PWX 2021

Lessons Learned: Integrating "Dirty Data" into Cartegraph (Room 274)

The City of Plano has approximately 1,000 linear miles sewer lines and has been conducting routine inspections system using in-house crews over the last five years for 12-inch and smaller lines. These activities were tracked and logged through the city’s work order system, Cartegraph, and downloaded to our CCTV data management system, GraniteNet, but that is where the data stopped. Unless there was a significant issue, the inspection was complete and the crews went on to the next task. While this process worked well, they were was gaining very little insight into the condition of their sewer system. As part of their recent Wastewater Master Plan, they worked with their consultant to conduct a risk-based assessment (RBA) to determine the current state of their sewer infrastructure. Through the process they identified a need to use the RBA condition assetssment and criticality assessment from the Waterwater Master Plan to enhance Cartegraph to ultimately develop a prioritized work plan for crews and a business process for maximizing the results of their data. Using the age and material data already populated in Cartegraph, they built generic degradation curves for our various materials to calculate an estimated condition score. For sewer mains that already had an inspection completed, they imported the NASSCO PACP structural index from GraniteNET to determine the condition score. They were also able to track our rehabilitation work in Cartegraph and use their relining projects to reset the estimated condition score of our lines. After reviewing the data in Cartegraph and consultant’s condition assessments from the Wastewater Master Plan, the results were significantly similar and they had a high degree of confidence that their Cartegraph process was working. As they continue to consume more data sources into our assessment, they are continuing to evaluate our parameters to ensure they maximize their investments in people, technology, and infrastructure.