When Thomas Kaufmann, an engineering-plans design supervisor at the Philadelphia Dept. of Water, sends engineers out to the field to look for underground water pipes, he says they typically have to take more than 120 maps in the truck to help track down the pipes. Once at the location in question, the engineers must rifle through countless paper maps to locate the one correct subsurface-infrastructure map to proceed.
But after Kaufmann beta-tested Bentley's latest app, which shares free geospatial information, his team may say goodbye to paper maps. The test also is helping to drive tablet adoption in the utility's office.