Success Stories

CIP Project Tracker 2.0 Upgrade (CPT 2.0) 

Overview

DataHouse was tasked with developing a Capital Improvement Project Tracking (CPT) system to standardize and automate end-to-end business workflows for the Hawaii Department of Education (HIDOE), the 9th-largest public school district in the nation. The CPT system tracks budget approvals, allocations, encumbrances, and construction management activities, transparently reporting spending, timelines, and project status to all stakeholders.

This system replaced a mostly manual and disparate set of unintegrated systems. The client’s preferred approach was to build fast and manage risk by taking an incremental approach utilizing proofs of concept on low-cost, low-code tools. The 1.0 system proved successful, resulting in widespread adoption and many requests for enhancements. However, the limitations of the “lightweight” development platform limited the system’s scalability to meet the growing user demands.

A 2.0 upgrade and platform migration were initiated to provide a scalable enterprise-grade system that meets the client’s growing demands. As such, DataHouse leveraged its VizPlatform Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution, pre-engineered entirely on AWS cloud services, which provided the core infrastructure necessary to achieve the desired outcome. 

Objective

Our development teams leveraged multiple AWS cloud services to deliver requested functionality and still maintain the ability to scale to meet future demands, including the core infrastructure components, RDS databases, data lake tools, and QuickSight reporting tools. AWS technical experts were regularly consulted to ensure best practices were being utilized.

DataHouse provided a full range of consulting and development services, including our VizPlatform to establish the 2.0 system. Our teams worked with the client to document and improve their business processes and engaged the numerous stakeholders in the organization to fulfill the client’s needs. 

Client Background

Industry

Governement

About the Organization

Public Education 

Challenge

Problem Statement

The client is responsible for managing and operating numerous areas involved in the capital improvement program: appropriations, budgeting, project management, construction management, financial transactions, contracting, procurement, and transparency and reporting. The challenge was to provide a system that addressed the needs of the various operational silos while effectively managing and making the data generated in each silo accessible branch-wide for timely consumption.

Impact

The lack of a cohesive project management system spanning all the operational silos resulted in poor management of appropriated funds. Management lacked timely and accurate visibility into financial and project status and was challenged to proactively mitigate problems in CIP project execution. 

Solution

Proposed Solution

CPT Enterprise Management Platform 

Key Features

The CPT system includes the following features: 

Project Management

  • Project and Jobs Maintenance
  • Project and Jobs Schedule
  • Alert Center 

Budgeting 

  • Appropriations Maintenance
  • Allotments Management
  • Transactions/Fund Allocations 

Procurement 

  • Consultant Selection
  • Contract Management 

Financial Reporting 

  • Public Reporting
  • Operational Reporting
  • Tactical Reporting
  • Strategic Reporting 

Construction Management 

  • Integration with Procore 

Implementation

Deployment

The project leverages a robust and scalable AWS architecture to deploy the CPT solution. 

The solution includes the following AWS components:

AWS Cloud

The AWS Cloud encapsulates the entire cloud environment.  

Availability Zones (AZ)

AZs ensure high availability and fault tolerance. 

Edge Services

Securely manages the public’s access to resources within the AWS Cloud.  

Public Services

Application Load Balancer distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets, ensuring even distribution and high availability. AWS Cognito is used to authenticate user access.

Application Services

The application is based on a microservices architecture using Lambda for microservices and Docker/ECS Fargate for containerization. The solution also integrates with third-party applications through API calls.

Database Services

The solution uses PostgreSQL Relational Database Services (RDS).

Integration

Our solution’s integration services enable integration with different systems through real-time APls, ETL or file transfer, pub/sub messaging systems, and webhooks. These streamline business processes that require involvement from different systems and make data synchronization and management easier. CPT also integrates directly with other third-party software, such as Procore, Auth0, Dropbox, IBM Maximo, and Caspio.

Customization

The solution is customized to fully support the client’s business process, including workflow configuration, digital form customization, and data schema. 

Outcome​

Achievements

Established an enterprise-grade system on a modern AWS platform

Successfully migrated data from the 1.0 to 2.0 system

Established a data lake

Established an ad-hoc reporting system using QuickSight

Key Benefits

The modern platform provides superior performance, scalability, and improved UI/UX

The superior 2.0 data framework provides greater flexibility in meeting user data management and reporting demands

The data lake provides users the ability to access multiple data sources to gain better and expanded insights into the business operation

The ad-hoc reporting engine provides users the ability to create and execute queries on real-time datasets on a self-serve basis

We were able to make significant improvements to project delivery through the implementation of the CPT application. The modernization of antiquated processes through technology is key to realizing significant improvement in government

Former Public Works Administrator

Next Steps

Future Plans

The client has plans for CPT, including:

Enhancement of the user experience to minimize training needs for business users and enhance user adoption

Automate workflows/business processes to reduce processing time and avoid human error

Leverage data processing/business intelligence to provide more insight and forecasting to support decision making

Expand integration capabilities to streamline data flow from different systems within the organization

Ongoing Support

The solution has an integrated support widget operated by our tier-based support team, assuring business continuity and providing in-time support for the user when needed. Besides that, we engage the client by demonstrating the upcoming features and providing training to ensure users can adopt new features successfully. 

Partnership

DataHouse partnered with Procore to integrate their best-in-class construction management Software as a Service (SaaS) into CPT at the client’s request. The integrations provide a seamless user experience and multiple controls to ensure the business workflow is optimally maintained. 

About DataHouse

DataHouse is Hawaii’s longest-standing IT consultancy, known for solving complex IT problems for our clients since 1975. Our expertise in leveraging AWS services and solutions demonstrates our commitment to using cutting-edge technology to positively impact the local and global communities our clients serve. As an AWS Advanced Partner, DataHouse continues to drive innovation in partnership with public and private organizations.

Contact Us

Our team would love to help you find the perfect fit of products and solutions.

Phone

+1 (808) 942-8108

Email

[email protected]
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