Organized Chaos: Tracking Water Quality Improvements from Concept to Completion
Planning efforts to identify successful water quality improvement projects within the City of Virginia Beach has developed a wide range of planning documents. From GIS evaluations, to subwatershed evaluations, to that neighborhood project idea discovered on a random drive-by inspection, tracking all the possible BMPs and selecting the most cost-effective solution adds an element of chaos to the most organized of systems. The City of Virginia Beach has implemented a project tracking system that relies on the Microsoft Office standard toolbelt. A Microsoft List is used to track each site evaluated for water quality improvements. The list uses fields that can categorize each site evaluated by status, feasibility, watershed, council voting district, and more. Using the list views and filtering capabilities has eliminated the multiple separate tracking spreadsheets formerly used. A Microsoft SharePoint Document Library is used to save all backup documentation. The library is able to integrate with the list so that evaluation documentation can be found by location, rather than by which of the dozens of evaluation reports had been previously completed. An ArcMap GIS plugin for SharePoint connects the list, library, and provides a spatial component to display each category of water quality improvements. Each location datapoint includes key information from the list, such as cost, pollutant reduction achieved, or status, and provides a link to backup documentation. The map is an excellent tool for communicating with stakeholders or leadership teams. For example, the map can visually show all the efforts that have taken place within an identified council election district. The list reports to a PowerBI dashboard that can provide insights on current and planned progress toward TMDL goals. The dashboard can toggle between alternative implementation strategies and calculate total implementation costs for enhanced program planning.Author Bio
Jim has 12 years engineering experience and serves as the TMDL program manager at the City of Virginia Beach. He manages a team responsible for the planning and implementation of water quality improvement projects used to meet TMDL Action Plan goals.
