Tag Archives: utilities

GeoSpatial Business Spotlight: H2M

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Location:        Corporate Office in Melville, New York /  10 Other locations 

Website:          www.h2m.com

Employees:    372 in Melville / 110+ in satellite offices

Established:   1933

H2M is a multi-disciplined professional consulting and design firm focusing in the fields of architecture, engineering, and environmental sciences. From treatment facilities to public safety buildings, land surveying and road reconstruction, and from site assessment to remediation, H2M has helped design and build throughout many communities across New York State since 1933.

Geospatial Support in Water Supply Systems

H2M has built its engineering practice around its service to water clients working directly with municipal water suppliers and private water utilities. The company’s work in this space has grown significantly over the past five years and is built on decades of combined municipal and private A/E experience. Recent work has focused on supporting public and private water systems to comply with new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Revisions to the Lead and Copper Rules which require an initial inventory by October 16, 2024. One of the rule’s requirements mandates the inventory must be made publicly available online for systems serving a population of more than 50,000 people.

H2M’s primary water-related consulting includes, but is not limited to, comprehensive and cost effective water engineering, water quality analysis, distribution system mapping, water storage tank inspections, water quality testing services, lead service line (LSL) inventory, leak distribution analysis, main break mapping, hydraulic (pipe) modeling, and a full suite of online and mobile mapping applications utilizing industry leading GIS software solutions. Fully integrated GIS applications include access to maintenance logs, field notes, spur maps, tap cards, valve sketches, as-build drawings, and photos.

The scanning and indexing of historical hardcopy records of water system features adds great context and valuable information to new GIS-based applications

Complaint tracking, customer notification, and work order management functions are also supported by H2M as many infrastructure GIS systems are integrated with Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) programs such as Cartegraph, IBM Maximo, Cityworks, Tyler, AssetWorks, Infor, and Lucity. These systems often consume published GIS map services, ensuring dynamic connectivity for real-time data analysis and review.

In the realm of field data collection, mapping and viewing software is augmented by powerful mobile apps. ESRI’s suite of mobile software products includes Field Maps, Survey 123, Workforce, and QuickCapture. These mobile apps can be augmented by connecting to external GNSS devices for real-time coordinate correction and higher accuracy data collection.

H2M’s work in the water system space includes the delivery of dashboards to which have become increasingly popular among administrators and decision makers providing a direct and “live” link to water system databases. Such dashboards access to pie charts, spreadsheets, photos, and mapping/viewing windows

Illustrative Projects:

Greenlawn Water District

H2M assisted the Greenlawn Water District in meeting new EPA lead service line inventory requirements by accurately geocoding each of their 12,017 service accounts and creating a data schema that complies with New York State Department of Health requirements. H2M reviewed multiple sources of information to determine service material including approximately 12,000 tap cards, dozens of hardcopy record replacement maps, and municipal records that include date of construction. Based on this information, H2M created an inspection map in ArcGIS Online which allows the District to determine areas with unknown service material and suspected lead which requires further investigation. H2M deployed Esri Field Maps as well as a Survey123 inspection form for the District to record their field inspections. This allows the District to easily document field inspections with notes and pictures, which are tied directly to the core GIS inventory data. Furthermore, H2M created multiple dashboards in ArcGIS Online that provide a dynamic snapshot of known and unknown service line material. This enables the District to quickly see the quantity of accounts that require further investigation and action, should replacement be required.

Online map viewers are easily configured to visually classify the types of water system materials owned by both the water district and by property owners

Village of Garden City Water Department

H2M was tasked to perform the Village-wide Lead Service Line (LSL) inventory and to develop a searchable, map-based data repository within its existing ArcGIS Online environment. As part of this work, H2M’s geospatial team reviewed several thousand individual records provided by the Village, including Excel spreadsheets, Building permits, plumbing permits, and nearly 1500 engineering plans. Information pertaining to water service material was transposed from the source materials to the GIS data. Source documents were also attached to the GIS data to facilitate simplified, map-based retrieval in the future. In addition to scanned documents, H2M incorporated information from engineer field observations, customer reports, and date of construction, as documented by the Nassau County assessor’s office.

Every street-side and customer-side water service within the Village is mapped and catalogued by its documented material and status.

Veolia North America (formerly SUEZ Water New Jersey

Veolia owns, operates, and maintains a network of hundreds of miles of transmission and distribution infrastructure serving more than a million residents in numerous municipalities/institutions throughout the State. In advance of the proposed State of New Jersey lead service line regulations, Veolia launched a comprehensive lead service line replacement (LSLR) program in 2019. Veolia sought assistance from H2M architects + engineers (H2M) as Construction Administrator and Construction Observer to support the regulatory compliance goals and ensure detailed records of field activity, including digital mapping in a GIS framework.

The initial scope of the 2021 LSLR program was characterized by the performance of dig-and-determine for1,900 services and the replacement of approximately 1,200 (lead and non-lead) lines within the Veolia Hackensack Public Water System Identification (PWSID), which has since been expanded to 4,600 dig and determines and 2,500 replacements.

The most challenging portion of compliance for Veolia and H2M was in the identification, cataloging, mapping,and replacement of lead service lines in systems. Service line inventories must result in the categorization of services as either: LSL, brass with suspected leaded gooseneck requiring replacement, galvanized requiring replacement, or non-lead.  Particularly vital to the success of this effort was the creation and maintenance of a set of standards intended to document compliance with the updated federal Lead and Copper Rule and ensure continuity of critical infrastructure data for future operations. To accomplish this, H2M utilized a novel, tablet-based data collection tool to document each crew’s daily activities and ensure immediate QA/QC access to the Veolia leadership team.

H2M’s work has ensured Veolia remains EPA compliant and ahead of the new requirements schedule.

 Hicksville Water District

Since 1996, H2M has supported the Hicksville Water District and as part of this work, a service line material inventory was created for the District utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology. Leveraging existing District data which exists in both hardcopy and digital format (tap cards, record replacement maps and date of construction records) and combining with field collected datasets, H2M continues to assist the District in meeting EPA Lead and Copper regulations. This also includes complying with public/private water system data standards established by New York State Department of Health.

ESRI’s ArcGIS Online provides an excellent framework to establish and serve easy-to-use map viewers that will allow residents to look up service material by either address or account number. H2M’s efforts support compliance with the regulation and increased transparency for the municipality.

Water distribution systems built before the 1950s often had distribution networks that were built with lead piping

Summary:

The team of GIS professionals maintain technical fluency in the constantly-changing
GIS industry software and practices including the ESRI and AutoCAD platforms.
Software flexibility and expertise in deploying need-based solutions ensures H2M’s clients have the information they need to continue to provide the highest level of service to our communities.  A more detailed description of H2M’s capabilities and geospatial work in the water systems industry can be found in this presentation.

In addition to applying and creating solutions for the water systems sector, H2M’s geospatial team also provides client services in the following areas:

  • BIM Integration
  • Community Planning
  • Data Conversion
  • Digitization of Records
  • Environmental Data Analysis
  • Geodatabase Design
  • Geospatial Analysis
  • GPS Data Collection
  • Hydraulic Modeling
  • Mobile Application Development
  • Municipal Asset Management
  • Online Mapping
  • Raster Analysis
  • Special District Mapping
  • Wetland Delineation

H2M is an ESRI Business Partner and was recognized with their ArcGIS Online Specialty designation for the continued deployment of successful online and mobile mapping solutions.

Contact:

Christopher M. Kobos, PMP
Director of GIS Services
H2M architects + engineers
538 Broad Hollow Road, 4th Floor East, Melville, NY 11747
tel 631.756.8000 x1731 | direct 631.392.5359 | mobile 516.946.9832 | fax 631.694.4122

The American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021: Where’s the GeoBeef?

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There's lots of money out there. But few in the GIS community seem to be talking about it

During the waning months of my service with Westchester County last fall, I began to see references and documentation connecting geospatial technology to Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) program which was enabled as part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) passed earlier in 2021.  Earmarked monies for each government in New York State.  This was followed by passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) passed in November 2021.   In general, SLFRF funding is more directed to local governments and IIJA funding being more focused on state government appropriations.  The progams certainly haven’t gone unnoticed by GIS software companies such as ESRI and Cartegraph which have published documentation outlining how specific categories of ARPA funding  can be used to support local government geospatial activities.  Even Autodesk, the AutoCAD giant, has recognized the relevance and importance of these landmark funding programs.

Empire State organizations such as the New York State Association of Towns (NYTOWNS), New York State Association of Counties (NYSAC) and the New York State Conference of Mayors and Municipal Officials (NYCOM) which represent the many levels of local governments across the state are also busy tracking funding allocations and keeping their own scorecards.  For example there is NYCOM’s Municipal ARPA Plans and Programs inventory, NYTOWNS procurement guide, and NYSAC’s county-level breakdown of funding   And there’s more.  The U.S Treasury Department’s Allocation for Metropolitan Cities  or the Brookings Local Government ARPA Investment Tracker.  Your county or municipality may have yet to make the connection to these geospatial opportunities.  

The Brookings ARPA Investment Tracker is one of several sites monitoring the use of grant funds. Erie County’s use of the funding is highlighted here with 92% of the funding being used for infrastructure purposes. Other New York State government interim reports can be found here.

But even with all of this publicly available information, and aggressive marketing by the vendor community, there seems to be a limited amount discussion about how these major federal grant funding programs can be woven into local geospatial initiatives.  And this is unfortunate because its very clear there ARE local activities which are “ARPA eligible” in the areas such infrastructure management, economic development, health and human services delivery, housing, transportation and community revitalization to name only a few.  So who is leading the statewide local government ARPA geospatial discussion?

Diving a little deeper, I took out attempting to survey the statewide local government geospatial community on the ARPA and IIJA programs by issuing a simple survey via the NYS GIS listserv, as well as having a link put on the NYS GIS Assocation’s website (thank you, Association webmasters).  Perhaps I would have gotten a better response to the survey offering links to both of the funding programs, but instead, wanted to capture the respondent’s immediate understanding/awareness of the programs when opening the survey.  Providing links to the programs would have defeated the purpose of the survey.   And I made it clear the survey was only for New York State local government users and/or their contractors.    That takes a lot of potential respondents off the table via the listserv and with local government representation in the Association hovering around less than 25% of the total membership, I wasn’t sure what the response would be.  Though not included in the images below, I emailed a handful of former county colleagues separately ahead of the online survey which resulted in very similar results.

The results can hardly be considered a statistically representative sample of the statewide local government GIS user community.  I received only 20 responses of which 18 provided usable data.   As such, I would submit the following pie charts can be considered illustrative or reflectiveof the current overall awareness, if not understanding, of the current ARPA funding programs.  While only a third of the respondents indicated they were even aware of the ARPA program (first pie chart),  there was barely any understanding of the funding as it relates to geospatial (second pie chart) and only one of the respondents indicated he/she had been involved in any discussions regarding the use of ARPA funding (third pie chart) in their organization.   Though to some degree many GIS practitioners across the state often hold down technical positions in department-line staff positions which are normally far removed from the grant funds discussions being held in much higher administrative offices.

Unfortunately, as historically been the case, the top level NYS government associations noted above have rarely made GIS/geospatial a visible and outward facing part of their agenda.  Even today, Its hard to find anything really meaningful for the local government GIS community when using keyword searchs such as  “GIS, geospatial, or mapping” on any of their websites.  And its highly doubtful there will be, or can be, any real meaningful advocacy through any state program offices as this political or elected official outreach framework doesn’t even exist on behalf of local government GIS programs.    As the next generation of local government GIS/geospatial programs evolve, particularly in the urban environments where the focus will be more on the public infrastructure, utilities, sustainability and climate change impacts, large scale and high resolution mapping and surveying – the collective internet of things (IoT) – discussions and geospatial strategies with most state government offices in this space will  become more distant.    Geospatial programs for different levels of government in New York State evolving in completely different directions.   Albeit for sure New York City is on a different level when is comes to infrastructure and underground mapping, but it’s Underground Infrastructure Project concept does represent an important direction of the next generation of local government GIS programs in urban areas across the state.  It’s just a matter of degree.

The list below, from an ESRI publication and is available on numerous websites, highlights the local government programs in play.  No, not necessarily direct funding to your GIS office, but does serve as a roadmap of who GIS practioners should be talking with at the local level.  EcoDev, public health, infrastructure and public works, and cooperative efforts with utilities.  And then find out who is administering your government’s ARPA funding.    You can be assured someone or some agency has dibs on the funding.  And apparently the GIS programs are only visible in the rearview mirrow. 

The four major ARPA funding program areas include:

1.  Support public health expenditures, by, for example, funding COVID-19 mitigation efforts, medical expenses, behavioral healthcare, and certain public health and safety staff
2.  Address negative economic impacts caused by the public health emergency, including economic harms to workers, households, small businesses, impacted industries, and the public sector
3.  Replace lost public sector revenue, using this funding to provide government services to the extent of the reduction in revenue experienced due to the pandemic

4.  Invest in water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure, making necessary investments to improve access to clean drinking water, support vital wastewater and stormwater infrastructure, and to expand access to broadband internet

Within these overall categories, recipients have broad flexibility to decide how best to use this funding to meet the needs of their communities

While actually securing funding is much easier said than done, often requiring great grant and proposal writing skills as well as involving many individual offices and agendas in the organization.  But the almost complete lack of even a discussion by the statewide local government GIS/geospatial community to date seems amiss.

There are so few funding opportunities such as these 2021 federal grant programs to take advantage of.  These are generational programs.  Right now the onus of finding representation and advocacy for local government GIS funding in the federal grants arena falls squarely on local government GIS leaders and their representatives.  As well as local GIS practitioners.

Right now, though, the silence is deafening.