Oracle Customer Success—Chicago Park District

Chicago Park District Efficiently Manages and Executes More Than 400 Annual Parks Projects Across 30 Departments

Expanded collaboration and visibility across departments has been the greatest outcome of our Oracle-based integrated park and project management solution. From the park staff knowing the status of their work orders to project managers knowing the status of their funding, it has been extremely valuable for us.

— Tanya Anthony, Chief Administrative Officer, Chicago Park District

Chicago Park District (CPD) is one of the largest municipal park systems in the nation. CPD is responsible for more than 8,100 acres of green space, including 580 parks, 77 pools, and 26 miles of lakefront and beaches. Whenever there is a repair needed or a new project in one of its parks or facilities, CPD, which keeps Chicago beautiful, is in charge of developing the plan, allocating budget, and following the project to completion.

Business Challenge

Improve ability to manage and share green-space-related information, including data on parks, pools, lakefronts, and beaches, so that more than 30 departments—each with a unique mission—can more effectively collaborate and coordinate their operations
Automate project workflows, providing each department with the ability to efficiently track approximately 400 annual projects (such as installing drinking fountains) and share project-related information

Transform and automate several redundant, manual, spreadsheet-based processes to improve efficiency and accuracy, and eliminate project delays
Manage funds and grants for capital projects and facilities more effectively to optimize use of public and private funding

Improved communication between park and trade staff (such as carpenters, plumbers, and electricians) as well as boosted overall productivity by automating CPD’s service-request process, providing park staff with instant visibility into their submission statuses from a central location, and giving trade staff the ability to prioritize their schedules and work
Enhanced CPD operations by providing project managers with park grant-allocation and fund-approval tracking information

Gave directors insight into how many projects each project manager has underway at any given time to assign workloads more evenly and avoid project delays
Used Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management as a one-stop shop for all current and historical park project information to enhance reporting
Enabled CPD to work toward its goal of having a well-lit, easy-to-use park within 10 minutes of every resident using Oracle Fusion Middleware functionality to respond more quickly to work orders and effectively manage 400 active projects in a more streamlined manner
Provided CPD with accountability and productivity tracking to pinpoint each department’s staff dependencies, identify bottlenecks, and improve operations across 30 departments
Ensured quicker response time to process work orders and projects more efficiently, enhancing citizen satisfaction
Worked with Oracle Specialized Partner Sofbang LLC to give CPD a robust, flexible platform that it can use today, as well as into the future as business needs change over time

We are an Oracle shop and have been since 2002. Any time we want to initiate a new project, we want to leverage what we have for continuity. We advertised a request for proposals and were open to other solutions, but Oracle’s offerings were unmatched in terms of their best-of-breed approach and completeness—spanning technology, middleware, and applications layers. They also afforded tremendous intra-department collaboration.

— Tanya Anthony, Chief Administrative Officer, Chicago Park District

Execution

In the project’s early stages, nearly every director—from budget, the Comptroller’s office, CFO, facilities, natural resources, capital, planning, and IT—were involved. Following the kickoff meeting, CPD embarked on a three-phase project to include grants management, project management, and work order management modules. CPD started with the grants management module implementation, which took approximately eight months to complete. It then began configuring the project management and work-order management modules, and integrating them to share information.

About Chicago Park District

Headquarters

Chicago, Illinois, United States

Chicago Park District

Partners

CPD chose Oracle Platinum Partner Sofbang LLC (also an Oracle Specialized Partner) for its experience, proven methodology, and best-of-breed solution approach.

Sofbang’s first step was to spend time with the CPD stakeholders in outlining pain points, existing business processes, and objectives across various departments. With an understanding of the current state, Sofbang then architected, designed, implemented, and integrated Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management, in addition to a third-party, work-order management solution and a custom Oracle Application Express solution for grants, funds, and parks management. Sofbang then installed the Oracle Fusion Middleware product stack and implemented a variety of service-oriented architecture business-process execution, language-based interfaces to integrate these modules, along with CPD’s Oracle E-Business Suite, for smooth exchange of data and workflow across the departments. This SOA-based implementation set the framework for future, easy-to-manage enterprise integration within CPD. Sofbang continues to support this environment for ongoing enhancements and maintenance.