Tales from the $Facility: Part 16 - Where The Heart Is

Posted by Mr_Cartographer@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 67 comments

Hello one final time, y'all :) This is my last from the $Facility, wherein I talk about how things have gone since the rollout. All of this is from the best of my memory along with some personal records (and I have started taking notes specifically so I can write stories for TFTS!) There's also a lot that comes from rumors, gossip, and other people, but most of this is very recent, so any inaccuracies are entirely on me. Also, I don't give permission for anyone else to use this.

TL/DR: ...it's also where the wi-fi connects automatically...

For some context, I'm not in IT; rather, I'm a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) professional. This particular world is quite small, so I will do what I can to properly anonymize my tale. However, for reference, all these stories take place at my new job working as the GIS Manager at the $Facility, a major industrial entity in the American South. Here's my Dramatis Personae for this part:

Oh, you thought I was done, huh? Nope. There's still more work to do, so one last story :)

I recall someone saying that MBAs are always concerned that folks who do techy things - coding, programming, IT work, the like - will eventually "get done" and put themselves out of a job. The techy types never respond, mostly because they are laughing so hard they can barely breathe.

So it is with GIS. Just because I'd finished my rollout in no way meant I was done. If you ever want job security, learn how to do GIS. You'll be creating, maintaining, and updating GIS data for years without running out of things to do. Seriously, my intern ($Civilty) has been here about a month. I've already showed her a dozen GIS postings in our area that have gone up in that time alone.

In the weeks and months after the GIS rollout, I addressed a ton of questions and requests that folks had regarding the system. We kept updating things based on their recommendations. I deployed things to additional users. I also created tons of new data, mostly information related to security, property boundaries, publicly-available datasets, and environmental data.

Speaking of environmental data, we wound up hiring a new environmental manager, $MaskedHero. One of his first tasks was something required by the regulatory agencies in this area - he needed to place physical "No Trespassing" signs around the edges of one of our mitigation sites. Basically, this was a physical deterrent to make sure any trespassers knew they were coming onto our property. On top of that, the regulatory agency needed exact coordinates as to where each of these signs was located.

Sounds like a GIS task to me... muhahaha... . I don't know why I tried to make that seem evil.

Anyways, I created a webmap for us to collect all this data and we headed out to the site. We trudged through the swamps and marshes with $TheMusketeer and $BowerBro to place all these signs. It was exhausting, but we did it. At each site, I used FieldMaps to place a point in our AGOL environmental webmap, attaching a photo to each point of exactly what the sign looked like when we posted it up. Pretty cool!

However, while we were out there, we found ample evidence of poaching and trespassing. There were deer stands, feeder stations, and trail cameras everywhere, most of it either on our property or pointed towards our property. Not cool. $MaskedHero said he'd come by later to pull all that stuff down. $TheMusketeer said he'd get his crews to disassemble the big stuff, like the deer stands. I thanked them for doing that. After all, we didn't really want people with guns hiding out on our mitigation sites, especially if we needed to get staff down there.

Anyways, as we traversed the marshes, I wound up falling in several times. I'm not the most physically-fit guy; working in an office for the past 15 years will do that to you. I did my best to keep up, and I did manage to collect all the data we needed. But when we finally walked around the entire perimeter of the site, arriving back at one of the trail heads, I was exhausted. I asked my fellow crew if they would be alright if I just waited here for a few minutes and caught them as they headed back out in the truck. $BowerBro laughed and said that'd be no problem. They started walking down the trail, leaving me sitting there on a log.

A few minutes later, I could have sworn I heard voices. I looked up from where I was sitting - and right inside the forest, directly across the clearing from me, was a deer stand. I heard the voices again - low, male, at least two - and I took off running. I ran at least half a mile down the trail, despite being tired. Nope, not taking any chances when hanging out next to a deer stand with a couple of trespassers toting rifles right near me! Anyways, a few minutes later, the crews picked me up. I let them know what I'd heard. $BowerBro said that I probably heard some folks in a nearby neighborhood, but it sounded way closer than that. I was just happy to get out of there after all this.

A few days later, $MaskedHero headed back out to the site with a team and took down all the poaching equipment they found. Almost immediately, we were contacted by the owner of that equipment, an entitled jerk we will now refer to as $RetiredIdiot. His initial call to the $Facility was a self-righteous diatribe about how we had stolen his stuff, interspersed with profanity-laced demands for his things back. The response my leadership was some variation of the following:

$Facility staff: Oh, so that was you! Thanks for letting us know. We'll be initiating the trespassing charges now.

The most surprised of all Pikachus.

$RetiredIdiot tried to fight us on all this, actually. He had been hired by a nearby property owner to keep wildlife numbers down. But he apparently hadn't given two sh!ts as to where he was setting up. I was able to use my cool new GIS stuff to pinpoint exactly where his equipment had been located and definitively prove that it was on our property. And $RetiredIdiot seemed to think he could get away with far more than he was actually able to. With some of the cameras we'd put up (and I'd georeferenced in GIS), we caught him trespassing back out on our property a few weeks later, even after we'd served him with a notice. An analog fool in these digital days. His contract with that other group was terminated, we gave him back his sh!t, and we told him that if we ever caught him on our property again, he'd be arrested.

Haven't seen him since :D

This hasn't been all that I've been able to help with. Thanks to me continuing to work with other departments across the $Facility, I've been gradually spreading the word on what I'm able to do across the whole enterprise. Many of my fellow staff have realized that I don't just make maps, I'm able to do all sorts of geographic analysis and asset management as well. Well, this got back to the CEO, actually! Late last year, she asked me to build an entire management system for a particular classification of assets we have in our buildings across the various campuses. I was so stoked when I heard she wanted to actually pull me into a project! I let her know that I'd get to work on this as soon as I could. It took me many long months, but I eventually got it done. I went live with this asset system only a few days ago! We have a meeting with the CEO to go over this project about a month from now. FTW, y'all!

But my final success has been the one that I am most proud of.

In the wake of $NairCo's failure, I had several other engineering firms reach out to me to try and help me construct a GIS inventory. For the vast majority, a cursory discussion with their dev teams revealed that they didn't know what the h3ll they were talking about.

However, one person contacted me that I thought very highly of. $ThisGuy had worked with me in the past. I'd always had a high opinion of him. He had never overpromised and was always trying to help me out with the most applicable support in his previous roles. He had even been the one to nominate me for one of the huge awards I'd received!

Despite being well-disposed to work with him, though, the issues I'd encountered with $Ryan and $NairCo weighted heavily on my mind. When I spoke to him, I told $ThisGuy that I wanted to see an example of what they could do, prior to me setting up an official project. Namely, I wanted to assess their work on a pilot project, having them create GIS features for a small area over a specific asset category (in this case, water features). The team seemed ok with this. We got things put together, I hammered out all the legalese, and they started work. $ThisGuy even told me that they'd expected to do this project for free! I told him that I'd never ask that of anyone - if you're doing work for me, I'm paying you for it. 13th Amendment and all.

Anyways, we got started on our project. We did an actual attribution data review, and they were very, very thorough. While I'm sure they were trying to get my business, I was particularly impressed with how much attention to detail they were showing. Their staff was excellent. It was clear they had worked in this sort of field before, and they all asked pertinent questions as we progressed through everything. I was cautiously optimistic as we got closer to the deliverable date. During the process, however, we had a few disruptions. The team assigned to this pilot project lived in western North Carolina and central Florida. If you'll recall, in the latter half of last year, both of those areas were hammered with hurricanes. Yet despite this, the team told me they'd "probably be delayed a week or so"!

And they were true to their word, too. They wound up getting me a final draft within a week of their original deliverable date. I downloaded it and opened it with some trepidation - despite having good feelings about this company, you never know what the data looks like until you receive it. I added everything to my Pro project, and opened the attribute table...

And lo and behold, it was complete!!!! At least 95% of the attribution was there, and represented well and accurately. The only things missing were data elements that they had no way of knowing (due to not having primary sources), or data that I specifically told them not to worry about. The company had even attached .pdf drawings of all the as-builts to each individual feature, indicating where they had found this data. This meant that any person selecting a record could instantly see the Engineering drawing where that data came from! I hadn't even asked for this, but the company had used it to ensure they could draw things accurately. It just so happened to be immensely helpful for me and my team, as well!

Halleluia, y'all! I had found my unicorn :D

We'll refer to this company as $TheUnicorn from here on out. I took the data they gave me, uploaded it into AGOL, then created a webmap specifically for my Engineering, Facilities, and Maintenance teams. We had our first meeting to go over it shortly after the data was delivered. The crews were immensely happy - they could now select every water line throughout the campus and see every single detail that ever mattered to them. Diameter, material, length, install date, depth below the surface, you name it. I talked to them about how we could use this map to record our fire hydrant testing results, and they were stoked. All-in-all, incredibly well-received. The crews have come to me constantly asking about what can be added into this system and what else they can use it for.

With this, I had found the company I needed more than any other. The company that could help me complete the rest of the GIS inventory for the entirety of the $Facility. Thanks $TheUnicorn, y'all are the best!

I doubt I could ever express how happy all of this has made me. And it's allowed me to recognize how much I've managed to do here. What I'm doing has value here, y'all. People are using it, day after day. I've gotten through most of the hurdles. And what we're going to create is just going to keep skyrocketing in the months and years to come.

Remember that challenge I set before myself, all those years ago? That the GIS architecture at the $Facility would be a model for other folks in this industry across the country one day?

I truly think we'll get there :)

A few months ago, we had a huge snowstorm here. As you're probably aware (particularly those of you from the North), a snowstorm in a major Southern city is basically the end of the world. Cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria. Predictably, the metro prepped to shut down entirely. Grocery stores completely sold out of bread, eggs, and milk. Whatever. Anyways, the day that the storm was to hit, I asked $TheGentleman if I could head home a bit early. It was looking like the roads would start icing up soon and I lived very far from the office. $TheGentleman said no problem and wished me well in the storm.

I drove off from the headquarters building. It started sleeting on me almost immediately. A little harrowing for my Southern sensibilities, but I drove cautiously, avoided getting too close to others, and tried to pay attention to the road. I was able to make it back to my neighborhood without any incident. As I pulled up into my driveway, I let out a little sigh of audible relief. It was good to be home.

I walked inside and flopped down on the couch, thinking about what had just gone through my mind. "It's good to be home." Is that really what I thought?

After letting that simmer in my brain for a while, with the snow pouring down outside, I started to smile. Yeah, yeah it was. This isn't just the place I live, the place where I have a house. I've met tons of friends here. I've done some awesome things here. I've made a name for myself here. It took me a long time to get to this place...

But this is definitely my home now :D

THE END

(for now, at least)

Thanks for reading, everybody! I hope you've enjoyed the stories. I'll be back with more before too long, and I promise they won't be years into the future. So until next time, don't forget to turn it off and on again!

Here are some of my other stories on TFTS, if you're interested:

The $Facility Series: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15

Mr_Cartographer's Atlas, Volume I