Vallecitos Water District faced a common but pressing challenge: their legacy GIS system, built on Esri’s soon-to-be-retired Geometric Network model, couldn’t keep up with the demands of modern water utility operations. With Esri encouraging migration to its new Utility Network framework, Vallecitos needed to upgrade — but without disrupting essential daily workflows. They turned to Quartic to lead a seamless, zero-downtime migration that would bring faster performance, better tools, and a future-ready GIS backbone.
Executive Summary
Quartic guided Vallecitos Water District through a full migration from Esri’s Geometric Network to their Utility Network — without disrupting operations. This complex transition involved cleaning and reconfiguring decades-old data, writing custom scripts for data mapping, and deploying a parallel Utility Network instance that allowed staff to continue working uninterrupted. Post-migration, district staff benefit from faster rendering speeds, more customizable tracing, and powerful new visualization tools — all within a system that looks and feels familiar but performs at a much higher level.
The Challenge: A Legacy Network Holding Back Progress
Vallecitos Water District had built their GIS network years ago on Esri’s Geometric Network, a now-outdated model that only works on the soon-to-be-retired ArcMap software. With ArcGIS Pro as the new standard — and Geometric Network no longer supported — the district needed to migrate to Esri’s modern Utility Network to continue editing, tracing, and managing their water data.
The challenges included:
- A legacy network with outdated topology rules
- Inconsistent naming conventions and schema across years of accumulated data
- The need to retain familiar workflows and map styling for staff
- Avoiding service disruption during the migration
The Solution: Parallel Utility Network Migration with No Downtime
Quartic handled the full end-to-end migration:
Planning, data cleaning, configuration, testing, deployment, QA, and go-live.
Key solution highlights:
- Parallel Deployment: The Utility Network was deployed alongside the existing network so staff could continue working throughout the migration.
- Data Cleanup: Quartic combed through and corrected legacy errors in the original network to meet the strict rules of the Utility Network model.
- Custom Python Scripts: Used for data mapping and transformation, ensuring seamless alignment of legacy field names and values with the new schema.
- Minimal Disruption: On go-live day, Quartic simply redirected all maps and applications to the new Utility Network. Staff paused edits for only a few hours — the rest of the migration was invisible to users.
Esri Tools Used in this Project
- ArcGIS Pro
- ArcGIS Solutions
- ArcGIS Dashboards
- ArcGIS Python API
The Results: A Future-Ready GIS with Familiar Feel
With the Utility Network in place, Vallecitos Water District now benefits from:
- Faster rendering and tracing speeds for daily editing and analysis
- Higher flexibility and customization in network tracing
- New tools like simplified Utility Network Diagrams
- A seamless transition with no operational downtime
- Preserved visual consistency because maps and symbology remain familiar to users
Though largely invisible to the staff and public, this upgrade has aligned the Vallecitos Water District with industry-standard, fully supported software – while also streamlining operations for greater efficiency.
“Migrating to the Utility Network isn’t just about keeping up with Esri’s newer technology of feature-service based editing; it also provides faster performance, modern tools, and more flexible tracing, all in a system that feels familiar but performs at a whole new level.”
— Alexandre Bontemps, Senior GIS Analyst, Quartic
About Quartic
At Quartic, we understand the power of GIS — and are eager to share our expertise with agencies looking to maximize its value. We specialize in assisting local governments and utilities in simplifying their spatial systems with tailored, tested, and easy-to-maintain Esri-based solutions. Our services range from Parcel Fabric migrations to Utility Network implementations; all designed to reduce complexity and provide long-term value.
