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Case Study: The Town of Windsor Public Works
Bringing Departments Together Under the Fleet Master
Plan…
Used with the permission of the Colorado Public
Works Journal
Windsor is just one of many communities in Weld
County that has experienced a multiplying
population. Incorporated in 1890 and founded on an
agricultural base like most every other eastern
Colorado town, Windsor’s crop production –
especially that of sugar beets – flourished on over
300-days-a-year sunshine and mountain runoff from
Caché la Poudre River. For over 60 years, The Great
Western Sugar Company and its local factory, one of
11 in northern Colorado alone, had its effects on
everyday life in Windsor, most often for the better.
But by 1968, the factory had closed; as had many
others as processing operations were consolidated.
The Town’s less than 1500 citizens had, luckily,
little time to worry about the lost jobs, as Eastman
Kodak Co. began construction of a new manufacturing
facility on the City’s west side. The high-tech jobs
would be the beginning of a more diversified
economic base for the area.
Windsor has always been a natural place for
development to occur, with its centralized position
between Fort Collins, Loveland and Greeley and
proximity to I-25. With only the limited
responsibility of a small town, Windsor’s Public
Works Department had always done a good job for
citizens. Windsor, in fact, has the distinction of
being the first in Weld County to build a paved road
(to support truck traffic generated by the sugar
factory). In 1990, with population nearing 5000, the
Town began plans to extend its western border to
I-25, which would purposely lead to greater growth
than the area had ever before experienced. While
past Public Works successes were nice, incoming
department Director Terry Walker was focused on
developing a long-term, growth related strategy for
providing civil services.
A 1972 Windsor High School graduate, Walker began
his civil service career in his hometown in 1975. He
learned early how computers and information
technology could benefit public works, recording
infrastructure development and maintaining databases
of costs for all types of services provided. As
computers became more common place in the late
1990s, Walker convinced Windsor’s Town Board that
there was a need to “get onboard.” They then
assigned Walker to make the new IT Department part
of Public Works.
“It made a lot of sense,” says Walker. “Information
technology benefits all departments, but it
especially benefits public works.”
The task was huge; fortunately for Windsor, its
growth and increase in demand for services was
coinciding with emerging computer technology. Walker
hired a fellow Windsor High School graduate, James
Griess, a Kodak employee for 27 years. Griess, an
engineering technician, left Kodak to head up the
new IT Department in 2001.
When the IT Department first started the
consolidation, Griess contacted others in larger
communities to see how they had done it. He was at
first surprised to hear that they hadn’t. Was it
because the departments were too big, or operations
were too spread out, or was there ownership of data
by specific departments?
“The most difficult challenge was getting all the
departments on board,” says Walker. “You have to get
them to buy into the overall benefit for the Town.
One of the first areas targeted was starting the
database consolidation and data linking. The Town
had 160 different databases, with only a few being
regularly maintained and duplicate data by each. We
consolidated the databases to approximately 30 and
linked data to build a network of linked databases
that would compile appropriate data, update
automatically and be shared by all departments.
Without cooperation from each department,
consolidation wouldn’t have been possible. We're
still working – and probably always will be – to
improve efficiencies of the system.”
For the Town’s expanding fleet, technology could
readily be employed to accurately track operational
costs against expected costs for each piece of
rolling stock. The compilation of data would be the
basis for all fleet planning and action. “When I
started with the Town in 2001,” says Griess, “there
were 49 miles of streets that the Town maintained.
Now there are 105. We needed to expand the fleet
wisely to be able to provide for an increasing
demand for services but still stay within each
department’s budget.”
Fleet Manager Dave Vigil had acquired a Fleet
Replacement Program from Judy Workman with City of
Greeley. Griess was assigned to investigate fleet
management software to replace the system the Town
was using, which required manually entering
information into the system from hand-logged reports
maintained for each vehicle or piece of equipment.
Automating this process would improve overall
operating efficiency, of course, but would also
result in accurate assigning of costs. Such a
fail-safe system would not only be easier but meant
no more forgotten or overlooked costs. Griess and
Walker considered programs offered by five different
software manufacturers, but only one allowed the
Town access to link to its tables, which was
PubWorks, a product of Snowmass Village-based
Tracker Software Corporation.
“PubWorks is an activity-based costing model that
records information and can produce over 200
different reports,” says Griess. “This activity
information gives us the power to analyze specific
costs in a wide variety of ways that help manage
overall public works operations. PubWorks includes a
fully integrated fleet maintenance module designed
to track all parts and labor maintenance activities
as well as fuel usage for each vehicle and piece of
equipment.”
The software provides comparative analysis of data,
such as parts and labor, maintenance, preventive
maintenance scheduling, odometer and fueling logs.
Work orders, parts inventory, fuel usage and
virtually anything else can be tracked and
automatically updated within the system. The Town no
longer enters data manually into the Fleet
Replacement Database, except for a few
budgetary-type items not tracked in PubWorks. After
that, the system takes over, automatically
collecting live data and providing detailed reports
on demand.
Each time an expense is incurred, such as filling up
with fuel, the driver or operator must enter the
unit number and current mileage or hours into the
system, which automatically records the information
with the odometer reading, date and time. When a
specific report is requested, the software extracts
proper bits of data necessary to generate it. The
system also produces an alert of services needed
when an item in the fleet reaches a threshold of
miles, hours or age.
“It’s difficult to maintain accuracy when you have
to manually update the database of 112 fleet units,”
Griess points out. “Not to mention the fact that
having to manually log data is a terribly
inefficient use of time. Technology allows us to
have up-to-the-minute data of the highest accuracy,
cross-filed and correlated with other data however
we so choose for the information we desire.”
Deciding to replace specific fleet units has been
made much easier with PubWorks software. Costs can
be compared to both Town and industry averages for
like units providing like services. When weighted
costs incurred by an item in the fleet exceed the
lifetime depreciation and maintenance costs, it’s
time to consider replacement. For certain units, it
may be more cost-effective to overhaul instead of
replace. Department heads have to make the difficult
choices; having accurate data plotted against
standardized parameters allows for variable costs of
usage to be accurately estimated in advance,
creating justification for budget decisions.
“As we build our own fleet replacement database,”
Griess says, “we have access to PubWorks’
consolidated database to help us determine averages
that serve as parameters or points of comparison. We
then use formulas that are in accordance with APWA
standards to graphically display and help determine
priorities and the wisest course of action.”
We thank
Don Ludwig (720-205-4681) of the Colorado Public
Works Journal for providing this article.
Table of Contents Volume
2, Edition 3
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