Cityworks Touts Full Lifecycle Asset Management for Infrastructure

Geospatial data and information is one of the most critical elements for infrastructure improvement projects and asset management. The GIS  provides  context for where infrastructure is placed, its attributes, topography, maintenance history, and much more.  These attributes  track an asset’s  performance and catalog its proximity to other assets. Cityworks adds to this context by providing historical activity of when and how the infrastructure was placed, what type of work has been performed against the infrastructure, and the ability to identify the encompassing business risk should that infrastructure fail. With its platform architecture, Cityworks is able to consume various sources of data which inform organizations and assist with smart and efficient planning as stewards within their communities.

Cityworks was acquired by Trimble in 2019. It is built as a GIS-centric, platform-based, software for asset management and permitting. across the asset lifecycle with added capabilities for project management, contract management, and activity-based solutions. Cityworks, alongside e-Builder, a Trimble BIM Solution that integrates on the platform, provides comprehensive asset management from the permitting phase through building and inspection into operations and maintenance. 

Recently within Trimble, a new sector was created that is specifically focused on owners of infrastructure and the public sector. The Owner and Public Sector includes Cityworks and e-Builder along with Trimble Utilities and Agile Assets, a pavement manager. They are positioned as part of the construction sector with a focus on the public sector and leverages these solutions that are focused on completing and fulfilling the different stages of the design, build, operate process to provide a comprehensive GIS-centric solution for the public sector. 

Trimble’s Owner & Public Sector works with e-Builder, AgileAssets’ Pavement Express solution, and Trimble utilities vis-à-vis hardware, sensors, and additional software for both back office and field in combination with Cityworks. Cumulatively, through the collection of those solutions, Trimble can provide connected workflows that help organizations who are responsible for owning and maintaining infrastructure to span that full process from the time that the asset is being designed to maintenance and enable the flow of data throughout an organization.“We track every time an asset is touched, every activity that’s performed against that asset and all the resources that are invested as well, so labor, material costs and then allocation of those resources back to projects, contracts and budgets,” according to Becky Tamashasky, vice president of Vision and Engineering at Cityworks.

The asset lifecycle management process initiates with the permitting phase, when a contractor or resident submits an application for a permit with designs that come from an engineering firm. Those designs are entered via the permitting portal and relayed to  the city. That event initiates the plan review, collects any fees, and schedules the inspections along with any other tasks that take place around approval for the construction process. Once the infrastructure is operational following construction, Cityworks asset management software picks up again for the duration of the asset’s  lifecycle operations and maintenance.

Adds Tamashasky, “Over the lifecycle of the infrastructure, we’re able to capture all the data and then use that to perform risk assessment for the infrastructure as well, getting into prioritization of the highest assets, the assets that have the highest business risk, and helping organizations to understand how to allocate those resources going forward with capital projects, to be more efficient and more focused on the allocation of those resources.”

Cityworks functions as a platform application and continues to expand that platform with web services to ensure their application is extensible and supportive of integration with third-party business systems utilized by their customers and used to build additional solutions by partners.

“We’ve brought forward a few new solutions, one of which is OpX from Cityworks,” said Tamashasky. “OpX brings the existing project management tools into an updated interface with enhanced query engines, comprehensive activity and financial summaries, and a spatial view. With iterative releases, the capabilities of contract management and budgeting will be incorporated with consolidated details and an overview to simplify the financial tracking for organizations. The application was recently released to the market, and focuses on information that’s being tracked across the financial side of the organization, looking at the project management, budgeting, contracting and allowing a single unified consolidated view of that information for those end users who are dealing with the ins and outs and the daily reconciliation of financial information from the operations side, i.e., through contractors, and being able to do the justification process.”

In relation to risk assessment, Cityworks makes sure projects are evaluated under the perspective of extending the useful life of infrastructure through asset management and that the projects and contracts are there with the budget justification. “We’ve also been doing additional work in relation to Esri with our latest release,” said Tamashasky. “Cityworks is built directly on the Esri platform, and works only with Esri GIS, and so with that, there’s a lot of the functionality that Esri brings that is incorporated and adopted as part of our solutions.”

Cityworks provides solutions with ArcGIS Indoors and offers full support for Esri’s Utility network. “Cityworks is natively reading the utility network feature services,” Tamashasky said. “This is possible because Cityworks has been built from the beginning to read directly and dynamically from Esri data. We have other activities in progress with ArcGIS Knowledge, and the ArcGIS Mission.”

Cityworks has been offered in the industry for over 25 years. AMS represents the Asset Management System and PLL is Permits Licensing and Land and organizations can license and deploy one or the other or both for maximum value. Organizations that deploy both benefit as those users of the permitting and licensing capabilities can share data and consume data from the asset management side of the organization and vice versa.

“It could be a development process and the water distribution system needs testing to take place as a water system is going live for the organization,” noted Tamashasky. “It would allow users to schedule those inspections from the operation side of the house to go out, and then all that information because it is one complete solution, is fed back in, and activities are updated. This way the workflow can progress. Users are notified and events are automatically initiated as part of that workflow logic.”

The applications are for both desktop and field mobile use. All solutions are web-based.

Users have the options of HTML 5 apps or mobile apps for iOS and Android. Trimble Utilities also provides mobile offerings for Cityworks applications that are designed to support Windows users. There is a lot of flexibility for how users can interact with Cityworks applications. Many users are using many different platforms within the same organization.

For more on Cityworks, you can visit

www.cityworks.com

Tags: Cityworks, infrastructure, Trimble

Category: Video Interview

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