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One of the UK’s most trusted social housing providers, Citizen owns and manages 30,000 homes for diverse communities across the West Midlands, from urban tower blocks to rural villages and towns.

 

CHALLENGE

Staff at Citizen were using a Geographic Information System (GIS) that was proving difficult to manage. They did not have a GIS Manager to take ownership of the system nor a dedicated resource to manage its implementation. Whenever they needed to update or administer licensing and Ordnance Survey® mapping updates, it was becoming time-consuming, complicated and difficult to deploy.

The housing association was going through a period of transition and wanted to avoid a lengthy tender process. It turned to the G-Cloud framework to procure a suitable GIS and Web Mapping solution.

“NEC had a simpler upgrade path and easier communication all around. It offered a licensing model we could understand, value for money, and just what we needed.”

Debbie Jupe, Senior Project Manager, Citizen Housing

SOLUTION

Citizen selected SIS WebMap for presenting and interrogating spatial data. This is accessed via a browser and includes a mobile responsive interface. It is cloud hosted on Microsoft Azure Hosted Server with the geospatial web services engine  GeognoSIS. The solution includes the Edit, ReportIT, and Local Knowledge™ options for further functionality. SIS Desktop was installed on the local network.

NEC setup maps in SIS WebMap to display Citizen’s stock, grounds maintenance and other data.

The solution is managed by NEC and uses Federated Security to allow single sign on, making it easy for staff to access. NEC updates all of the Ordnance Survey mapping data as and when it is released reducing the administration overhead for Citizen. A cloud hosted PostGIS database on Microsoft Azure is now the corporate GIS data store.

OUTCOMES AND BENEFITS

SIS WebMap is used by teams across the organisation, ranging from Asset Management to Development, and from Service Charge to Business Intelligence. The benefits include:

  • Amalgamated data overlays allowing grounds maintenance data to be shared more easily
  • Accurately budget for future procurement of external maintenance contractors
  • Access to NEC’s experienced geospatial technical team to manage its GIS and web mapping
  • Improved accuracy of shared information by having up-to-date Ordnance Survey maps

“Feedback from our users has been very positive. They tell me SIS WebMap is very smooth to use and editing data is so much easier.”

 

Debbie Jupe, Senior Project Manager, Citizen Housing

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To find out more about our Geospatial Solutions for the Housing sector, get in touch with us.