"I am extremely excited that Chatham-Kent has chosen ESRI Canada and our business partner, Miner & Miner," said Alex Miller, President, ESRI Canada. "We look forward to working with them to successfully implement their utility management solution, and in helping them to become leaders in leveraging the technology. Chatham-Kent's selection is a clear indication of their understanding of the off-the-shelf benefits that they will leverage moving forward."

Chatham-Kent is a single tier local government located in south-western Ontario. Since 1998, the Municipality has been using GIS to improve efficiencies for various departments. This project will provide the opportunity for further leveraging GIS at Chatham-Kent's Hydro, Public Utilities Commission (PUC), and Engineering Departments.

The consolidation of their legacy AM/FM system onto a single GIS platform based on ArcGIS and ArcFM will provide the benefit of improved data sharing and access across the organization. "With the adoption of a single application architecture, we will realize significant savings," said Scott Praill, General Manager, Chatham-Kent Public Utilities Commission. " This new tool will improve productivity and will allow for easier access to our data."

Chatham-Kent will use Miner & Miner's ArcFM application to manage data for electric distribution, water distribution, and wastewater networks. " The ESRI GIS solution offers us a greater range of add-on software," said Dan Charron, Director of Operations, Chatham- Kent Hydro Inc. "This will allow us to move beyond simple GIS maintenance and viewing to full geospatial solutions such as Outage Management, Asset Management, and System Design. We feel it is in these applications that the real gains in productivity and savings will occur."

Miner & Miner (M&M), a Telvent company, is a world leader in the development and implementation of GIS software for utilities. M&M's ArcFM Solution and its extended services assist electric, gas, water, and wastewater utilities in increasing productivity, lowering costs, and improving services by allowing them to effectively manage spatial information. Founded in 1946 as a full-service electrical engineering firm, M&M has been a business partner of ESRI since 1987. This partnership has enabled M&M to become the world's leading developer of ArcGIS applications for the utility industry. M&M services include implementation and customization of software to fit the needs of individual utilities. For more information, please visit http://www.miner.com/.

About ESRI Canada:
Established in 1984, ESRI Canada is a Canadian owned company specializing in geographic information systems (GIS) solutions. We distribute the world's leading GIS software solutions from ESRI Inc., Miner and Miner, and Azteca. In order to provide organizations with complete industry-specific solutions we have established an extensive business partner program that includes more than 125 Canadian organizations. ESRI Canada also provides professional services including consulting, training, technical support, and enterprise GIS implementation. We are leaders in providing world-class enterprise GIS solutions for many industries including local government, utilities, public safety and defence, business demographics, education, natural resources, and transportation. ESRI Canada has thirteen regional offices across the country, with headquarters in Toronto, Ontario. For more information, please visit http://www.esricanada.com/ or call 1-800-447-9778.

Media Contact:
Heather Adams
Communications Specialist
ESRI Canada
T: 416-386-6463
E: hadams@esricanada.com  

David Farnsworth
Project Manager
ITS The Municipality of Chatham-Kent
T: 519-352-8401 Ext. 3730
E: davidf@chatham-kent.ca
W: http://www.chatham-kent.ca/