Sewer CCTV Inspection Management Software

[JoshuaDamron]

Greetings,
  My municipality is looking at purchasing software to manage sewer CCTV inspection files and I???m trying to research what our options are.  We are a small city so until now we???ve gotten away with simply storing the video files in folders by street name/address (we have not linked them to the GIS yet).  Maintaining sewer video files in an easy to find format has been difficult due to a lack of consistency in staff naming conventions.  Due to new policies we are implementing a program to inspect all +60 miles of pipe every 5 years.  This is going to generate a large amount of data.  With this in mind we are looking at investing in CCTV Sewer Inspection Management software, some of the key reasons for this are:

   -We intend to link videos to ArcGIS, many software products have functionality that streamlines and automates this process.

   -Creating pipe reports - Documenting pipe conditions and video findings without having to repeatedly review videos or keep track of hand written notes.

   -Organize pipe CCTV, photos and reports such that they stay together and organized (Automate file naming and storage).

    -Query and categorize pipe conditions to easily quantify results/present results to make defensible Capitol Improvement decisions.

Searching on the web there are several companies out there which offer products that link CCTV videos to GIS features.  To name a few of these: POSM, CUES/Granite, PipeLogix, Redzone, Innovyze. 

Nearly all of these boast being ESRI ???Gold??? or ???Silver??? business partners??? Can someone clarify what exactly this means?

Do any of you have experience you would be willing to share with regards to how you manage your CCTV video files and reports?  Any experience with the pros & cons of these (or other) different software options?

I think we prefer to not go out and purchase another software package to link videos to the GIS, however it is looking like our field crews will be making the purchase anyways so I???m doing my homework here to ensure the right de3cisions are made.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

-Joshua

[GrahamW]

Hi Joshua,

We are going down the same route now and looking to enhance our current win-can system. I'll watch this thread closely as we realistically are in about the same position as you in terms of our current status..

We are very interested in GraniteXP as this is a very thorough system but we have some issues with some finer details before perusing it. We have had demonstrations and communications about going down this avenue but again we have to be sure it will be money worth spending. It also seems there is no water authorities in Australia who are using this so there is also an industry accreditation/peer review that may be requried before going down this path.

One of our key drivers is to get inspection scores feeding directly into our Asset system (Hansen)

Regards,

Graham Wood
Water and Sewer GIS Coordinator
Gosford City Council

[JoshuaDamron]

Graham,

Thank you for the post back.  I've been quite busy researching cameras, crawlers, CCTV van equipment and inspection software... to say the least I've learned a lot.  We've had camera/crawler/truck units giving live demos & software companies doing web demos and I gotta say the technology is pretty neat and the sales staff are very helpful.

On the software end I've learned that there are Inspection based software and Asset based software, we are going the Asset based route. I'm not sure what your process has consisted of but I found that each company uses its own lingo so I made up a comparison sheet in Excel and had each company answer questions about what their products offer.  I think this is the best and only way to compare the different vendors simply because each vendors software works a little bit differently from the next and its hard to keep them straight. 

One of our key drivers is to get inspection scores feeding directly into our Asset system (Hansen)

From what I learned most of the companies talk like they play well with Hansen.  For us, we aren't using an asset management system but it is 90% for sure that we will be migrating to SunGuard Public Sector's "One Solution" in the next year.

All of the companies have great qualities and lots of similarities, they all seem to be in the same price range.  I think it is important to isolate the "top 10" must haves for your organization.  For us a few of our big things are able to automate the mapping of mainline deficiency ratings, point defects & observations, continuous defects, and lateral & manhole scores; also open architecture (able to easily customize the database) and as an extension of this the ability to expand the program to track more data than gravity water utilities and manholes.  Also checks and balances between the sewer inspection software and the GIS to ensure the integrity of our GIS data.  For us we have narrowed our search to I.T. Pipes, GraniteXP & WinCan.  All are very well designed programs and it will be a pretty near decision.

Good luck!

[TrishRice]

Good job with all that research.  We use Granite XP.  We're also a small city--9000 pop, 17.5 miles of sanitary sewer inspected on a 3-year cycle.  We are quite happy with it, we've had it for a long time so I've never compared it to other programs.  I only have the Viewer version and the field crew has the Inspector version so my knowledge of its inner workings is limited.  We also have a separate asset management program PubWorks, for about a year now, which has a steep learning curve to input data but our PW Director loves it for his $$ reporting.  We are looking at getting Granite's GIS module so we can link the inspections with the maps and with PubWorks, but like you are weighing what we'd gain from that.

Not sure what I can tell you that the sales reps haven't, but if you want any examples of how it works for us I'll see what I can do.

[nicogis]

I have posted a little start point sample using Dynamic segmentation ( http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/74130-Pipeline-video-inspection-using-dynamic-segmentation?highligh... ). You can create records in table (info track registration video) and create on the fly polyline M for mapping your video on tube (you can creating a soe in ags). With DS you also can do your processing for extract info ect ..

Here you can see Program Tiers: http://www.esri.com/partners/partner-network/program-tiers

[JonathanFeeke]

Greetings,

We have and continue development of a customer based (you) application which completely integrates into ArcGIS, showing videos, images, attributes, spatial location, filters, environmental impact based on other layers, automated display of inspection data on your ArcGIS Map in a new layer, transfer of data from CCTV data to shapefiles, and GIS Editing related tools just to name a few. It is a client specific application, so what you want is what we develop, which our base development focused on Pipeline Networks. Visit http://www.covegis.com for more information, but also take note that the features of the application i listed above are not reflected on the website as we have just concluded our first version of the app.
It is in the form of an ArcGIS Add-In, which simplifies the installation and provides complete integration. Currently available for ArcGIS 10+. Im not sure if i can put contact details on this blog, but it is available on the website.

Jonathan Feeke
Lead Developer

CoveGIS - Bridging the gap between ArcGIS and CCTV Data

[CalebAnderson2]

Joshua,

We're just now moving to new CCTV software. What did you end up going with? How has the transition been? Did it meet the goals you outlined?

We're looking at

ITpipes

WinCan

Granite XP

POSM

Any recommendations?

[AdelOtman]

Hi everybody!

I'm very interested for esri CCTV tool which uses for sewer inspections, so I'm looking for anyone who knows about it, how to get, training, how much it cost? any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks