Portland Public Schools (PPS) achieves an 80% reduction in data update time

Portland Public Schools automates workflows and ensures real-time data consistency across platforms to save time and maximize operational efficiency

In providing academic learning experiences to over 49,000 students in 81 schools, Portland Public Schools (PPS) is one of the largest school districts in the Pacific Northwest. To manage their facilities and real estate, PPS’ Planning and Real Estate team uses IBM TRIRIGA, a Computerized Maintenance Management system. Using this tool, the team can maximize their operational efficiency by centralizing asset data, tracking operation costs, automating maintenance workflows, maximizing space use, managing moves, and more. 

TRIRIGA uses a data structure that differs from the GIS industry standard. Previously, this methodology complicated information-access for non-expert users and made analytics impossible. In addition, their CAD to GIS manual static connection integration was time-consuming and challenging to troubleshoot, leading to inconsistent data between systems. After years of unsuccessful scripting-based integration attempts, the PPS team turned to Safe Software partner Consortech for support.

Seeking the most effective solution to overcome syncing and integration issues, PPS used FME to create a completely automated process

After working collaboratively with PPS to develop an integration project plan, Consortech enlisted a multidisciplinary team of two FME developers and one solution architect. While Consortech remained in charge of the project, all stakeholders (PPS, the subcontractors who manage ArcGIS, and those who manage TRIRIGA) were kept closely in the loop throughout.

The result is a no-code environment that syncs key systems on a daily basis

Consortech created a completely automated, no-code process to sync up the three systems, ArcGIS, TRIRIGA, and CAD on a daily basis. This was a major undertaking, with FME Flow and Form integrated extensively and delivered in two environments to guarantee greater stability during maintenance and the development of future enhancements to the solution. 

With daily data syncs, PPS can ensure the quality of their ArcGIS database and trust that the information remains up-to-date and is easily accessible. The PPS team is able to identify data inconsistencies before data is available to their users, contributing to higher confidence and a data quality assurance of at least 99%. The project also provides better insight into the structure of the data in TRIRIGA, so PPS can provide analytics and leadership for data-driven decision-making in asset and facility management.

The PPS team has experienced substantial time savings as a result of their TRIRIGA software integration, reducing the time needed to update their data by 80%: Whereas updating a data table in TRIRIGA once took two days, the process has been streamlined with FME and now only takes a couple of hours to prepare and change. The team is also saving 200 hours yearly on manual data integration, auditing, and updating.