The City of Bay Village, Ohio is a residential community of 17,000 residents located 15 miles west of Cleveland on Lake Erie’s southern shore. The city prides itself on being just far enough off of the beaten path to provide a safe, healthy and peaceful environment of suburban living.
Protecting the quality of the city’s drinking water supply is paramount. But like thousands of other communities, Bay Village’s city government must maintain an aging potable and waste water system infrastructure with limited taxpayer dollars. That’s why Bay Village has turned to Emerson Professional Tools and its RIDGID® brand for help.
Bay Village’s water department uses Emerson technology solutions – including our RIDGID® utility locating devices – to clearly identify where underground utilities are located. They also use RIDGID SeeSnake® video inspection tools to visually inspect and record the condition of pipe deterioration or other problems.
Although RIDGID technology enabled Bay Village to monitor and record the conditions of their water infrastructure, they found that maintaining these records can take up several file drawers and involve thousands of documents. Moreover, there’s a constant need to access these files and share various documents with residents, other government agencies, contractors bidding or working on projects, and for time-sensitive regulatory and legal needs.
Emerson’s RIDGID offered the city a chance to participate in the beta testing of an online digital platform it was developing. The solution is designed to help contractors and service professionals, such as plumbers, HVAC technicians and facility managers, store and share job site photos and videos, job reports and histories, maintenance records, customer lists and other project files.
It’s Never Been Done Before. It’s called RIDGIDConnect™ and Bay Village has found the service an ideal way for city employees to easily and cost effectively store and share water system records and images with residents, contractors and other entities. City employees have password-secure access 24/7 to system records via a computer, web enabled laptop or smartphone. The RIDGIDConnect platform provides an online historical “medical record” for projects – streamlining the recording and reporting of everything that has been done – and needs to be done.
Now when Bay Village receives a report of a water line break or pipe collapse, its technicians can use RIDGIDConnect to quickly access detailed records and even file reports from the job site as repairs are diagnosed and made. This makes compliance with timely reporting required by state and federal public health and environmental laws much simpler and allows the service to residents to be communicated seamlessly.
Using Emerson’s RIDGIDConnect, the city of Bay Village has been able to simplify the organization and storage of the digital information. They also have found that online access to project records – and reducing the need to create, store and distribute DVDs, VHS tapes, handwritten records and forms – has resulted in an estimated 30 percent increase in employee efficiency. The city also benefits from the peace of mind that the online system offers in daily backups and off site information and media storage.
Bay Village’s experience using RIDGIDConnect has been so positive that in November of 2009, Mayor Deborah Sutherland asked the city’s building and street departments to join the water department in using RIDGIDConnect technology as a common platform to store, share and simplify their records city wide.
RIDGIDConnect officially became available to service professionals and contractors nationwide in January 2010. To learn more, visit www.RIDGIDConnect.com.
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