Saline - GIS Solution Development

Restructured GIS Platform Provides a Trusted Source for Improving Efficiencies, Informing Decisions, and Positioning Community for a More Resilient Future 

The City of Saline is a future-focused community, but its water and sewer record keeping had fallen behind. Hard copies of plans, as-built drawings, and other documents were housed across various city facilities, creating inefficiencies for the public works team. The municipality engaged OHM Advisors to lead the process of rebuilding and restructuring their under-leveraged GIS into an up-to-date, easily accessible platform.

To develop a comprehensive, reliable GIS, OHM Advisors and city staff inventoried Saline’s water and sanitary sewer systems using high accuracy, survey-grade Global Navigation Satellite System receivers that connect with a mobile app. This allowed staff to collect geographic data in the field while checking quality, standardizing inputs, and capturing on-site images and information. Decades of paper records were digitized, reconciled, and linked to locations in the Esri ArcGIS platform.

With its customized GIS in place:

• The City of Saline can rely on interactive tools to track management and maintenance activities, from hydrant flushing and winterizing to catch basin cleaning.
• City staff can easily access mapping data on their mobile devices, informing decision making and improving response time during a water main break or other emergency.
• Contractors partnering with the City benefit from geospatial information that increases accuracy of estimates and reduces turnaround time.
• The City can be more proactive and prepared, using the data to identify needed projects, guide capital plans, and develop a utility master plan.

The City of Saline’s Department of Public Works has transformed the way the team manages and maintains their infrastructure, demonstrating a commitment to efficiency, transparency, and long-term sustainability of the community’s water and sewer systems.

Project highlights: GIS, community engagement, transportation planning, traffic engineering