Village of Sister Bay

The Village of Sister Bay, in picturesque Door County, WI, holds a small population of less than 1,000 people. For a smaller community, staff time is invaluable, especially when it comes to keeping up with public services and maintaining infrastructure. A GIS solution was determined necessary to provide staff access to real-time information in the field and capture historic information for oncoming staff.

A specific need for the Village was the use of GIS as a tool to easily locate curbstops. The use of staff time was eased by having survey-grade location of curbstops on hand. Without the GIS, time would be spent searching through yards, digging through snow, and uncovering buried curbstops when services need maintenance or seasonal shut-offs.

Needs Survey

To meet the Village’s needs, Ruekert & Mielke, Inc. worked with Village staff to survey their water and sanitary systems to build a highly accurate foundation for their GIS. Once the survey was complete, R/M provided the Village with R/M’s cloud-based GIS solution, AssetAlly. With the survey data integrated into AssetAlly, R/M staff measured information collected in the field and asbuilts provided by the Village to populate the remaining characteristics of their infrastructure. Once the information was in their GIS platform, staff had access to AssetAlly’s tools for capturing, scheduling, and recording routine maintenance efforts, access to linked asbuilts, and measuring tools. These digital tools replaced their dependency on using hand drawn service cards for locates.

The Village now uses AssetAlly as a tool to provide the resources the Village needs for planning staff initiatives, year-end reporting, and access to real-time data that improves planning efforts for the Village’s CIP projects. AssetAlly also includes tools that address the needs of the Village’s planning and building departments. Village staff use AssetAlly as a spatial filing cabinet for tracking permits and streamlining their ability to share documentation with residences, commercial developments, and state agencies.

Time Savings and Support

R/M offered significant time savings across multiple departments for the Village through managing their assets and processes. AssetAlly also includes customer support and unlimited user licenses, which was beneficial for a small community on a tight annual budget. Staff were able to improve utility locates, permit tracking, and access to plans in the field.