Getting the Most Bang for Your Buck with Public Services in Topeka, KS

Making long-term plans while managing day-to-day operations is hard. There’s always something competing for your time. Make strategic planning easier by collecting the data you need along the way. Then, roll that data up and gain the insights needed for better strategic decisions. The City of Topeka is an expert at employing this approach.

City officials recently shared how they collect and assess data from the city’s systems, including SeeClickFix, Cityworks, and ArcGIS, to make long-term public service strategies and implementation plans. Here’s how the city handles the work now while building strategic plans for the future. Though this example highlights potholes, this approach is applied to other public services across Topeka.

Getting Through Pothole Season

Last winter was tough on Topeka’s roadways. The worst in the last 5 years. As a result, road crews are doing a lot more pothole filling. In fact, the City of Topeka reports patching nearly two-thirds as many potholes already in 2019 as it did in all of 2018. The wise use of city systems allows the city to be more efficient.

Getting the Most Bang for Your Buck with Public Services in Topeka, KS

“What SeeClickFix allows the city to do, is to have citizens help report where the potholes exist citywide. The requests then populate our Cityworks system, and we’re able to develop a game plan on how to address the large number of requests in the most efficient and effective way. We’ve started out by addressing the high-traffic corridors, sending crews from one end of the city to the other hitting every pothole, and then sprinkling in any claims of damage to wheels or vehicles and promptly addressing those,” says Jaci Vogel, Deputy Director of Public Works Operations for the City of Topeka.

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Vogel adds, “With limited resources, we’re trying to get the most value from our staff and available funds. The combination of maps, data, service requests and work orders offers us the foundation to make the best decision.”

Here’s Topeka’s step by step approach to making a short-term pavement management strategy:

Use SeeClickFix to encourage residents in being the eyes and ears of the city by submitting service requests from wherever they are.
Cityworks helps track equipment labor and materials, so staff can look up history at a particular location, as well as, the expenses and hours it took to address.
City staff conduct field research to compare and contrast with other data sources.
ArcGIS allows the city to overlay and visualize the data in order to identify hotspots and trends.

Strategic Planning Moving Forward

More recently, the city has begun to compare areas with planned projects with areas the city knows it has a high number of SeeClickFix and Cityworks requests. The goal is to see which projects will tackle the most requests and work orders at once in order to prioritize those projects. “This can be helpful in justifying a project’s priority and getting the most value for the time and money spent,” said Brandon Bayless, Project Administrator for the Public Works Department.

Here are the data sources Topeka consults prior to making a long-term pavement management strategy:

Capital improvement projects plans
Overlap of requests from SeeClickFix that flow into Cityworks
Layers Cityworks work orders, requests from SeeClickFix (through Cityworks) into ArcGIS
Field inspections based on past repairs
Areas of lowest PCI (pavement condition index)

Want to learn how you can provide better public services by focusing your attention where it is needed most today, and have data to share all while planning for the future? Click here to learn more about SeeClickFix from CivicPlus^®.