City of Edinburgh Council is finding a way to look at the big picture in its operations and strategic planning for place management.
It wants to develop a ‘place making approach’, managing its physical assets as a whole rather than in silos, with a view to harnessing the internet of things (IoT) and adapting the city to a post-Covid world.
Edinburgh has placed an emphasis on bringing the information on different physical assets onto a single platform, which can be accessed remotely and provides not just the data, but a visualisation of maintenance requirements and the surrounding assets.
Sean Gilchrist, the council’s transport manager for asset and performance, has described how it is using Precisely’s Confirm system to make this possible.
The platform proved invaluable during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, enabling Edinburgh’s inspectors and repair squads to keep each other informed in carrying out active maintenance.
“It was almost like business as usual with no real stop in operations, and it was the technology that allowed us to continue as normal,” Gilchrist says.
But the council also sees a long term value in the system, supporting an approach in which it takes the management of its different physical assets out of their silos for a better co-ordinated “place making” approach. Confirm gives its managers and planners a clear view of all the related assets in a locality and can also integrate with Precisely’s Spectrum Spatial Analysis and geographic information systems to show where investment is needed and how it is performing.
This approach is going to be even more critical as Edinburgh rolls out plans to adopt more IoT technology in the future, as well as with the current need to think more about the movement of people around the city.
To learn more watch our interview with Sean Gilchrist below:
Sean recently participated in an episode of UKA Live: Smart places, smart working. You can view here
Pitney Bowes Software and Data are now Precisely. To learn more about Confirm, Precisely’s solution for smart infrastructure management, please visit:
https://www.precisely.com/product/precisely-confirm/confirm
