Location Centre Improves Land and Property Data Sharing
Description
Customer
Millar & Bryce Ltd.
Challenge
Bidders and project partners required access to the wealth of land and property ownership information.
Solution
Location Centre – A fully hosted intranet and internet GIS solution.
Results
Increased efficiency and consistency of land and property data sharing and publication.
Services
Hosted Service, consultancy and training.
Millar & Bryce is the largest of the private land search firms in Scotland. The firm provides a range of land and property related services. The firm’s Land Referencing service provides high accuracy ownership information for road and rail schemes, pipeline installation, commercial developments and regeneration projects.
"Providing shared access to complex and technical data relating to the proposed route, to a wide stakeholder group is a key requirement to ensuring the continued success of the Border Rail Project. Location Centre afforded Millar & Bryce with a solution to deliver this requirement that provides us with significant benefits in terms of data delivery, cost management and risk management.
Forth Valley GIS’s desire to innovate and improve is reflective of our own business model and is therefore one that we admire. But the true value of their service lies in the attention that they pay to us and to the requirements of our company and our clients. Consistently ahead of the game in recognising what improvements need to be made, they are attentive and responsive to our suggestions for improvement. Their appreciation of how we deliver our services allows them to develop their own services in a proactive way, always with a view to making our and our clients’ lives easier and our dealings more efficient."
Gary Donaldson
Business Development Manager
Millar & Bryce Ltd
Challenge
Millar & Bryce have been working on the project to reopen the Borders Railway since 2006, providing land referencing services to support both the parliamentary and land acquisition phases.
The project is a key part of the Scottish Government’s wider programme of investment in transport infrastructure working towards the sustainable economic growth of Scotland.
Transport Scotland was inviting tenders from firms to design, build, finance and maintain the railway. As part of this procurement process, bidders and other project stakeholders needed shared access to all relevant technical documentation relating to the proposed route.
The validation of land and property ownership was the key overall aim of the land referencing process. Typically this work involved the sourcing, collection, capture and research of a wide range of land, property, environmental and technical data from a variety of sources.
Traditionally, this data had been compiled in a way that made it difficult to share or easily update the information between
the various partners involved.
The overall business requirement was to provide Millar & Bryce with an innovative facility to deliver interactive, online access to the wealth of land and property ownership information for bidders and project partners.
Solution
Forth Valley GIS worked closely with stakeholders in Millar & Bryce and Transport Scotland to deliver Location Centre, an innovative hosted solution that would meet the key business requirements of the project. This work involved tuning Location Centre to align with the key business processes associated with the preparation of development proposals for the reopened railway line.
The solution for Borders Railway now stores approximately 70 layers of complex GIS data on a secure, hosted environment. The system provides a functionally rich internet application
which allows users to carry out a range of standard GIS operations such as viewing, querying, analysing and printing maps.
The system is used extensively by staff in Millar & Bryce, Transport Scotland and the bidders working on development proposals for the new railway line. Each organisation now has secure access to the same, shared data that is updated once and dynamically shared many times between the various project partners.
Overall, the solution enables an innovative approach to improving bidder participation.
Forth Valley GIS also provide a fully managed support service for data management, training and a service desk to the project stakeholders as part of the solution.
Results
Location Centre was successfully delivered within ambitious time, quality and cost objectives.
The solution was easily configured to support the core business processes associated with development proposals, increasing user engagement and satisfaction. The hosted approach and managed service that underpin Location Centre reduced the risk and complexity of implementation for Millar & Bryce.
By publishing the wealth of spatial information on land and property ownership to the bidders and for use by key stakeholders such as Transport Scotland, the rail industry and the three local authorities involved, Location Centre provides an interactive solution that increases the efficiency and consistency of data sharing and publication.
The collaboration between Millar & Bryce and Forth Valley GIS has successfully provided a unique solution to the market by drawing on expertise and experience within each organisation and working efficiently together to deliver on customer objectives.
Key Benefits
- Cost savings by publishing and sharing information online compared to traditional data publishing and distribution methods.
- Improved data sharing between public/private sectors.
- Reduced business risk.
- Increased collaboration between public/private sector partners.
- Greater efficiency on key business processes.
- Enhanced business reputation for innovation.