Situated 80 miles west of Philadelphia, the City of Lebanon, PA has become one of the fastest growing small cities in the United States. The City of Lebanon Authority serves as the water and wastewater authority for Lebanon and surrounding municipalities. The Authority’s seven-member sewer inspection crew manages 90 miles of sanitary sewer lines and uses WinCan VX inspection reporting and assessment management software to inspect their sewer lines and plan rehabilitation. Since implementing the software, not only have they realized benefits in terms of planning and efficiency, but they’ve also saved money on inspection and rehabilitation.
In 1996, The City of Lebanon Authority and County of Lebanon came together to form a GIS Department. The GIS system provides quick, accurate data on water and sewer mains locations, facilities and other assets. In 2014, the Wastewater Department realized that they needed to upgrade their sewer inspection software in order to better utilize the information that ArcGIS and Infor (Hansen) generated for them. “The new software system needed to integrate seamlessly with Esri's ArcGIS and the Infor Public Sector assessment management tool, as well as provide an easier inspection storage solution,” says Eric Shearer, Assistant Maintenance Manager at the City of Lebanon Authority.
“The WinCan sales team was quick to assess our needs and share a solution that would work,” says Shearer. Some of the features that appealed to the Lebanon crew were WinCan VX’s support for all major GIS systems, its built-in mapping capabilities, and that it allows users to save inspection videos digitally by compressing them into MPEG format. “The decision to purchase the software was simple — it offered us everything we needed with a host of other features that me and my crew couldn’t wait to try.”
“Internally, the WinCan platform has helped us plan and execute a better sewer inspection program and use the end deliverable to create an action plan that we can present to our board,” says Shearer. Like many water authorities, The City of Lebanon Authority’s staff believes in a proactive approach to handling I/I. They’ve also been able to use the WinCan VX platform to aid in this mission. “Now when we inspect for I/I we use an overlay with contour elevation to better target problem areas and understand the flow,” says Shearer.
Not only has the platform helped the Authority become more efficient and effective, it has also saved them money. “WinCan VX has a rehabilitation planning tool that allows us to compare the cost of rehabilitation done by a contractor versus using our own resources,” says Shearer. “Now we are in a better position to negotiate the price a contractor charges us because we have a report that lays out all the work and what it would cost us to do it internally. Contractors are quoting us lower prices because they know we’ve done our homework.” Also, the WinCan VX platform allows users to do manhole inspections complete with 3D models of the manhole and pipes. “With the ability to do 3D modeling of manholes while inspecting, we are able to do manhole inspection in-house instead of paying an engineering firm to do the work like we’ve done in the past.”
“We just didn’t realize how much money we’d save and how efficient and effective our sewer inspection workflow would become by implementing the WinCan VX platform,” says Shearer. “Today, we couldn’t be happier with our decision — all the features that we now take for granted makes us wonder how we ever did without WinCan VX,” he adds. The City of Lebanon Authority’s team continues to eagerly add new capabilities and features to advance their sewer inspection and rehabilitation workflow as they work with WinCan VX.
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