Summary
PPDO has partnered with the Center for Integrated Spatial Research (CISR) to convert facility floorplans into a web-based GIS system designed for managing interior space. Sometimes called an Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS), space can be visualized geographically and relative to other campus features to give planners a more comprehensive look at campus infrastructure.
PPDO has always maintained an archive of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) drawings representing our facilities and floorplans. There are many SaaS offerings for Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS), but one in particular offers the chance to integrate with spatially-enabled operational data. This is an exciting development as previous campus planning tools have been limited to individual facilities and floor plans. The project team consists of Parker Welch, and Information Systems Analyst from PPDO, and Barry Nickel, a faculty member based in Social Sciences. Together, they have built a pipeline to load CAD drawings from the floor plan library, and publish them as GIS-ready data for operational use. Connecting that with the space inventory tool allows a real-time spatial view of campus space usage.
The focus of this project was not just operations however. “We get a lot of requests from students and faculty to help them find a particular room in a facility. This new approach will allow us to provide room-level routing to all campus users, regardless of affiliation, something we’re all very excited for,” said Welch.
Immediate plans for this project are to continue pushing CAD drawings through the pipeline until we have every space in every facility mapped and attributed. We are targeting Fall 2026 to integrate this space-level data with the Interactive Campus Map, so stay tuned!