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Public works & utilities · Executive summary

Return on Location

Where geospatial investment actually pays back — and how to prove it

For Public Works Directors, Utility Superintendents, City and County Engineers, Asset Managers, GIS Leaders and Finance Directors.

Return on Location report cover

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  • Conclusions evidence-rated
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Executive summary

Public works departments and utilities manage some of the largest investments a local government will ever make: roads, water systems, wastewater networks, stormwater infrastructure, bridges, facilities and fleets. Almost every one of those assets has a location.

That connection changes specific, measurable decisions — reducing repeat trips to the same asset, consolidating field work into single deployments, replacing manual inventories with reusable digital records, and exposing the cumulative cost of repairing the same asset again and again. This report sets out where geospatial investment actually pays back, and how to prove it with numbers a finance director will accept.

Contents

  1. 01Executive Summary
  2. 02Five Findings
  3. 03How to Read the Evidence
  4. 04Reduce the cost of knowing what you own
  5. 05Reduce the truck roll
  6. 06Move from reactive to planned maintenance
  7. 07Know when to stop repairing
  8. 08Replace the right asset at the right time
  9. 09Turn maintenance data into capital evidence
  10. 10The utility evidence comes with a warning
  11. 11The ROI that never gets verified
  12. 12A better way to calculate Return on Location
  13. 13The Return on Location scorecard
  14. 14What should Public Works measure?
  15. 15From map to investment system
  16. 16Take this to Finance
  17. 17Where the evidence is strongest — and where it is thin
  18. 18What the evidence does not support
  19. 19A 12-month Return on Location program
  20. 20Evidence snapshot
  21. 21The return is not on the map
  22. 22Evidence Framework
  23. 23Bibliography