The Village of Huntley is a growing community on the northwest periphery of Chicago’s suburbs. After substantial population growth over the last few decades, the Village management needed to develop and implement some creative tactics to ensure the quality of life for the residents in the retirement community.

With a knack for change and the ability to adapt and continue their forward-thinking mindset, the Village creatively partnered with consultants and incorporated new technology to support their CIP projects, communication and operations management. Among those partnerships was Ruekert & Mielke, Inc. (R/M), whom the Village worked with for many years building their GIS system. Part of this project included a phased transition from a standard GIS system into VUEWorks with the assistance of Data Transfer Solutions (DTS). DTS has been a partner and supporter of R/M technology services since 2009. Staff attributes the success of the VUEWorks implementation to the trifecta relationship between DTS, R/M and the Village.

Many factors impact the success of software implementation. One major component often overlooked is getting “buy-in” from the staff at all levels. In the Village’s case, R/M tributes the success of this project to the public works director and assistant director’s ability to prioritize their staff’s needs by involving them in the preliminary planning processes during the VUEWorks implementation. Having staff attend workshops together to talk through their duties, workflows and naming conventions, established the buy-in the Village needed to make this a successful project. It also instilled trust between staff and management, staff and the consultant, and comradery among each another.

The configurability of VUEWorks software played a major role in the Village’s success, benefitting all parties involved. VUEWorks configurability allows the Village to easily replicate the existing naming conventions and workflows for each department, making the transition a less disruptive experience and more intuitive for staff. The ease of use when configuring the application made it easy for R/M to quickly set up and adjust the application’s structure when needed. Once the application was set up to capture all of the departments’ activities and implemented into staff operations, the public works managers worked with R/M to refine the application’s structure to report on the information they needed.

Fine-tuning the Village’s VUEWorks application is an ongoing process that involves developing new reports, detail forms and dashboards to better capture and display current and historic information for management’s use for analysis and informed decision making. VUEWorks presents many opportunities for the Village. This has led to so many initiatives across departments that they are working with R/M on a five-year technology plan to continue to phase out their goals at a pace manageable for their staff and budget. As R/M continues to assist Huntley down this road, they have witnessed the interest and ownership of the project grow within the Village.

“DTS has been a valuable behind-the-scenes asset. Their quick responsiveness with customer support, documents portal, informational webinars and training opportunities helped ensure a smooth transition into VUEWorks asset management software for our client.”

• Village of Huntley population 29,305
• R/M implemented GIS in 2012
• 2014 – 2017 integrating asset management processes into daily operations
• 2018 R/M started VUEWorks implementation workshops and site development
• 2019 Village’s site went live for three of their five departments
• 2020 R/M continues to support Village site configurations and workflow consulting