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Revolutionizing Infrastructure Management: Coordinate Team Wins Michigan Contract for “Dig Once” Portal

Posted on August 20th, 2023 by Patrick Skoglund

Revolutionizing Infrastructure Management: Coordinate Team Wins Michigan Contract for "Dig Once" Portal

The Coordinate team is happy to announce that the State of Michigan has awarded the Coordinate team a contract for their innovative “dig once” portal, set to transform the way Michigan manages infrastructure dollars. The Coordinate team aims to help better understand where key projects and funding are being spent, save taxpayer money, identify underserved communities in the state, and limit CO2 emissions presented as the result of redundant construction work. Let’s explore the potential impact of this exciting development!

 

The “Dig Once” portal streamlines collaboration across departments for infrastructure projects, eliminating redundancies and optimizing resource utilization. This results in significant cost savings for taxpayers, as projects are completed efficiently and within budget. Also, by integrating data on infrastructure, demographics, and community needs, the portal helps prioritize projects in underserved areas. This ensures equitable access to critical infrastructure dollars to ensure Michigan allocates funding where they are most needed. Lastly, the portal will help reduce CO2 emissions by minimizing excavations and promoting sustainable decision-making. This aligns with Michigan’s environmental goals, fostering a greener infrastructure development approach, something that will benefit all citizens of the State of Michigan. 

 

Ryan Laruwe, Executive Director of the Michigan Infrastructure Council and Department of Treasury had this to say about the exciting new partnership. “The Michigan Infrastructure Council is excited to partner with Coordinate (SADA Systems) to provide our stakeholders with a state-of-the-art coordination software. We look forward to a future where infrastructure owners can work together to dig less and accomplish more as we rebuild Michigan’s infrastructure systems.”

 

The Coordinate team is extremely excited about the opportunity to work with the State of Michigan on this initiative and we are looking forward to a long and successful partnership with the state! If you would like to get more information on how the Coordinate team can help your organization, please reach out to us at www.gocoordinate.com.

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dotMaps is now Coordinate, with powerful new features to reduce costs and carbon

Posted on October 26th, 2022 by Patrick Skoglund

dotMaps is now Coordinate, with powerful new features to reduce costs and carbon

SADA is excited to announce that dotMaps is now Coordinate, with new features including enhanced data aggregation to consolidate data streams, increased ease of use, enabling reductions in customer CO2 emissions, and cost savings for both organizations and taxpayers.

Coordinate is an extremely powerful project coordination tool to better manage the public right-of-way. The Coordinate application reduces the risk of project conflicts by alerting agencies when projects may overlap or be duplicative, saving organizations time and costs. Potential project conflicts are identified, and notifications are generated in real-time, leading to faster resolution for application users.

“With the rebranding and redesign of our Coordinate application, we will deliver an even more simplified way for local municipalities to plan, orchestrate, and execute construction happening in the right-of-way,” said Joe Kosco, Executive Vice President of Sales at SADA. “We are excited to help cities decrease CO2 emissions and cut costs while saving them and their taxpayers millions each year by eliminating redundant repavings across their cities. With features like configurable project coordination, conflict resolution, approval workflows, and integrated communication between agencies and utilities, we can eliminate repeated street cuts and department silos to create a better user experience and flow across organizations.”

Built using Google Maps and Google Cloud Platform, Coordinate expands upon its previous incarnation as the popular dotMaps application, providing a simple, intuitive map editing and creation tool. The result is a high-performance, easy-to-use application that effectively streamlines workflows for better project scheduling and overall resource management. Coordinate is designed to support organizations whose operational success depends on accurate geolocation for ongoing projects, including Departments of Transportation, Public Works, State and Government agencies, utility and gas companies, and commercial organizations.

“A project that was going to cost $200,000 only cost $100,000, so there are more funds to expand the network or otherwise improve infrastructure. That’s good for everyone,” said Heather Marx, Director of Downtown Mobility for the Seattle Department of Transportation. “Coordinate has proven to be an invaluable tool for Seattle residents and visitors as well as for the city itself.”

New Features:

  • Workflow Builder enables organizations to create their own custom unique workflows in the system around project and utility coordination. 
  • Service Requests through the Coordinate Public Portal allows citizens to submit requests for work orders, special event permits and problems existing in the Right of Way (ROW) 
  • Front-End Configuration of System Level attributes and Agency Permissions enables organizations to update and adjust attributes and schema items without the need of coding. Administrators within organizations can update and tailor specific schemas at their discretion. 
  • Added Support for Reporting and Analytics allows for a better understanding of data so organizations can make better decisions and increase their return on investment.

Additional Benefits Include:

  • Reduction in CO2 emissions by limiting redundant re-pavings 
  • Reduced risk of overlapping projects and duplicated efforts, saving organizations time and money
  • Reliable backup with a 99.9% up-time guarantee powered by the same infrastructure as Google.com
  • Consolidated data for a centralized hub of information that increases productivity with quick accessibility across multiple organizations and departments
  • Improved inter and intra-agency collaboration with real-time communication and sharing of project information
  • Increase citizen satisfaction with faster projection completion and disaster recovery, from road repairs to new construction
  • Improved ROW management, project coordination, conflict resolution, private utility coordination, public transparency, notifications for public around projects, events, construction, and permits 

Learn more about Coordinate.

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SDOT Gains Immediate Cost Savings with Project Coordination Application, dotMaps

Posted on October 26th, 2022 by Patrick Skoglund

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Forbes: How SDOT Expects to Save $7M in First Year

Posted on October 26th, 2022 by Patrick Skoglund

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SDOT Gains Immediate Cost Savings with dotMap

Posted on October 26th, 2022 by Patrick Skoglund

Overview and Challenge

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is tasked with building and managing infrastructure for a rapidly growing, vibrant West Coast city. In 2015, Seattle voters passed a $930 million levy to fund the repaving of roughly 200 miles of city streets. While this was a positive development, city officials anticipated that SDOT would need to coordinate heavily with city agencies and utilities on the upcoming repaving projects to minimize traffic congestion in and around the city. SDOT managers also knew they would need a better solution for coordinating the various agencies such as Puget Sound Energy, Seattle City Light, telecommunications firms, and other agencies that build in the right of way. Currently, Seattle has more active construction cranes than in any other U.S. city, and citizens were frustrated with the construction disruptions, according to Scott Kubly, Director of SDOT. He faced the challenge of balancing the city’s infrastructure demands with the need to minimizing impacts on mobility for all modes of transportation, maintaining access to residences and businesses, and protecting city assets.

Kubly began looking for a new project management tool that would display all the projects happening within the city to identify conflicts and opportunities for coordination between public and private agencies. For example, if two utilities planned on working in the same area the tool would alert project managers of the opportunity to coordinate on scope and schedule in the hopes of saving construction costs and time.  “We needed an application which could identify conflicts and opportunities for us automatically, and would be really nice to look at so people would use it,” Kubly says.

Solution

SADA Systems was the successful bidder to replace SDOT’s non-functional right of way management system, given its business and product development experience designing an application with similar requirements for the Chicago Department of Transportation. SADA Systems customized the interactive mapping application, dotMaps, which went live in Seattle in August 2017.  Public and private entity project managers can use dotMaps to search and view all planned city and private projects as well as events and paving moratoriums.  Users can also find information on the type of project, agency, project manager, and schedule for each project. Beyond this, dotMaps analyzes the data to identify which projects overlap in time and space, called conflicts, and which projects overlap in space only, called opportunities. The main uses for dotMaps today include:

  • Project managers overseeing any city infrastructure projects used dotMaps to see what other projects are nearby and identify potential conflicts and opportunities for coordination. dotMaps also alerts project managers of new projects that overlap with theirs for conflict resolution.
  • SDOT coordination engineers use dotMaps to create groups of projects in specific geographic locations where there is a high density of development.  The coordination engineers use dotMaps to contact all affected project managers and create a construction sequence. Doing so reduces construction times and impacts on the public and saves money for the involved agencies.
  • Users can see SDOT construction events in the system, i
Benefits

Within a short timeframe, dotMaps has improved communication across agencies regarding transportation construction projects and serves as a valuable mechanism to minimize the negative effects of road work on the public:

  • In the first two months of using dotMaps, the SDOT Project Coordination Office has already generated $800,000 in cost savings from better coordination between projects. Projecting $7 million in cost savings within the first year.
  • SDOT can manage projects to comply with a new five-year moratorium on construction after a road has been repaved.
  • Finally, SDOT has drastically improved its ability to coordinate projects. Prior to deploying dotMaps, SDOT was able to coordinate roughly 3% of city streets. Today, Seattle is coordinating 100% of city street projects. ​

“The system we had before didn’t have a friendly user interface, and it was hard for project managers to update information,” says Kubly. “We know that as SADA makes changes to the product we will benefit, and we’re already envisioning how dotMaps can help in other areas such as for budgeting and making strategic decisions with elected officials and community leaders.”

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