Setting out weed control tender made easier with geospatial data analysis

Basildon Council runs a weed control programme throughout the borough. The council owns many, small parcels of land that are distributed right across the borough. To set out a tender for grounds maintenance, it first had to ascertain land ownership and then separate these areas by type of surface. Having a member of council staff measuring each individual block and working it out was going to be too time consuming.

Basildon Council approached their GIS supplier, Cadcorp, as it had been using Cadcorp SIS for many years. For this project, th­­e council selected the Cadcorp Data Analysis and Modelling Service. Cadcorp was able to create a definitive layer of land ownership, calculate the corresponding Ordnance Survey MasterMap Topography Layer^® land classifications and create a report including both a map and tabular output. This included detailed PDFs and spreadsheets with all the necessary information broken down.

Having the output in this report format makes tendering easier for Basildon Council. Long term it brings the benefit of a proactive weed control programme. The data analysis by Cadcorp is reusable and is already being used by its cleansing department for a similar project. As Basildon Council starts using it more, it will bring efficiencies to tendering and their general maintenance programming.

Stuart McDermott, Street Scene Maintenance Officer at Basildon Borough Council commented: “I was very happy with the outcome. The engagement with Cadcorp was good and I liked that everything was checked and proofed as we went along."

Cadcorp offers a range of services to complement the provision of GIS and web mapping. For further information visit: http://cdcp.io/services