Project Overview
The City of Chicago instituted its Project Coordination Office (PCO) in 2012 to facilitate coordination of work within the right of way among multiple service providers. Prior to 2012, City Aldermen and residents complained about multiple, repeated disruptions to traffic due to work in the right of way, as well as cutting into and patching of newly constructed pavement.
The Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) identified a need to develop a comprehensive approach to work in the public way that would coordinate construction design reviews, permitting, and inspection for projects under one program.
In 2012, CDOT launched the Project Coordination Office (PCO) whose mission was to relieve the burden on the residents of Chicago by creating an environment in which stakeholders performing public and private construction can do so collaboratively, openly, efficiently, safely, and with minimal disruption to the public.
Working side-by-side with CDOT, Collins, as the PCO, provides improvement of internal business processes, develops an understanding of external agency needs, and integrates both with CDOT’s mission. The result is the minimization of disruptions to businesses and citizens, and the maximization of the engineering design life of the public and private utilities infrastructure investments.
In January 2015, the PCO teamed with SADA Systems, a Google for Work Premier Partner, to build a custom cloud-based Google Maps program asset management system. The resulting system was dotMaps, where CDOT maintains ownership of its data.
dotMaps is a cloud-based singular enterprise platform that provides an intuitive interface for real-time coordination between public and private utilities. It permits users to more efficiently resolve utility conflicts by allowing all stakeholders to view upcoming infrastructure work. The mapping solution provides an accurate representation of past, current, and future infrastructure projects in the public way, thereby streamlining the plan review and permit process.
Since 2012, the PCO has saved the city $150 million.