Background
The City of Leduc in Alberta, Canada, has been using Cityworks since 2015 to help optimize work management and improve staff productivity. Cityworks is a platform that simplifies project workflow for public asset management and maintenance, helping government agencies collaborate more efficiently and improve decision-making.
After their first EagleView flight in 2018, Leduc’s Chief Information Officer Cindy Post started to see the potential for maximizing the impact of their data by integrating EagleView’s oblique and orthogonal aerial imagery with the Cityworks platform.
Cindy collaborated with EagleView to help develop and test an integration with Cityworks. The resulting partnership has made it possible for the City of Leduc and other government agencies to seamlessly merge public asset inventories with their EagleView oblique and orthogonal aerial imagery—helping them visualize the entire scene, see the exact location of assets on a high-resolution image, and access the information needed to work more effectively in the field.
"We're really excited about our partnership with EagleView and Cityworks, especially the ability to use oblique imagery for asset management. I think it revolutionizes the way that we're able to use data in our day-to-day work."
Challenge
Meeting the community’s expectation to demonstrate fiscal responsibility, transparency, and prudent staffing decisions has been a key driver for the city’s investment in new technology.
“We’re asking our staff to do a lot of things now. The only way we can accommodate that is by looking at efficiencies,” said Post. “If we’re not adding more staff, then the only way we can actually move forward is by investing in innovation.”
An early step toward this goal was replacing paper maps and manual processes with digital tools, providing field teams with the information they needed right at their fingertips—no matter where they happened to be.
Yet relying on separate platforms created new bottlenecks. Staff still needed to spend time searching for data in multiple places, as well as inputting and exporting information between tools. “People out in the field would either have to pull up a completely different application, or they’d actually have to go back into the city and do that work at their desktops,” said Post.
To get the greatest benefit from their technology investments, Cindy needed these systems to share data, keep everyone connected, and minimize the amount of time spent searching for the right information.
Solution
Cindy shared her vision with Joe Oddi, Director of Strategic Partnerships for EagleView Government.
“When we learned that Leduc’s existing setup wasn’t quite hitting the mark, we immediately started working on ideas for building a completely custom integration for them,” said Oddi. “Since EagleView’s solution is designed to be connected with other platforms and operate seamlessly within your workflow, we were able to collaborate with Esri Canada and quickly build a custom connection that provided the functionality Cindy was looking for.”
EagleView imagery, including patented metric oblique images, could now be accessed directly within the Cityworks platform, facilitating communication between team members across multiple locations, and making it much easier to share and confirm details regarding assets, locations, structures, and projects.
“I brought it back to the utilities manager, and he couldn’t believe that the very simple conversation we had around these challenges led to this new tool,” said Post. “Now they use it all the time. Our staff is constantly using it in the field and the office and communicating with each other on it. They don’t know what they would do without it.” EagleView is using feedback from staff to improve the integration, too, with enhancements planned in 2023.
Impact
The new streamlined functionality between EagleView and Cityworks enables the city’s staff to do all the work they need to do from the field, helping departments operate more efficiently and achieve their project goals—without increasing headcount.
The integration has also been a catalyst for change management within the City of Leduc, expanding the vision of what’s possible by showing staff how efficiency can lead to better ways of doing their jobs, solving problems, and accomplishing their most important goals.
Finally, the integration and associated benefits have caused the City of Leduc to move from bi-annual to annual flights with EagleView, allowing all departments to receive imagery and data more frequently.
“I believe that it’s those images that start different conversations. You can give people graphs and tables, but when you put this type of map-based visual data in front of them, it sparks these amazing ‘what if’ types of conversations that wouldn’t have otherwise happened,” said Post. “Once people can see what it can do, they want to build on it.”
Availability
Though initially developed for the City of Leduc, the integration between EagleView and Cityworks is available for any EagleView client using the Cityworks platform. At the time of publication, an additional sixteen local governments have set up the Cityworks integration, allowing their staff to leverage the power of EagleView oblique and orthogonal imagery directly in their Cityworks software.
