For most utilities, stronger asset management is the key to system and operational improvement. Get the most out of each asset, and you’ll gain greater overall efficiency.

That’s were Cartegraph comes in. Cartegraph asset management software can help municipal water and wastewater utilities with a host of tasks, from managing work orders to maximizing asset life.

Municipal Sewer & Water magazine recently had the opportunity to speak with Kurtis Warne about the company’s history and how it’s helping utilities get out of the reactive cycle.

MSW: Tell me a little bit about Cartegraph’s history and how it has evolved.

Warne: Our company has a great origin story. In 1994, Cartegraph started in a basement as our four founders looked to grow and change an industry. They saw local governments struggling to manage their infrastructure assets with notecards, paper maps and best guesses — and knew they needed to create a better solution. They focused on building easy-to-use software that could help our customers answer three fundamental questions: what assets do I have, where are they located, and what condition are they in?

Nearly three decades later, our team, vision, solutions and customer base have all certainly grown, but our inspiration remains the same. Today, Cartegraph helps government agencies, educational institutions, and private companies manage every indoor, outdoor, above and belowground infrastructure asset. By assisting organizations in taking better care of their buildings and infrastructure, we hope to help our customers build safer, more resilient, and more sustainable communities.

MSW: What types of needs do you address for municipal utilities?

Warne: Municipal sewer and water teams use Cartegraph work and asset management software to optimize the life of their infrastructure, track maintenance work, meet regulatory compliance and make smarter, data-driven decisions. While our web-based software and mobile tools are known for being user-friendly and well-designed, the depth and breadth of Cartegraph’s analysis and reporting capabilities are just as impressive.

Whether you’re responsible for water distribution, sanitary sewer, stormwater, or water and wastewater treatment plants, our solutions help you manage every asset, document inspections, and ensure you’re performing the right work at the right time. Crews and operators love Cartegraph’s deep domain expertise, preventive maintenance capabilities, and that they can assign, schedule and complete tasks from anywhere with a mobile device. Office staff appreciate how easy it is to organize and track customer requests and that Cartegraph can automatically send real-time status updates as crews perform the work. Finally, managers and directors value how easy it is to track goals, measure progress and prove compliance with Cartegraph’s Analytics Dashboard and out-of-the-box reports.

MSW: Can you give me a short overview of how Cartegraph integrates with utility data sources?

Warne: We believe that you should have the freedom to use your data, however, whenever and in whatever platform you choose. With that in mind, Cartegraph software integrates with practically everything: 811 locate and pipeline inspection solutions, billing and fueling systems, SCADA software and IoT devices — we do it all. For a list of integrations and info on our webhook and REST API capabilities, I recommend visiting www.cartegraph.com/integrations.

MSW: How does this system help municipal water/waste-water operators run their systems more efficiently?

Warne: With Cartegraph software, you’re able to ditch the paper maps and work orders, eliminate duplicate data entry, streamline reporting and free up your team to focus more on the work that matters. For example, the wastewater department at the City of Kingsport, Tennessee, saves thousands of hours a year with Cartegraph mobile workflows. Instead of having morning assignment meetings, crews now come in, grab their iPads loaded with their tasks, and head right into the field. This improvement may seem simple, but it’s saving at least 30 minutes a day per crew member — and those savings add up.

Water and wastewater systems run more efficiently with Cartegraph because all your asset, work, request, budgeting and reporting data are in the same comprehensive platform. Your team never has to worry about losing a work order, forgetting to do an inspection, or that an employee will retire and take all that historical knowledge with them. You also won’t waste hours trying to track down updates or find information filed away in cabinets.

Instead, you’ll rest easy knowing your users are capturing the correct data and following standard operating procedures with guided inspections. You’ll build custom dashboards and reports to monitor the data that matters to you most and easily prove compliance with NPDES, CWA and other federal, state or local requirements. You’ll use your operational data to justify staff and budget increases and tap into Cartegraph’s Scenario Builder feature to build multiyear capital improvement plans and make the most of your resources. 

MSW: Cartegraph functions as an asset management system for a variety of facilities. How is managing a school system similar to managing a sewer system?

Warne: Both a school system and a sewer system are a complicated network of infrastructure assets. Cartegraph software helps you manage every micro and macro level of that network. With Cartegraph, you’re able to drill down to analyze a specific asset or process — such as a single valve. Using Cartegraph’s container-component relationship capabilities, on the other hand, you’re able to roll up and monitor the collective costs and conditions of a specific facility, plant or your sewer system as a whole. You can even analyze how work on one part of your network will impact assets and processes further down the line.

MSW: What other elements make this system stand out?

Warne: Aside from our deep sewer and water expertise, our intuitive and user-friendly software, and our ability to manage every vertical and horizontal asset in your network, there are a few other elements that make Cartegraph stand out. For one, our 25-year partnership with Esri and our two-way ArcGIS integration help your team see where things are happening and how information is connected. By combining Esri’s robust mapping and spatial analysis tools with Cartegraph’s work, condition and cost data, you’re able to make informed decisions on everything from project planning to disaster preparedness.

Other elements that our customers rave about are Cartegraph’s overall ease of use, our intuitive mobile app, the flexibility to configure the solution to fit their needs and the software’s industry-leading automation, data visualization, reporting and budgeting features. But don’t take my word for it. Head to www.capterra.com to read reviews right from our customers.  

MSW: What are the most common problems you see your municipal customers facing?

Warne: Most customers have a long backlog of deferred maintenance but don’t have the funding to make a sizable dent in it. Luckily, with a real-time work and asset management system like Cartegraph, our customers can prioritize work, extend the life of their networks and make the most of their resources.  

Another challenge we hear about is battling institutional knowledge loss from employees leaving or retiring from the workforce. Fortunately, our customers use Cartegraph as a digital archive of maintenance history, so nothing is lost and new team members can be brought up to speed quickly and efficiently.

Finally, the last challenge we see the sewer and water sector struggle with is understanding, responding to and complying with new regulations. It takes a lot to ensure standard operating procedures are updated, new rules are being followed, the correct information is being recorded and that the proper reports are filed on time.

MSW: How do you see water/wastewater system maintenance and management evolving, and how does Cartegraph fit into that?

Warne: The future is smart infrastructure asset management. When I say smart, that’s two-fold. First, smart as in making better, data-informed decisions for your community. Best guesses and gut decisions aren’t enough to manage your sewer and water networks anymore. Teams need to capture the right data points, analyze that information and use the intelligence and insights to improve productivity and prepare for the future. 

On the other hand, smart infrastructure management is also leveraging the latest tech — augmented reality, automatic vehicle localization and artificial intelligence — to increase efficiency, automate processes, connect systems and better predict future needs and outcomes. We already have one customer, the city of Auburn, Washington, pairing augmented reality with Cartegraph to help their crews “see” and interact with underground assets. All without lifting a shovel.

MSW: What do you say to the small municipal utility that isn’t sure if the investment in this system will provide a return?

Warne: Big or small, your utility should strive to build higher-performing operations. Or, simply try to be better today than you were yesterday. Those daily wins and process improvements build upon each other, and regardless of size, we’re able to offer exponential value to every single customer.

Cartegraph will help your team eliminate paper, which allows small systems to get control of their costs. We also make it possible to reduce the time it takes to do tasks by offering a way to communicate in real time, track the progress of those items to completion and keep a record of all the work that’s been done. This provides cost information to help small systems make better maintenance decisions, sharper investments and stretch their limited resources. Most importantly, we also give small systems the ability to know what assets they have, reducing the risk when the sole operator leaves or retires, which is invaluable.

MSW: What sort of training and support do you offer your customers?

Warne: Time and time again, customers are blown away by how incredible our employees are. While our software is the best on the market, we also pride ourselves on being devoted to customer success every step of the way. We build, implement and support our solutions — a huge differentiator in our industry — and our professional services team continues to earn a 100% “reference ability” record with our software implementations.

Once onboarded, each account receives a dedicated customer success manager. This expert works with the customer to build continued progress toward their goals for the platform and their unique operations and maintenance programs. Our in-house tech support team, managed by a former Cartegraph developer, also gets rave reviews for responsiveness and their ability to resolve issues quickly. Our support has a 70% first-call resolution, and as one customer recently put it, “Working with Cartegraph feels more like working with coworkers than software vendors.”

Aside from our industry-leading team, we also offer an online resource and training center, Cartegraph Campus, full of video tutorials, how-to guides, white papers, on-demand webinars, blog posts, case studies and more. In addition, we also have various regional events, online admin certification training and even a national conference that helps foster our robust Cartegraph user community.