Public works & utilities · Executive summary
Return on Location
Where geospatial investment actually pays back — and how to prove it
For Public Works Directors, Utility Superintendents, City and County Engineers, Asset Managers, GIS Leaders and Finance Directors.
Asset Mapping Evidence Standard
- Sources verified
- Claims checked
- Evidence critically assessed
- Conclusions evidence-rated
Executive summary
Public works departments and utilities manage some of the largest investments a local government will ever make: roads, water systems, wastewater networks, stormwater infrastructure, bridges, facilities and fleets. Almost every one of those assets has a location.
That connection changes specific, measurable decisions — reducing repeat trips to the same asset, consolidating field work into single deployments, replacing manual inventories with reusable digital records, and exposing the cumulative cost of repairing the same asset again and again. This report sets out where geospatial investment actually pays back, and how to prove it with numbers a finance director will accept.
Contents
- 01Executive Summary
- 02Five Findings
- 03How to Read the Evidence
- 04Reduce the cost of knowing what you own
- 05Reduce the truck roll
- 06Move from reactive to planned maintenance
- 07Know when to stop repairing
- 08Replace the right asset at the right time
- 09Turn maintenance data into capital evidence
- 10The utility evidence comes with a warning
- 11The ROI that never gets verified
- 12A better way to calculate Return on Location
- 13The Return on Location scorecard
- 14What should Public Works measure?
- 15From map to investment system
- 16Take this to Finance
- 17Where the evidence is strongest — and where it is thin
- 18What the evidence does not support
- 19A 12-month Return on Location program
- 20Evidence snapshot
- 21The return is not on the map
- 22Evidence Framework
- 23Bibliography