Preparing for Implementation Success: Bay County's Top 5 Tips

One of our local government peers was recently looking to make the move to mobile and they reached out to get my thoughts and guidance. Our utilities team here in Bay County, Florida, implemented a new asset management system in August, and that change—like most changes—was met with some understandable hesitancy.

Adjusting to a new way of doing things can be scary, and this community wanted to learn from our experience. How did we get our crews on board with a new system and procedures? How did we reduce friction in the adoption? What went well? What would we do differently?

I knew exactly how they felt. Ahead of our software implementation with Cartegraph, we wondered how it would be accepted here too. Then again, we didn't have much to lose. In terms of paperwork and our day-to-day operations, things here were frankly awful. In the field and forgot your forms? Time to double back to the office and grab them. Task incomplete? It’s probably on a work order lost under a truck seat or floor mat.

"When you account for these efficiencies across our department—and across the calendar year—the savings in time, money, and everyday crew stress add up and multiply."

Luckily, I can look back on that period of time and laugh. I think of it as The Stone Age of Bay County Utilities. Since implementing the new work and asset management technology, we’ve caught up to the high-tech era and then some. The smart use of apps, ArcGIS maps, and mobile devices have allowed us to accomplish so many things that just weren't possible before—even though we now see how important they are to getting our jobs done right.

Today, we can track the condition of the 21,000 water and sewer assets most important to us: mains, meters, and manholes to pumps, valves, and hydrants. We can zero in on maintenance costs with the same precision and speed it takes to send a text. We track our labor, equipment, and materials better than ever before. When you account for these efficiencies across our department—and across the calendar year—the savings in time, money, and everyday crew stress add up and multiply.

We now know where we've been, where we want to be, and how to get there. Bay County's partnership with Cartegraph has us well on our way to set a shining standard we can be proud of. We've gone from collecting crumpled up forms to iPads and smartphones filled with comprehensive, real-time data. And, that data will help us to develop benchmarks where we can look back at the year and review what we’ve done.

There's every reason to believe your municipality can benefit from our experience, especially when it comes to negotiating a smooth implementation that guarantees success. Here are some of Bay County's top tips and key takeaways I'd like to share: