Why the combination between GIS and BIM drones in planning infrastructures is making the water corporations so important 

In an era where everything changes so rapidly, there’s a difficulty following all the technological innovations, even after we went through an infinite number of conventions on Civil 3D, GIS, BIM, water depletion (and more), this thing creates great struggle for the authorities when it comes to deciding where to invest their money, what is more and less important.

When water corporations were privatized, one of the explicit goals for which the program was intended was to improve customer service.
A quote from the water authority’s website: “the purpose of the reform is, first and foremost, to improve the service for the customer. The thing is done, among other things, through professional and efficient business management of the water and sewage economy and the allocation of income from water and sewage services to investments required in this field”.

In the context of an article, we’ll emphasize the following point: “through professional and efficient business management”. Let’s try to imagine together a picture in which a water and sewage infrastructure planner performs his planning in such a way that the corporation’s CEO and the corporation’s engineer see in real time a three-dimensional model of the street and all the underground infrastructures that run through the street. In addition, they are able, on the spot, to change the infrastructure’s position together with the planner, and receive in parallel on a small screen on the side, a description about how this change affects costs, time schedules, disturbance for the neighbors, water and sewage flowing in the pipes, and more, in real time.

The water corporations did took the whole service domain to a new level. Today, in aspiration, in every corporation, a GIS system delivers information on the existing infrastructures in the city, so that the corporation must choose the engineers they’re working with carefully. An infrastructure planner today must have knowledge that combines background in GIS systems with classical engineering, in addition to real time modeling and analysis capabilities (!).

A planner’s ability to model the infrastructures in a precise way, and to show the decision makers how each change affects the main goal, the service for the resident, at the same time for a reliable and efficient management of water and sewage systems, (and I will emphasize again) all this in real time, is critical to the corporation’s success in its mission. It has already been proven in the United States and in China how a reliable and precise modeling shortens the project’s time between 30-50% (and can reach even more in complex projects), and saves expenses of 25% to 40%. The time saving affects directly the resident’s way of living, who still lives between one traffic jam to the next, and the renovation of one road to another, not to mention broken sidewalks because of the renovations, the national outline plans, and natural obsolescence, so adding infrastructures works makes his life even harder. Furthermore, saving in expenses will eventually bring to decreasing the price of water to the consumer.

So, dear decision makers, choose planners who have the ability to combine all the existing technologies today and will be able to give you the possibility to do your job on the best side possible, as well as giving the resident the best service possible.