The Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) released a software Request for Proposals to choose an enterprise GIS Software Vendor. A team comprised of Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) and Miner & Miner were the chosen vendors. Because of Great Arc’s longstanding relationship with NIPSCO as a GIS consulting and software developer, Great Arc was asked to have its consulting staff involved in the project.

Great Arc has worked on a number of projects with NIPSCO, ranging from Gas Service Card scanning and database linking to Web-enabling NIPSCO’s GIS to custom Field Tool Software development. Because of Great Arc’s knowledge and understanding of the NIPSCO data model, environment, and software, Great Arc was asked to be involved in the decision-making, planning, migration, and implementation of the ESRI and Miner & Miner software. Additionally, Great Arc was asked to provide an on-site resource for the duration of the project.

The first phase of the project was known as the elaboration phase. During this phase, various aspects of the data migration, data model, software specifications, etc. were discussed, planned, and finalized. It was during this phase that risk was assessed for the implementation as well as pricing out the implementation of an ESRI solution and migration of the data from the Autodesk format.

The next phase of the project was the construction phase. During this phase of work, various scenarios of software implementation, and data migration were discussed and pilot projects were developed. It was during this phase of the work that final decisions were made as to best practices for migrating the data and implementing the various pieces of software and systems.

Once the construction of the application components was complete, Great Arc assisted NIPSCO with the implementation phase of the project. This project phase included application testing, application deployment, and training. Although the implementation phase of the project is technically the final phase, Great Arc has continued to be involved with the NIPSCO GIS system on a daily basis since implementation. We assist NIPSCO by providing user support, data cleanup efforts, application upgrades, WO QA/QC, remote VPN support, and various other support services. Currently, in addition to supporting NIPSCO’s existing GIS system, we are again working with a team of consultants to create a data model and data migration application. These efforts support NIPSCO’s next-generation GIS.