year Award recognizes organizations as vanguards for their GIS-centric vision and practice which enables them to meet a variety of goals and objectives in asset management, permitting, licensing, and more. These five award-winning sites consistently demonstrate high levels of increased efficiencies and measured performance. Cityworks is very proud of their accomplishments as well as many others throughout the user community.

President and CEO of Cityworks, Brian Haslam, presented the awards at the plenary session of the Cityworks User Conference on Monday, May 16, 2011. The following individuals received the award on behalf of their organizations:

* Cucamonga Valley Water District, California - Marty Zvirbulis and Darron Poulsen
* City of Delaware, Ohio – R. Thomas Homan and Perry Mickley
* City of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada – R. Thomas Homan, Mike Bolger, Sharon McDonald and Janet England
* Palm Bay, Florida – Crystal Phillips-Mustain and Ellen Prendergast
* Waterford Township, Michigan – Carl W. Solden and Terry Biederman

“We have an amazing user base, and the group of clients awarded this year’s Cityworks User of the Year Award are as good as they get,” stated Mr. Haslam. “While it is difficult to pinpoint just a few, those selected are definitely lighthouses in our user community. We want to recognize and extend our appreciation to these organizations. They have demonstrated outstanding GIS-centric techniques and capabilities, and we are thrilled they have fully taken advantage of Cityworks robust, powerful technology combined with Esri’s leading ArcGIS software.”

Source: cityworks.com

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Cityworks GIS Solutions for Property Management

The City of Coon Rapids, Minnesota, found a solution for managing their vacant and rental properties as well as general upkeep needs in Cityworks, by Azteca Systems, Inc., the leading provider of GIS-centric management solutions. Coon Rapids reports on the cost-effective, innovative nature of Cityworks and how it can be uniquely tailored to fit the needs of an organization.

Prior to deploying Cityworks, the Coon Rapids Housing and Code Enforcement Departments wanted to gain a better understanding of the impact vacant and rental properties had on city neighborhoods. Since the Public Works Department experienced such great results using Cityworks, the City wanted to incorporate the program into the Housing and Code Enforcement Departments as well. Now using Cityworks, service request and work order templates are created based on input received from staff, work orders are created on address points, and tasks are used to track the progress of properties with focus on vacant properties, rental properties, and general upkeep.

With Cityworks in place, City staff can view the status of a property in question at any time. Prior to Cityworks, Coon Rapids was unsure of the number of vacant properties throughout the City. Now, when vacant houses are reported, Public Works is notified and the property is entered in Cityworks triggering water shut-off to prevent damage from frozen pipes. The first winter season, the number of homes with burst water pipes dropped substantially.

“Adapting Cityworks to fill the City’s unique needs is proving to be a cost-effective, innovative solution for Coon Rapids,” states Cindy Hintze, GIS Specialist at the City of Coon Rapids. “Creative work order templates, tasks, custom fields, and custom inspections in Cityworks provide the City the information we need in a format that ca be easily retrieved, viewed, and shared.”

For rental properties, custom fields are used to capture information and tasks are used to track details about properties. Using Crystal Reports, work order reports are created so rental property details can be reviewed at a glance. For general upkeep needs, work orders for buildings and yards are created on address points within Cityworks mitigating issues such as weeds, overgrowth, debris, and structure maintenance. In addition, the City has found Cityworks to be useful in informing citizens about planned projects for the upcoming year along with Housing and Code enforcement issues in their specific neighborhoods.

“Our unique and innovative approach to asset and maintenance management is clearly the differentiator in places like Coon Rapids,” says Brian Haslam, President, Azteca Systems. “A non-modular, GIS-centric approach allows our customers to utilize Cityworks across a wide array of disciplines – from traditional outdoor, buried infrastructure to indoor facilities and property. Coon Rapids is a perfect example of how easy it is to apply Cityworks and without having to license individual modules, program flex-type technology, synchronize with GIS data or develop a costly integration.”

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