Leveraging software investments with the Utility DataHub™ at Fort Pierce Utilities Authority
The mission statement of Fort Pierce Utilities Authority (FPUA) in Fort Pierce, Florida is “To provide our customers with economical, reliable and friendly service in a continuous effort to enhance the quality of life in our community.” To achieve this goal, the leadership of the electric department established a vision to provide a single, streamlined environment to support new design improvements to the City electric network. This growing community needed to be able to reduce the response time for Customer requests, while managing the ever increasing costs associated with capital improvements to the electric system.
FPUA had several challenges to deal with. Current design processes and infrastructure, while effective, were not efficient. It was necessary to access three different applications to perform the design process. Current construction pricing information was not readily integrated into their design environment, making financial management of the design process much more difficult. And finally, their Asset Management system, based on Cogsdale Corporation and Microsoft Dynamics GP, was not integrated into the design process.
With a clear vision in place, FPUA set out to fulfill the promise of their mission while taking advantage of their current investments in AutoCAD®, Cogsdale and ArcFM. They chose the SBS Utility DataHub™ integration software suite and took advantage of the low cost upgrade from AutoCAD® to model-based AutoCAD® Utility Design (AUD). This ‘simple’ solution removes redundant data entry, without the need for costly training and software. The Utility DataHub™ automated information exchange of both labor and materials costing from the Microsoft Dynamics GP system and AUD. This process had previously required that the designers access three different systems to generate a design. Now all work can be done from a single application toolbar.
Several results are quite evident since making the change. The design process is now much more standardized, which improves overall cost effectiveness of the new construction process. Designs are much more accurate which is improving quality of the electrical system. Perhaps most important, SBS Utility DataHub™ allows FPUA to take advantage of their existing , and future investments in software technologies from Autodesk, Microsoft and Cogsdale to do much more than they could in the past.
