Client: County Public Water and Sewer District
Technology: MS-Access 2003, on a shared network

The Challenge: Better Approach for Managing New Constructions Projects

When planning for a new land development project, the water and sewer plans must adhere to strict state and local regulations and can cost millions of dollars. Throughout the project development phases, there are hundreds of petitions, checklists, planning notes, meeting minutes and approval documents. Thus, the manual process was expensive and hard to manage. Each project was managed using a separate file folder package, and there could be several projects running at the same time, which increased the need for a technology solution.

The Solution: A Database-Driven Engineering Project Management System

Taking the time to step through the entire process with the County Sanitary Engineer, and his staff, allow us to develop a custom MS-Access solution that could track and report multiple projects. There were over 300 data elements to capture, so the database was designed for efficiency, by grouping similar data elements into their respective tables. There are three main phases in a project: Pre-Construction, Construction and Post-Construction. Within each phase, there are several sections, so we used a two-tiered tab system, with a major set of tabs, and the minor set of tabs.

Below is an example of one of the forms.

Here is a sample of one of the MS-Access screens, which is displaying the
Plan-Approval Steps, in the Pre-Construction Phase.

The Benefits: Client Cost Savings Easy Access to Project Data

With easy access to the project database, the County Sanitary Engineer, and his staff, can quickly and easily view the status of all projects, and then address the projects that need their attention. The data is entered by the responsible party, and is thus available as soon as it is entered.

Technology Solution: Leveraging Existing Components

The database and programs were entirely written in MS-Access 2003. The system consists of a front-end menu system, which allows the users to easily navigate the system. The project tabs are logically grouped to allow for efficient balance of the data.