Tony Bisson remembers the days when his wastewater district relied on what he refers to as "tribal knowledge," when records were passed down by word of mouth rather than housed in a centralized data repository. In those days, when an older crew worker left the maintenance tribe, a great deal of knowledge was lost.

"We relied a lot on hand-written work orders," Bisson said. "Eventually, as we grew and there was more data, we couldn't afford to miss anything. There was too much time being spent tracking down a member of the crew who remembered the information we needed, and too much time being spent looking for notes that were difficult to read. We didn't have many accurate records."

Bisson is the Maintenance Supervisor of Clark Regional Wastewater District, now one of the most progressive districts along the Northwest coast. For his agency, the times have changed. Three years ago, Clark Regional Wastewater District decided to implement an infrastructure maintenance management software suite to track assets and records, generate work orders, schedule preventative maintenance, and integrate with the preexisting geographic information system (GIS). "The products were the perfect fit," Bisson said. "It's taken us from relying on tribal knowledge to having our assets in an actual location on a GIS map."

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