Esri (Environmental Systems Research Institute) is a global company that provides a wide range of GIS software products collectively known as ArcGIS. The company has its head office in Redlands, California, and has been on the market since 1969.
Challenge
Esri reached out to Astec for help in data migration. This project turned out to be a lot more difficult than originally expected. The most significant reason was the lack of standardization in the way that the electrical network was created in Esri. The massive amount of data issues increased the project’s complexity and required additional work for data analysis.
Solution
Astec deployed a team of four senior Smallworld developers who developed the scripts for initial data loading and created the incremental data updates interface, one junior Smallworld developer working on automated data quality check scripts, one software tester responsible for quality control and data issues analysis, and one project manager.
The solution consists of a GIS data interface from the customer’s existing Esri GIS to PowerOn Advantage (using Smallworld Electric Office as a middle layer – data broker). The files generated by the source system are automatically processed by engines running on Electric Office. Incremental updates are then validated, translated to fit PowerOn Advantage needs, and sent out via GIS Adapter. Custom human-readable logs are created at each step of the process to help end users operate the solution on a daily basis.
Results
Astec’s experience in many other data migration projects made both time and cost scheduling a lot more stable. Astec’s team members know how to efficiently communicate with end customers. We were talking directly to the team responsible for data consistency and providing them with a detailed analysis of data issues. Our experience was used to take some of those responsibilities from GE staff and improve overall project quality.
It took us only 8 weeks to successfully complete most of the development tasks. This success is mostly the result of bringing our own organizational and communication standards into the project.