An update on what's going on around here

Happy Spring!
I know, I know… it’s been Spring for almost a week now, but we’ve been really busy!

We have a lot going on;

• we’re working with the City of Portland’s Public School Administration to develop a GIS platform in order to extend location intelligence across business lines, with the initial focus on mapping out safe walking and biking routes to each of their 64 elementary and middle schools,
• we’re helping the Idaho Department of Transportation evaluate the best software for their specific needs,
• we just kicked off a two-year project with Seattle City Light to provide Strategic planning and ongoing support services in order to fully integrate location intelligence capabilities into the workflows, analysis, and reporting needs of this major electrical utility serving Seattle,
• we’re in the process of configuring our Performance Atlas web application to meet the needs of Etisalat, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies; when we’re finished, we will have provided the Etisalat team with a hosted solution that will increase their location intelligence related to performance across sales, marketing and facility planning business lines,
• we’ve almost wrapped up a project to provide Pike Energy with location intelligence capabilities integrating centrally-managed data, web-tools for project planning and management, and mobile data collection in disconnected scenarios,
• we just wrapped up a project with Oregon’s Department of Fish and Wildlife to assess the best way to bring the popular hunting and shooting ranges map to mobile devices,
• we also just wrapped up a project where we configured a web application to provide a client with a hosted solution providing web access to college campus, floor-by-floor, viewing and updating of facility conditions and assets,
• and of course, we continue to provide hosting services to many happy clients!

Just because we have a lot going on doesn’t mean that we’re too busy to talk to you. If you are in need of some GIS consulting, or need a web application for your GIS data, or need a home for your GIS data – or just want to talk – please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re here!

Providing Seattle City Light with GIS Support

We recently kicked off a two-year project, during which time, we will be providing Seattle City Light - the electric utility in Seattle – with ongoing GIS support. We have teamed up with our friends at FLO Analytics in order to provide SCL with the best possible service.
The first phase of the project will involve a needs assessment where our team will meet with stakeholders in order to determine their needs and capabilities. The needs assessment will help guide a strategic plan that SCL will use to move forward with their planning for future needs and budgets.

I addition to the needs assessment and strategic plan, we will be proving SCL with “boots on the ground” GIS analysts to provide immediate practical assistance. The goal, at the end of the project, will be to provide the folks at SCL with the proper plan and know-how to move forward successfully on their own.

Please contact us if you’d like to find out more about how we can help your organization realize it’s full potential.

Strategic Planning for the City of Portland

Portland, Oregon’s Corporate GIS office (CGIS) is now operating under a new Strategic Plan.  Our team had the pleasure of engaging with a broad number of City staff and partners to lead a process of envisioning and articulating how CGIS will deliver geospatial services and boost the City’s location intelligence over the next several years.

The Gartrell Group performed a detailed assessment of CGIS’s staff capabilities, their data and technologies, and their portfolio of services. We also facilitated a series of workshops to invigorate stakeholder discussion, identify current needs and challenges, and to elicit the highest priorities of the users and beneficiaries of Portland’s geospatial tools and data.  We used findings from these efforts to craft and refine a plan for how the City may best apply resources for the greatest possible impact.

The adopted plan bridges topics of organizational strategy, data management, and technology management. It expresses a renovated vision and mission for CGIS and outlines how these may be realized through a clear and measurable set of objectives.  Importantly, the endeavor of the planning process itself – the workshops, the brainstorming, balloting activities, and collaborative needs discovery – helped to strengthen bonds between the City’s management and stakeholders and to re-open communication channels across department and agency boundaries.

Assisting organizations develop and enhance their location strategy is one of our core services and a keen area of interest among all of our team members. We think the work is important, we enjoy the process, and we take a lot of satisfaction in seeing the acceleration that happens once a customer has spent some time getting (re) acquainted with their location strategy and direction.

We are equipped with a very adaptive toolkit of strategy development know-how, means, and methods, and we can tailor an approach suited to your particular needs and questions. Please contact us if you’d be interested in learning more about how we can help your organization improve location strategy.