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As a Project Manager in our Middletown, CT office, Kristen LaBrie specializes in identifying and implementing GIS solutions for municipal and regional governments. We spoke with Kristen to learn more about her work:

Tell me a bit about what you do and the projects you work on.

I work primarily with municipalities to figure out what they need and implement GIS solutions. We usually work with assessors to do update their GIS parcels annually. We’ll work with municipal engineering and DPW staff on creating GIS for stormwater, sanitary sewers, and other infrastructure. We also work with planners on zoning, wetlands, and open space. Municipal GIS data development is what I spend a good bit of my time on.

How does a municipality start to build its GIS capabilities?

The majority of what I do for municipalities are annual parcel updates, which are the cornerstone GIS need for most towns. Once the parcels have been created and the updated on a regular schedule, most municipalities will then say “Okay, what else would be valuable in GIS?” Then, we’ll talk to DPWs, engineers, and planners for data to develop, or ways to access and look at their data.

You’ve worked with a ton of municipalities in Connecticut on implementing GIS. Are there any lessons learned from those projects?

There’s sort of a step-by-step logical progression that we see towns and cities go through. The parcels are the basis for everything else that comes after it, so the data must be reliable. Once they have a solid parcel base, then they can build other layers – like working with fire departments and police departments to get accurate addressing and hydrant locations or working with planning for zoning and open space layers. Every client has unique workflows and processes and needs, so we want to look at the value or ROI for developing these other layers.