From Outdated to Outstanding: Harris County Precinct 2 Completes 5 Million Linear Feet of Ditching

After adopting OpenGov, Harris County Precinct Two dramatically modernized its operations, transitioning from outdated paper systems to a digital platform that significantly improved efficiency, transparency, and responsiveness. This transformation enabled the team to increase drainage maintenance from 300,000 to over 5 million linear feet, streamline communication, and better serve their 1.3 million residents with real-time data and coordinated workflows.

Video Transcript:

Adrian Garcia, Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner: “Running a major operation like Precinct 2 has about a 1,300,000 residents in it and covers a very significant part of the geography of Harris County, Texas. It is absolutely archaic to try to run this operation in a paper-driven manner.”

Juan Hernandez, Senior Public Works Director: “When I came to Precinct 2, we were using a outdated system called the red books. The red books are the journals here that would track all the work performed in our crews.”

Delon Guy, Public Works Supervisor: “We would put in our task for that particular day. So that would include the date, the roll log, along with the field personnel that would be within the task doing the job, and also the equipment that we would be using.”

Garcia: “I was always open to the idea of how to modernize our approaches. So I simply charged my director, Juan Hernandez, to think about ways to take us to the next level. Not only did he take us to the next level, but whatever is second is a far distant second to where we’re at today.”

Hernandez: “To reduce potential flooding, commissioner Adrian Garcia challenged us to come up with a drainage maintenance plan. As part of that, we had staff go out and evaluate every street with drainage systems. And with that, we developed the worst-first strategy, where over these last four or five years, we’ve been addressing the worst first. We were hitting areas that were never maintained for the last 20 years.”

Garcia: “Precinct two is the downstream side of not only Harris County, but four other counties. So, making sure that we have a well functioning drainage system is critical to ensuring that my residents do not flood repeatedly as they have done in the past. We went from an average of about 300,000 linear feet a year of drainage maintenance to a million in 2020 during the pandemic.”

Hernandez: “Cartegraph had a huge impact. We’re able to track all the work activities that we perform. We’re able to track the amount of footage, and that has made us more efficient and more streamlined. In doing this plan, we were able to achieve 5,000,000 linear feet.”

Guy: “Accomplishing the work without Cartegraph… it would be tough. It gives more of that time management. If you’re out in the field and you’re able to have your tablet with you, any new requests come in, they can be addressed. If I get any type of call of ‘do you have a crew working at this particular location?’ I could just go in Cartegraph and tell them that it was at this particular location from this time to this time or whatnot, or if they were even at that location.”

Regina Duncan, Resident & General Manager of HCWCID36: “I feel very confident in the Precinct’s ability to respond to our needs. They have yet to have any kind of gaps in our communication. Especially in the last few years, we’ve seen a big improvement. We feel like a big team with Precinct 2. We don’t feel like we’re separate from them. It’s helped us be able to even address that with our citizens here in the community that they have this tool. Utilizing the software has helped tremendously with communication with Precinct. I can’t say enough how easy it is to use, but also the feedback. Via email or phone, someone is always responding pretty quickly within a day or two.”

Garcia: “And so for me, I wanted to make sure that my constituents were well served and that they could see, feel, and hear their government at work, putting their hard-earned tax dollars, to good productive daily work. And so the combination of smart people, dedicated, professionals, alongside good technology and technology that helps to bring systems and approaches together is the reason why I am so proud of the work that we’ve been able to accomplish.”

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