City of Shawnee approves asset management plan Cityworks

On Monday, attending Shawnee City Commissioners voted unanimously, 6-0, to approve the implementation of a new asset management platform, called Cityworks, which is a tool designed to fully leverage an organization's investments in one database. Ward 4 Shawnee City Commissioner Darren Rutherford was not at the meeting.

In a recent presentation of the system, Shawnee Public Works Director Brad Schmidt said assets can be tracked and monitored, as well as maintenance schedules, equipment use, labor costs, permitting workflows, asset conditions and risk assessment — all in real time.

The aim is to streamline field work, warehouse inventory, customer feedback and stakeholder insights both onsite and remotely.

Schmidt said his staff had looked at several platforms, but Cityworks is the industry leader.

“They offer the most complete package,” he said.

The Cityworks system will affect all of the public works departments, like parks and recreation, fleet management, water and wastewater — including utility billing, streets and traffic, facility management and emergency management, he said.

“This last year, we had the two FEMA events — the ice storm in October and the snow storm in February — we spent several months after both of those inputting data for reimbursement,” he said. “This software will allow you to capture that data in real time, generate the report, that allows us on a public works side, to continue working on water, wastewater, streets, traffic, parks, and allows emergency management to utilize their time more efficiently.”

He said another big component of the system is resident engagement.

“What this will do is streamline the reporting process,” he said. “This allows real-time reporting for customers, business owners, passers-by; they can report right from their cell phones and take a picture of the issue, and it will auto assign to the correct department.”

The initial cost is $224,860.

“The majority of that is the creation of templates and uploading all of our scattered data,” he said. “For Cityworks itself, the first year is $48,500, that gives us up to a 40-percent discount.”

Year two would cost $63,500, and year three — and after — would cost approximately (based on population) $78,500, Schmidt said.

“I don't know what our cost in man hours were between those two storms, but I know it's more than year-three costs, and it's probably really close to that initial cost — of time we spent citywide gathering all that data and organizing it,” he said. Schmidt also said there is a lot of time and labor involved in just work order management under the current system.

“With this, once a call is received, it can be auto-assigned, or assigned to a crew or truck in the area, by GPS, and that work order will stay on that device until that employee resolves that issue,” he said.

Schmidt said Denton, Texas, had a spreadsheet system like Shawnee's, but uses Cityworks now.

“Once they implemented this, their expected budget went from $4.3 million for that year to $2.1 million, just in the accuracy of data presented,” he said. “So, that's a very big savings you can do with proper information.”

There also are many other aspects to the system, including things like asset management, which Schmidt said Shawnee does not currently have.

To implement the process, it would take about six to eight months, he said.

For more information, Schmidt said there are many videos about Cityworks available for viewing on YouTube.

For story ideas, questions or concerns, reporter Vicky O. Misa can be reached at vicky.misa@news-star.com.

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This article originally appeared on The Shawnee News-Star: City of Shawnee OKs asset management plan Cityworks