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Asset Register: Production of Specification
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Environment Agency Wales
The Water Resources Department of the Environment Agency Wales is responsible for a vast array of capital plant and equipment; ranging from buildings and telemetry outstations to river weirs and rain gauges. To date, the Department has kept track of such assets by means of a proprietary database. But whilst this is able to store the required information, it is difficult to maintain and not amenable to widespread use. Moreover, being DOS-based, it is keyboard-intensive and cumbersome.
In May 1997, add2 was contracted to analyse the requirements for such a register - in the light of current PC technology - and to draw-up a detailed specification for the next generation of (more user-friendly) software. Thus, working closely with the Agency database experts, the deficiencies of the existing system were highlighted, the required new facilities were identified - and the accumulated experience of the Department was distilled.
Eventually running to some 150 pages, the finished specification envisages a Graphical User Interface giving access to a modern relational database. The GUI will (probably) comprise a Delphi application and will enable assets to be described by pictures and video images as well as by the usual text. (To illustrate this approach, Regent prepared a demonstration program.)
Using a series of forms, which the user fills-in from appropriate look-up tables, the new system adopts the ‘point-and-click’ approach to data entry, in preference to the keyboard. This should improve both speed and accuracy and lead to a more instinctive feel for casual users. Within this basic framework, the specification goes on to introduce the idea of a ‘site’ asset - in addition to the ‘fixed’ and ‘mobile’ asset types currently employed. This should improve the tree structure linking associated assets and so aid navigation through the system.
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