Building a Modern GIS Foundation: Forest Grove’s Multi‑Year Migration Journey
Migrations have been the name of the game for the City of Forest Grove, Oregon over the past couple of years. What began as a strategic evaluation of the City’s GIS capabilities has evolved into a broad, multi‑phase modernization effort—one that has reshaped how data is managed, accessed, and applied across departments.
From Assessment to Action
In late 2024, our Geo Strategy Team completed a city‑wide GIS Program Maturity Assessment. That assessment uncovered a familiar set of challenges: performance limitations, resiliency concerns, and ongoing support gaps tied to the City’s legacy ArcGIS Enterprise deployment.
With the findings in hand, the City made a decisive move—they opted to undertake a full replatforming effort to stabilize, modernize, and future‑proof their GIS program.
Replatforming to a Cloud‑Based ArcGIS Enterprise
Our Cloud Managed GIS Team worked closely with key City stakeholders to design a modern, cloud‑forward architecture. The result was a highly resilient, AWS‑based ArcGIS Enterprise environment that offers the performance and scalability the City needed to support present-day operations and future growth.
From there, we guided Forest Grove through a comprehensive, QA‑validated migration into the new environment. After structured onboarding, targeted training, and ongoing mentoring, staff began using the platform with increasing confidence.
Next Step: Migrating Electric Utility Data to the Utility Network
With the new platform in place, attention turned to the City’s electric utility data. The City’s Light and Power group partnered with us on a test-driven, iterative migration into Esri’s Utility Network (UN) model.
Over several months, our team led the City through sequential migration cycles—refining datasets, validating topologies, and ensuring the model accurately represented their real-world network. The result: a fully migrated, UN-based electrical dataset that is now live and in production within the cloud environment.
The Apps & Integrations team then jumped in, collaborating with the Light and Power field and office crews to build a suite of targeted apps. These tools now support inspection workflows, field data collection, and efficient data management—bridging the gap between field operations and the modernized GIS backend.
On to “Wet Utilities”—Stormwater, Sewer, and Water
After completing the electric data migration last summer, the work continued. We’re now partnering with the City to migrate their stormwater, sewer, and water systems to the Utility Network.
As part of this effort, we're also developing purpose-built tools and resources to help the Public Works team access, update, and manage these datasets with greater efficiency and accuracy. The transition to the UN foundation is paving the way for improved workflows, stronger data governance, and better long-term asset management across the City’s wet utilities.
A Partnership That Continues to Grow
One of the most rewarding parts of this ongoing engagement has been watching the evolution within the City itself. Enthusiasm is growing. Teams are gaining confidence. Staff across departments are discovering new capabilities and new ways to combine creative problem‑solving with modern GIS solutions.
It’s clear that Forest Grove is on a path to becoming a model municipality when it comes to broad, innovative use of GIS across disciplines.
We’re proud to be their partner on this journey—and excited for what comes next.