Project Goal
Implemententation of modern GIS solutions at Xenia Rural Water District are key to a small staff able to serve water in a large physical area. Xenia’s ability to provide safe clean drinking water to rural areas and small communities is thanks in part to mapping and GIS systems making a small staff feel so much larger.Business Problem Solved
Xenia Rural Water District modernized workflows by moving away from Arc Reader and taking advantage of applications supported by web mapping (ArcGIS Online). ArcGIS Field Maps was implemented to track water meters that misread during meter reading routes. This enabled staff to easily navigate to meters, correct the problem, and provide this information on a web map in real time. The workflow saved Xenia Rural Water District approximately $10,000 per year.
ArcGIS Field Maps was also implemented, replacing an excel spreadsheet, to track fire hydrant flushing. Field Maps has eliminated manual import and join of the spreadsheet and enables staff to see what needs to be done in the area where they may be doing locates or service calls, saving multiple trips to the same area.
Technology Implemented
ArcGIS Field Maps was also implemented, replacing an excel spreadsheet, to track fire hydrant flushing. Field Maps has eliminated manual import and join of the spreadsheet and enables staff to see what needs to be done in the area where they may be doing locates or service calls, saving multiple trips to the same area.
With the Lead and Copper Rule Revisions requirement to complete a service line inventory by October of 2024, Laird looked to GIS for help. He learned about and implemented the Lead Service Line Inventory solution. The LCRR require that the inventory include material type on the private side of the service line. This was a big concern for Xenia Rural Water District because they did not have any data for the private side of service lines. The LSLI solution helped by providing a Survey123 form that can be provided to customers for data collection. This app was deployed with minor configurations to meet their needs, resulting in about a 50% customer response.
Development Team Biography
Laird Van Dee
In 2012 when the former GIS staff left Xenia, Laird was asked to oversee the GIS department un till the new staff member started a month later. When that new GIS staff decided to not take the job after all, Laird was asked to oversee the department full time. With minimal training in GIS, and no college education, Laird used a combination of ESRI's online training, and trial and error to keep the districts data up to date and to move it forward with the changing of the GIS landscape to the more online era with the introduction of ARCGIS online. In 2014 Xenia added the water modeling software Info Water to the suite of products, and again Laird was able to have the 6 individual parts of Xenia's systems modeled and ready to use daily. In 2023 Laird oversaw Xenia's transition from on premise servers to cloud based servers, and at the same time switched the company from ARC READER to exclusively using AGOL for all of the staff's mapping access.