Good morning.  The University of Maryland - College Park is looking for a little help from this community.  We need to put together an RFP for a consultant to help us implement a complete (11 utilities) utilities GIS solution.  We are hoping that someone(s) from this group would be willing to share existing RFPs to give us a starting place.  Any help would be appreciated. Thank you in advance! ... View more

Hello All, We're looking for some insight from other universities who have moved to the utility network model, whether for individual utilities or all of them. We have 4 utility systems (water, sewer, chilled water, steam) currently on ESRI's geometric network model and 3 others also in GIS but not in a network model. We are beginning to consider migration to UN, with the primary impetus being the eventual deprecation and end of support for ArcMap, and the need to be able to edit the systems on the geometric network in Pro.  We are beginning to understand how significant and costly of an undertaking this is and are curious how other universities have handled it. For any here who have migrated to UN, we would greatly appreciate any insight you have. Here are some specific questions we have: 1 - Was it done in-house or by an outside consultant? 2 - Did you tackle a specific utility as a pilot project or look at a combination of systems? 3 - What has been the primary value of being on the UN?  4- Are you using UN tools (e.g. tracing) on mobile apps in the field? 5 - How was the transition for GIS staff working and editing on UN? (Seems like a steep learning curve even for experienced GIS folks, so we're wondering how we would handle training of new staff.)   Thanks in advance! I know this is a lot to respond to - I'm very happy to talk with anyone if you're willing provide time and insight.  Laurel Krynock NC State University ... View more

Hello Everyone,  I am reaching out to this community in hopes of learning about any tips or tricks others have used to delineate a 'direction of flow' in some of their utility networks. This could apply to Electrical Distribution, Domestic Water Systems, Chilled Water Systems, Pressurized Steam Systems, etc. I am new to utility mapping but my goal is to gain some helpful information from some of the more experienced utility experts out there. Our utility assets were recently converted to GIS from a CAD based solution but they still lack a lot of the functionality or supporting attribution that will allow the data to thrive in the GIS environment. At this time, we simply have the line work and points digitized to resemble the previous CAD plans as close as possible. All the data is currently structured in a file geodatabase broken up into datasets for each utility asset. For the issue of flow direction, I used a separate feature class to drop arrows on top of the linework to signify 'direction of flow'. I am aware that this method is tedious and will not allow for future 'upstream/downstream' capabilities when further developing the networks. This is something that I think could eventually add significant value to the data and therefore would like to figure out the best course of action to build this out. The two main methods I have read about for achieving this are setting 'sinks and sources' or using 'digitized direction of edges'.  If anyone has experience with these methods and could share some insight, it would be greatly appreciated. Does one method work better than the other? Is one easier to manage down the line? (no pun intended). If I already have the system digitized without consideration of the direction it was drawn in, is there an easy way to set the direction of a line afterwards without having to redraw every line? Any and all help is greatly appreciated! I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Thank you, Nicholas Burns ... View more

On the 2nd meeting that took place on 1/19/22, I shared 3 Esri resource/updates. Esri Solutions Gallery The Esri Solutions page was recently updated, which included some updated solutions specific to utilities. The 'Data Management' solutions now include the ability to deploy them for ArcGIS Enterprise. These are the 'light-weight' network models that have a full-schema, symbology, applications, etc. IMGIS Plenary Session This link takes you directly to the IMGIS (Infrastructure Management) Conference playlist. The event took place at the end of 2021 and includes some great presentations. Network Management This blog provides details for Esri's Network Management Release Plan. Basically, these are supported releases for utilities that are deploying ArcGIS Enterprise and want to understand what versions to deploy for longer term production needs. ... View more