Gas Main Data Conversion & Asset Management

In collaboration with prime contractor SSP Innovations, our team assisted Nicor Gas with source record validation managed services. The main task is aimed at providing a pristine GIS database of gas mains owned and serviced by Nicor Gas within Illinois, covering approximately 35,200 miles of gas mains stretching across more than 56,000 square miles of service center coverage. The geodatabase is derived from “As-Built” engineering diagrams and subsequent data conversion.

In addition to providing project specific software and procedures training, our team has been instrumental in the provision of local, GIS onsite support throughout the data editing workflow. We provide environment set up and process definition to support day-to-day project activities. To ensure the highest quality, our team developed documentation based on Nicor’s schema and scope requirements. This approach allows us to log, report and track technical and IT issues, resulting in reduced downtime, higher production rates and greater accuracy. Post data conversion activities involved finding solutions to basemap conflicts and geometry discrepancies, specifically edge cases. Our team developed a workflow using the Esri Data Reviewer tool, which identified discrepancies in attributes and highlighted geometry where fittings or service lines weren’t snapped to a main. The output of that review was essential as a resource for data correction in the editing process.

Our contribution to this project is multi-faceted and benefits Nicor Gas by allowing them to pursue this endeavor within an optimal timeframe and with greater control over documenting their valuable assets. The efforts of our Source Records Validation team improved the accuracy of Nicor’s GIS data by correcting GIS attribute information.