Implementing a $1.5 billion program to move treated Lake Michigan water from the City of Chicago’s system to the southwest suburbs to provide an alternative water source to more than 300,000 people is a significant engineering undertaking. As a partner with Stantec, CMT is providing its Canopy™ platform to manage the massive amounts of engineering data and coordination to support a large team of cross-functional professionals and decision-makers over this multi-year initiative.

Canopy™ by CMT is a software as a service (SaaS) platform designed to bring engineering-specific geographic information systems (GIS) and analytical capabilities together with applications for asset management and large-scale project management. The Joliet project showcases how Canopy™ simplifies infrastructure management with intuitive features and powerful project management tools for overseeing large projects and coordinating project teams, all uniquely housed within a geospatial format. The solution has proven truly effective for a project with over 62 miles of transmission pipeline and related infrastructure, with hundreds of stakeholders all in a highly urbanized environment.

Key to the effectiveness of Canopy™ is its discipline-specific modules for managing project risks and coordinating efforts more effectively. The granular level of detail as well as the ability to view tasks and issues in a geospatial format provide a level of context that traditional project management platforms typically do not offer. With Canopy, users have access to not only the task, but also as much detail as needed behind the individual task.

The Canopy™ platform for the Joliet project is supporting over 180 users who can view, edit, or manage data, facilitating communication and decision-making all in real time. Examples of working modules include:

• Permitting: Allows the team to track progress on over 750 different permits by agency, location, contacts, status, and every communication that has occurred related to a specific permit.
• Utility Tracking: Allows engineers to maintain progress on utility-related conflicts to be addressed in design and status associated with those efforts.
• Land Parcels: With over 400 land parcels affected by the new water system, the land acquisition team can efficiently track the status of appraisals, surveys, and negotiations on each tract.
• Environmental Assets: Allows the team to be aware of the location, characteristics, compliance, and vital agency-related actions and communications.
• Geotechnical Surveys: This data is documented and managed within the system.
• Communication Log: Serves as a central clearinghouse of all communications with linkage to specific disciplines and acts as a valuable record as the project moves into construction.

Intentionally designed and continuously optimized around the needs of the project team, Canopy™ is recognized as being superior to managing disparate spreadsheets, emails, and team activities. Clients using Canopy™ note that they can have all needs met in one platform, with the added advantage of information being presented in a geospatial format.