The Challenge: A System with Data but No Access
Elijah Risch, Portland's GIS administrator, came into his role with a clear operational goal: make the city's utility department data accessible to the people who needed it. He knew the data existed. Sewer line records, gas infrastructure, asset histories: it was all there. But the maps were not loading reliably, services were throwing errors, and he could not pinpoint why. There was no documentation from the previous administrator, and the system's behavior was difficult to explain without understanding how it had been configured.
He found dymaptic through Esri's partner directory and initially requested a complimentary GIS assessment. The free assessment gave him a useful starting point, but he recognized he needed something more thorough. He came back and contracted for a full, paid assessment, the first step in what became a comprehensive GIS and IT infrastructure engagement.
Our Approach: Listen First, Then Diagnose
At dymaptic, a GIS assessment does not begin with tools or checklists. It begins with listening. Working closely with Portland's GIS administrator, the assessment team spent significant time understanding what he wanted from his system: what should be working, what had already been tried, and where the gaps in his understanding of the inherited configuration were largest.
From there, the assessment expanded into a ground-up review of the full technology stack. That meant examining the software installed on the servers, the data structure and how it was organized, the configuration of services, and the network environment those services were running on. Some of the most significant findings were not GIS issues at all. GIS infrastructure depends on the network and server environment it sits in, and dymaptic's team identified network configuration problems, inappropriate software licensing (workgroup-level SQL Server and an under-licensed ArcGIS Server install), and a security configuration in which a full domain administrator account was running GIS services, a setup that presented both stability and security risk.
One of the more striking discoveries was the state of the geodatabase itself. The previous administrator had never compressed the database, which meant years of edit versions had accumulated invisibly. Data the current administrator believed was simply gone was actually buried in those versions, inaccessible but not lost. Surfacing that finding was an early turning point in the engagement.
The Rebuild: What We Built Together
With the assessment complete and priorities established, dymaptic and Portland's GIS administrator moved into the implementation phase. The work was structured around a core principle: building the GIS administrator's own capability alongside the infrastructure, not instead of it. Kevin Sadrak, the dymaptic engineer leading the engagement, worked directly with the GIS administrator throughout, walking him through each step, teaching him how to create schema owners in the database, showing him how to migrate data from ArcGIS Online into his new enterprise environment, and then stepping back to let him carry it forward independently.
The infrastructure work was substantial. Key components of the rebuild included:
- Stood up a Windows Hyper-V host and provisioned multiple virtual machines to support a proper enterprise configuration
- Installed and configured ArcGIS Server, Portal for ArcGIS, and SQL Server in a correctly licensed and separated environment
- Separated the domain controller onto its own dedicated machine (it had previously shared hardware with the enterprise GIS services)
- Migrated data from ArcGIS Online into the new ArcGIS Enterprise geodatabase, bringing it in-house and reducing the city's ArcGIS Online credit consumption
- Migrated Survey123 surveys from ArcGIS Online hosting to the enterprise, including configuring pull location capability for auto-populating field forms
- Configured the city's asset management platform, Elements XS, to read GIS data through the new Portal app IDs
- Set up automated backup infrastructure to replace what had been an unreliable server environment
- Produced a data lineage deliverable tracing the full path of each dataset from its source through services and maps, giving the GIS administrator a complete picture of where data lives and how it flows through the system
A key part of the engagement also involved coordinating with the city's IT contractor to ensure the new enterprise system was properly accessible on the network and reachable externally where needed.
The Results: Data That Works, a Team That Can Use It
The clearest measure of the project's impact came from the GIS administrator himself. Before the rebuild, data existed but was inaccessible. After it, usage increased meaningfully as staff across the utilities department were able to reach the maps and services they needed. The GIS administrator described the outcome as "leaps and bounds" over what was there before.
Beyond accessibility, the project delivered infrastructure durability. Portland's Utilities Department GIS environment moved from a fragile, underdocumented system running on shared hardware to a properly separated, backed-up, and correctly licensed enterprise configuration. The GIS administrator now understands his system, can manage it independently, and has a clear picture of where every dataset lives.
The engagement continues in a light support capacity. Kevin also drove to Portland, Tennessee to meet the GIS administrator in person, an investment dymaptic made because the in-person connection brought context and understanding that remote work cannot fully replicate. The two have also submitted a joint presentation proposal to the Tennessee GIS conference to share what they built and how they did it.