Long Beach Water District

With more than 461,000 citizens depending upon the Long Beach Water Department (LBWD) to provide safe water for drinking, transportation, public health, recreation and business, the Department plays a critical role in the health of the Long Beach community. Thanks to a strong commitment to conservation, education and outreach, and a willingness to embrace new technologies, the Water Department has set an industry standard across the State of California and the entire West Coast region.

LBWD is also one of th emost efficient and competitively run water agencies in the U.S., and is the only water agency in the U.S. with its own patented desalination technology. So when the Long Beach Water Department determined to find a better way of accessing and preserving critical maps and drawings, they looked for a digital solution. They found it with Document Express with DjVu.

Challenge

Previously, Long Beach Water Department Water Department record drawings were stored on hanging files in a central vault. To reach them, personnel had to leave their work area and travel to another part of the building. Besides the work stoppage employees were hampered by drawings that were checked out to another user. Due to the sheer numbers involved, drawings occasionally turned up missing altogether. What's more, the drawings were large and inefficient, created wworkplace clutter, and were too large to be photocopied in a standard photocopier. Clearly, a better solution was needed.

The Water Department was lookin gfor more than imporved efficiency. Employees depend on reliable information to preserve public safety. Digging a few feet in the wrong direction for example, could cause a ruptured water main or worse. Without reliable access to maps, field workers were forced to phone into department supervisors asking for the data.

Results

The LBWD scanned multi-page drawings to TIFF format. Files were then encoded with DjVu software, resulting in dramatically smaller file sizes, which canbe easily downloaded and access across any network, keeping critical details intact.

Explains KC offenberg, Long Beach Water Department GIS Technician, "DjVu compresses twice as much as PDF files. When you can arrive at an answer in five minutes instead of 20 and with no work stoppage, you have a tremendous advantage."

Offenberg adds, "When employees need answers, they're able to do research without having to leave their work area. The scanned DjVu format documents are always available and well organized. In addition, more than one person can use the same as-built drawing at the same time. The ability of our main design personnel to research a large volume of work quickly and easily from their desk has made the project worthwhile in and of itself."

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