18 Jan Migrating to ArcGIS Indoors to Manage University Infrastructure

The University of Rhode Island (URI), like so many other higher education research institutions relying on indirect cost rate agreements, has long utilized a computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) system to maintain the institution’s space database and floor plan library. Our current system is the INSITE suite of products including Net-FM and Visual-FM.

INSITE has developed into a system of record for other needs as well. The Facilities Group uses it to manage the physical campus, and it aids Property & Support Services in managing the moveable asset inventory. Public Safety relies on accurate and up-to-date data for emergency planning and response, while Environmental Health and Safety requires the data for inspections, abatements, and mitigations. URI recently learned INSITE was being deprecated and a replacement was needed. It would be easy to say that URI considered ArcGIS Indoors based on a combination of existing GIS infrastructure and low licensing costs, but that would not tell the whole story. ArcGIS Indoors makes data easily accessible to decision-makers through dashboards.

Why ArcGIS Indoors?

Most CAFM systems are extremely useful to those who work in them daily. But how easy are they for others to use? We found that decision-makers relying on the CAFM data had difficulty interacting with the systems. As a result, CAFM operators spent too much time dumping data into spreadsheets or building reports and dashboards using third-party applications rather than focusing on data quality and creating new features. The data needs to be easier to retrieve, visualize, and analyze by decision-makers with less support from CAFM operators.

URI requires a system that also provides greater service to the campus community. Operationally, the campus community needs to track location data for multiple types of assets, collect data in the field, easily share data, and quickly develop systems of record for departments where none currently exist. At the same time, the university must meet the stringent system/data security requirements established by centralized IT. Also, faculty, staff, students, and guests want wayfinding assistance, room and workstation scheduling, and directory information—especially in a post-COVID-19 world.

ArcGIS Indoors, combined with existing products already licensed through our Esri educational agreement, gives URI these capabilities and more. In addition, the campus community will be able to access ArcGIS Indoors using a sleek graphic interface that is available on the desktop, the web, and mobile devices and through kiosk applications that are included with the license.

Also, GIS will now manage spatial data both inside and outside our facilities. Can another CAFM system provide an interface that lets users interact with floor plans, occupancy information, asset locations, and campus features outside the facilities while also providing scheduling capabilities with navigation from building to building or space to space? And—when considering future needs—ArcGIS Indoors brings URI closer to a true digital twin of the campus that is ready to integrate 3D data from Autodesk Revit, building information models (BIMs), and lidar.

Implementation Challenges

For starters, INSITE, like many other CAFM systems, is designed around the Postsecondary Education Facilities Inventory and Classification Manual (FICM). Establishing the space inventory in INSITE was straightforward, as preexisting tables contained the FICM major uses and associated codes.

Data Migration

The other challenge we face is the data migration from INSITE to ArcGIS Indoors, especially floor plan preparation. The Esri ArcGIS Indoors team has been a great resource for learning about how to prepare AutoCAD floor plans for ArcGIS Indoors. The team helped us understand the process, project scope, and data migration challenges. However, URI utilizes INSITE’s floor plan editing software, Visual-FM. URI plans are not AutoCAD files, so URI created a workflow to manually convert the plans to AutoCAD files. But with 800 floor plans, URI is seeking a third party to handle the AutoCAD conversion using automated processes or scripting.

Our CAFM system contains other important space attribute data such as office occupancy, research laboratory assignments, and space features. We needed a means to import the remaining data once ArcGIS Indoors was populated with the basic space inventory.

ArcGIS utilizes unique identifiers in the attribute tables and so do other databases. The INSITE space table includes unique IDs for each space. This space ID serves as a join for all the other related tables containing space attribute data and ties the attribute to the appropriate space.

These unique IDs are being copied to another field in INSITE that can be viewed on the floor plans through the INSITE floor plan editor in what is known as the INSITE space label. When the INSITE floor plans are converted to AutoCAD, the space ID will be included with the space label as it is transformed into an AutoCAD annotation. The annotation is then imported into ArcGIS Indoors when the floor plans are imported.

This will result in the ArcGIS Indoors space inventory containing the INSITE unique space ID. We can then utilize an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) connection to transfer data from INSITE to related tables in ArcGIS Indoors by creating a join using the unique space ID as the common field. This will ensure that the INSITE space attributes are tied to the appropriate space in ArcGIS Indoors without manually editing each record. Once the data migration is complete, the INSITE unique space ID can be deleted from the ArcGIS Indoors data model.

The campus community will be able to access ArcGIS Indoors via graphic interface available on the desktop, the web, mobile devices, and kiosk applications that are included with the license.

The Bottom Line

Finally, let’s talk bottom line. What is this going to cost? Our annual licensing costs are being reduced significantly. We estimate the ArcGIS Indoors migration will reduce our annual CAFM costs by almost 70 percent. That’s after accounting for both the ArcGIS Indoors and AutoCAD licensing required to replace the INSITE suite of products.

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