College of San Mateo is located in the northern end of Silicon Valley, just south of San Francisco, with sweeping views of the San Francisco Bay. Established in 1922, the 153-acre site hosts approximately 40 buildings with 50 miles of pipe and conduit criss-crossing the campus. The community college serves 10,000 students and considers itself “a gateway to higher education leading to university transfer, career preparation and advancement, and professional and personal development”.

Visibility problems

Before implementing InfraMappa, San Mateo County Community College District relied mainly on inconsistent plan sets spanning decades. According to Sustainability Manager, Joe Fullerton, “We were entering whatever information we could find into … Excel. In this process, we found not only inefficiency but inaccuracy. We ended up having to redo a lot of work.” The district relied heavily on the team’s recollection as well. “If someone was on vacation or left our organization, all that institutional knowledge went with them,” lamented Fullerton.

The solution

With InfraMappa smart mapping software, all plans are now easily accessible, centrally located, and digitized. Fullerton said, “for all of our underground infrastructure—plumbing, mechanical, everything you can’t see with the naked eye—[InfraMappa] allowed us to within seconds identify and address infrastructure needs.” His department not only uses the software to inform maintenance but also for infrastructure planning. “The next year is all about strategic planning, utilizing … this infrastructure and asset management tool to plan for future investment,” Fullerton continued.

“We knew it [InfraMappa] was going to provide value. What we didn’t know was how much value it was going to provide and to what level of specificity, detail and power it was going to give us in making reactive and predictive decisions.” – Joe Fullerton, Sustainability Manager