HomeMy WebLinkAboutFIN-09-035 - Water and Gas Utilities GIS DataREPORT
Report To:
Councillor Berry Vrbanovic, Chair, and Members of the
Finance and Corporate Services Committee
Date of Meeting:
March 2, 2009
Submitted By:
Dan Chapman, General Manager of Financial Services
Prepared By:
Jeff Ham, Manager, Database Administration and GIS
Les Jones, Utilities Engineer
Ward(s) Involved:
All
Date of Report:
February 24, 2009
Report No.:
FIN-09-035
Subject:
WATER AND GAS UTILITIES GIS DATA CONVERSION
PROJECT - FEATURE COUNT ESTIMATE ADJUSTMENT
RECOMMENDATION:
THAT purchase order # PO0801026to Rolta International, Inc. be increased by $252,231.17 to
$714,303.39 exclusive of GST to provide funding for the incorporation of additional mapping
features in the Water and Gas Utilities GIS data conversion project; and further
THAT $252,231.17 of funding be allocated from the following accounts:
Louisa St Reconstruction $115,000 (water)
New Regulator Station $40,000 (gas)
New Gas Services $97,231.17 (gas)
BACKGROUND:
Several months ago staff from the IT-GIS and Utilities divisions of the City of Kitchener
commenced a unique GIS data conversion project for the City. The underlying goal of the project
is to produce an up-to-date, detailed, consistent and accurate GIS map of the gas and water
distribution systems, to better face the challenges of supporting legislated requirements, utility
planning and development, emergency response, operations, system maintenance, locating and
enhanced service to the public.
Recently, the contractor for the project, Rolta International Inc. made Utilities and GIS staff aware
that the number of mapping features quoted in the RFP will be exceeded, resulting in an
estimated $253,000 shortfall in the overall budget for the project.
Three alternatives are discussed within this report to address this issue, from which the most cost
effective and expedient means of carrying out the project’s initial goals is recommended.
REPORT:
The City of Kitchener is experiencing a backlog in maintaining the detailed water and gas
infrastructure records. The water infrastructure records are almost ten years behind and have
reached a point where users have minimal confidence in the accuracy of the data. Due to the
nature of gas infrastructure, the records are more accurate and current, however they are headed
in the same direction (refer to Appendix 1 for a summary of the current mapping processes for
water and gas). A new process is required to decrease the amount of time it takes to update
drawings manually and to provide an opportunity to move towards electronic information. There is
an opportunity to have a GIS-based system using the current water and gas maps as a base.
Essentially as-recorded information and the existing hard copy records would be digitized into a
GIS system.
rrent Process:
In the fall of 2007, Kitchener Utilities staff and IT – GIS staff worked together to develop a Project
Charter, Request for Proposal (RFP) and pilot project to solve this business problem. In July of
2008, Rolta International, Inc. was awarded the work of converting thousands of paper and digital
water and gas distribution network drawings into a single GIS gas and water map. The source
drawings have been created by many different utilities staff and engineering consultants over the
past 60 years for gas and 90 years for water and represent all the detailed locations of water and
gas infrastructure. Utilities staff rely upon these detailed records to plan, operate, maintain and
respond to emergencies for the City’s gas and water distribution systems. The work has
progressed as planned and is now into full production. Rolta has recently alerted Utilities and GIS
staff that the number of mapping dimensions quoted in the RFP is going to be exceeded, based
on their estimates, by approximately 357,000 features (original estimate was 275,065).
At the time of the original RFP, the estimated mapping feature counts that the various
contractors were asked to bid on were based on either known values that were currently being
mapped such as the number of the hydrants, gas main valves, water main valves, etc or other
features such as dimensions and depths from a pilot conversion project that GIS and Utilities
staff had completed in the fall of 2007.
Recently, Rolta has made staff aware that the estimate for the number of features, (primarily
dimensions) varies dramatically from what Rolta staff had actually mapped in the first phase of the
project. Rolta is working on a section of the downtown area, the first of five phases, and they
have already mapped the total number of dimension features quoted in the entire RFP. As a
result Rolta has given Utilities and GIS staff their estimate of the new mapping feature count
which is 356,781 above the number in the RFP.
The shortfall between the RFP estimated value and the new Rolta value has been attributed to a
couple of factors. The first being that the original small pilot area was only a sample and not
necessarily representative of the number of dimensions that are on the detail sheets for the whole
gas and water distribution system.
The second factor was attributed to the pilot project not originally having the gas and water
service lines to the various residential and commercial customers placed on the map. It was
subsequently determined that the service lines and associated dimensions should be included on
the GIS map to be a truly helpful tool, and the impact of these dimensions on the overall feature
count was underestimated as a result.
In support of delivering an expanded scope of work to Kitchener, Rolta has provided a reduced
cost for placing the new dimension and depth features at a reduced price of $0.65 versus the
$1.05 quoted for placing the feature in the RFP. All other additional features are proposed to be
placed at a reduced cost of $0.81, again compared to the original cost of $1.05 per feature. To
deal with this shortfall in the budget for the project, three options are proposed:
1. Continue to map features for the gas and water infrastructure as planned but for a
confined geographic area. When the budget runs out, the mapping stops for this
current project. Ultimately the need to covert the remaining areas can be completed
with a future conversion project, either contracted out or completed in house over
time.
advantage
The is that the current tendered project will remain on budget. The reduced
areas that will get mapped will be completed with the entire list of features associated with
the water and gas infrastructure.
disadvantages
The are that this will lead to potential lengthy delays and increased costs
in ultimately completing the mapping, and the potential for geographic gaps in the data.
The project has momentum and a number of start-up costs would be lost if restarting a
future project resulting in an overall increased the cost. Dependence and trust in the map
as a tool for locating the gas and water infrastructure will be delayed as staff will continue
to rely on more accurate hardcopy information in the areas that are yet to be converted.
As a result staff may not buy-in to the new system due to the information gaps – this data
unreliability is currently the problem with the old system.
2. Continue to only map features for the gas infrastructure and cease mapping certain
water and gas features to negate the approximate $253,000 needed for completing
the project, as it is currently.
Advantages
will be that the project will be on budget and that Utilities can select which
features are more or less important but to get down to the $253,000 the feature cutbacks
will be significant (e.g. stop mapping water services to property lines)
disadvantages
The include the infrastructure information would not be consistent. Staff
will continue to refer to the outdated water detail sheets for water dimensions and negate
most of the advantage for having the newly mapped information in the field. Field staff will
continue to call in to the office for detail information. Alternatively because these records
have been scanned and will be geo-referenced there is possibility of accessing the data
from a laptop, but the process would be slow to retrieve information.
New water infrastructure and dimensions can be mapped with GIS but there will be a gap
in the information. The full benefits of the GIS conversion will not be seen and staff may
never “buy-in” to the new system, with a low trust factor especially during emergency
situations. There will be need a follow-up project to fill in the gap which will incur additional
costs and time as outlined in option 1. The process would be more inefficient than in
option 1, as the subsequent team will have to comb through the entire map to determine
which features have been placed and which are missing, leading to a greater chance that
some of the information will be missed and will never be filled in.
3. Continue to capture all features and dimensions for gas and water at an estimated
additional cost of $253,000.
advantages
The are that the format is consistent across all gas and water maps for the
entire city, and this will result in the quickest turnaround for completing the mapping of all
the options outlined in this report. There will be a consistency with the information and the
approach to how it is mapped and verified. The start up costs, spent on the
implementation of this type of data conversion project will not have to be spent again on a
successive project, such as would be needed to complete the mapping as outlined under
the other two options. There would be no additional GIS time to fill-in information.
disadvantages
The include the additional cost to complete the project and the estimated
time increase of up to 3 months to capture the additional dimensions, which is still a more
expedient option than the other alternatives discussed previously.
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS:
Utilities’ staff has reviewed the current capital budget, with the intent on re-prioritizing initiatives
and programs and/or re-evaluating the budgeted amounts based on more current information,
for the upcoming construction and maintenance season. The objective was to re-allocate
enough capital funds to cover the costs of the $253,000 overage outlined in this report.
Specifically it is recommended that funds be re-allocated from the following areas:
Louisa St Reconstruction $115,000
?
was budgeted as a City water main replacement but the Region is paying half because it
is designated as dual use (cost center 7012001)
New Regulator Station $40,000
?
detailed design indicates costs will be lower than originally budgeted (cost center
5018902)
New Gas Services $97,231.17
?
less services installed in 2008 (cost center 5018170)
CONCLUSION:
Transferring funds to engage the existing consultant to convert the current hard copy gas and
water infrastructure records will provide numerous benefits that accrue from having up-to-date,
detailed, consistent and accurate records, while providing quick access to them everywhere
throughout the Corporation. This will simultaneously position the City to better face the
challenges of supporting legislated requirements, utility planning and development, emergency
response, operations, system maintenance and enhanced service to the public. There will also be
the added benefit of increasing the efficiency and accuracy of the tasks performed by the Pipeline
Locators as they work to provide prompt and precise gas and water locates in the field, for the
safety of anyone planning to excavate in the City of Kitchener.
____________________
Dan Chapman, CA
General Manager of Financial Services
____________________
Wally Malcom, P.Eng, MBA
Director of Utilities
____________________
Michael Grummett,
Director of Information Technology
___________________
Jeff Ham, OLS, OLIP, CET
Manager, Database Administration and GIS
Information Technology
___________________
Les Jones, P.Eng.
Utilities Engineer
Appendix 1 – Current Processes (Prior to this data conversion initiative)
Water:
Currently the Water Maps are updated annually with as-recorded information provided by
consultants for reconstructed and newly installed water main & services. Field staff provide record
change information when they make repairs or notice any deviations from the existing records.
Any inaccuracies noticed during the year are marked on the water map in the storage area and
are updated on the Water Maps annually. A back log of these alteration sheets that are waiting to
be transferred to the detail sheets has been created by a lack of resources to complete this task.
Prior to this data conversion initiative, the as-built information would be used to manually update
the associated Water Detail Sheets or create new electronic Water Detail Sheets. This part of the
process is not being completed on a regular basis resulting in out-of-date, inaccurate Water Detail
Sheets and no new Water Detail Sheets for new areas (approximately 10 years behind). Figure 1
is an example of a hard copy Water Detail Sheet (approximately 5,000 sheets to be digitized).
Gas:
The gas pipeline installation process is distinctly different from the water because the design and
inspection during installation of the gas pipeline is completed exclusively by Kitchener Utilities
personnel. The Gas Pipeline Inspector completes the as-constructed detail sheets for all gas
pipeline installations and submits them to the draftsperson, who in turn enters relevant asset data,
manually trims and copies the paper as-constructed records for filing and to distribute to the
Locators and finally file the sheet. This is to be completed as soon as possible after the
installation of the gas pipeline, to give the Locator pertinent information to find the pipeline.
The as-constructed records are used to produce the annual gas maps, completed in MicroStation.
The data is entered in an Oracle database that is linked to the mapping element, through the use
a third party software package, DB Windows.
Alteration sheets or field change records are completed by Construction and Maintenance
personnel when work has been completed on the asset that involve a partial or complete
replacement of the asset. Information on these field change records are then transferred to the
map and applicable existing detail sheet and/or the connected database, as required. The
affected detail sheets then again have to be copied, distributed to the locators and re-filed. Figure
2 is an example of a hard copy Gas Detail Sheet (approximately 50,000-55,000 records to be
digitized).
Figure 1 – Water Detail Sheet Example
Figure 2 – Gas Detail Sheet Example