Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Boosts Efficiency with ProjectWise

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the largest municipal utility in the United States, was facing significant challenges with its engineering data management. With over 100 years of records stored in various systems across the enterprise, finding accurate information for new project designs was a time-consuming and often unsuccessful task. Drawing data, foreman’s prints, and job addresses were stored in three different Oracle databases, while CAD files were on a Linux server using an in-house configuration management application. Scanned foreman’s prints with field markups were stored in a Windows server, and Office documents, photos, and PDF files were scattered across multiple file servers in various departments. This disorganized system was causing lost productivity, project delays, and increased costs. Significant labor was required just to maintain the many repositories and custom software. New projects required hours of research to locate reference files and resolve inconsistencies, often resulting in designs started with incomplete or inaccurate information, leading to revisions during construction.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest municipal utility in the United States, serving 4.1 million citizens with 7,238 miles of water mains and 14,486 miles of electric transmission and distribution wires. LADWP is responsible for providing over 640,000 water customers and 1.4 million electric customers with the best service and lowest cost resources available. Revenue from the LADWP is crucial for funding parks and public safety services for the City of Los Angeles. The organization was facing significant challenges with its engineering data management, which was causing lost productivity, project delays, and increased costs.