The City of Barrie is a vibrant, progressive, and growing community located 90 km north of Toronto, on the shores of Kempenfelt Bay, the western arm of Lake Simcoe in Ontario. Home to over 140,000 residents, it boasts a magnificent waterfront with sandy beaches, festivals, and activities for outdoor enthusiasts.
The Challenge
To ensure the optimization and expedite the execution and justification of a data-driven road maintenance program, the City needed to inject software into a process that had previously been done manually. To effectively use staff time, maintain public and Council confidence, and display proper stewardship of tax dollars, it was essential for the City to use AI to strike the perfect balance between objectively defining each roads’ treatments and the timing & prioritization of such treatments.
The Solution
Through a competitive and open bidding procurement, the City sought an innovative and automated method to analyze road conditions and help translate asset data into actionable capital improvement plans and budgets. Barrie selected Streetlogix, a customizable, AI-based asset management software that enables municipalities to optimize road budgets within a user-friendly GIS environment. Based on ArcGIS technology, Streetlogix integrates seamlessly with all ArcGIS products, including the GIS system the City was using. Streetlogix’s Budget Planning tool was of specific interest to the City to assist with their Road Resurfacing and Capital Planning.
The Results
Streetlogix has been essential to effectively plan, maintain and repair roadway infrastructure. Corporate Asset Management Staff rely on the software’s decision tree and scenario building features to create capital improvement projects that work best for their resources and timelines. Streetlogix AI-engine utilizes PCI, road usage data, and a cost-benefit analysis to determine road maintenance, repair costs, and prioritization per segment. Budgeting and planning tools allow for editable short- and long-term planning as well as the level of service analysis with target PCI. “We can now project our renewal programs out as far as ten years so that we have a constant list of roads that we
would like to resurface in the upcoming years. Plus, we can quickly change the City’s Decision Tree Hierarchy, Repair Impact Information and adjust the Degradation Curve as we obtain more information through Road Condition Assessments,” explained Michael Brown, P. Eng., Supervisor of Infrastructure Renewal Planning.
The Benefit
Moving towards a data-driven platform has empowered Staff to make confident and justifiable decisions in maintenance and repair prioritization, budgeting, and planning. Thanks to Streetlogix, the City has a clearer picture and understanding of its street assets’ lifespan and where to allocate the right resources proactively. Any appropriate staff member can now collaborate, edit, and view the data, anywhere, anytime, and perform budget planning, run different scenarios in seconds, and estimate future maintenance and repair costs.
“Streetlogix has greatly improved and streamlined our processes. It has allowed us to do more precise asset management using evidence-based decisions through the PCI data that was gathered during our latest condition assessment. Streetlogix has removed a lot of the possible ‘human error’ out of our decision making, enabling Staff to complete the work in less time with more accuracy and confidence in the results, saving money for our citizens,” concluded Brown.
