Background: The City of Memphis’ Street Maintenance department handles all requests related to street conditions including cracking, guardrail, roadside litter, weeds, downed trees, and of course potholes. In order to be more efficient, the Street Maintenance team wanted a way to digitize request mapping in order to easily prioritize daily tasks and communicate these priorities to frontline staff. 

Service Question: How can we utilize data and digitize a solution to reduce the amount of time it takes to close service requests?

Implementation: The Information Services Division (ISD) worked with the Street Maintenance team to integrate the ESRI Collector app for field associates to track requests, automate maintenance tasks, and see near real-time service request activity. Additionally, managers were given an online dashboarding tool that allowed them to see an overview of requests in their area, real time activity being completed, and aging requests that need attention. An automated email was also generated that sends a morning email with the top 5 streets requiring pothole attention that day. 

Results: By digitizing processes that had been on paper for so long, everyone from field associates, to managers, to the director had a better picture of the work needing to be done and could prioritize the day's activity much more efficiently. 

In Jan & Feb 2017, crews responded to 949 potholes requests in an average of 4.33 days; over the same period in 2019, crews were able to process 3500 potholes requests in 3.98 days! That's a 268% increase in requests and an 8% decrease in average days to fill.   

Client Details: Information Services Division and Street Maintenance