Improving Productivity and Communications at Palmdale Water District
Tripepi Smith has delivered a Microsoft SharePoint Office 365 intranet project for longtime clientPalmdale Water District (PWD). Early in 2015, PWD expressed interest in an internal, employee-only website that facilitated collaboration and increased productivity within its existing Office 365 framework. Microsoft SharePoint provides a full array of tools oriented around internal collaboration and file sharing and was a natural fit for this project. PWD turned to Tripepi Smith to assist on the project based on their prior experience working with Tripepi Smith on the District’s public-facing website that Tripepi Smith rebuilt in 2014.
The project began in earnest in late August, 2015 when Ryder Smith and Jon Barilone conducted on-site interviews with the Palmdale Water District’s Communications Committee and other key staff members, who laid out their desired features and functionality for the new intranet website. After providing a Web Spec document, Tripepi Smith began building out the intranet, which included customized sections for each of Palmdale Water District’s 10 departments: Administration, Customer Care, Engineering, Facilities, Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Operations, Public Information Office & Water Conservation, and Water & Energy Resources. In late January, Jon provided multiple training sessions on-site to Palmdale Water District staff members who had been designated as their department’s “Content Managers.”
“The Tripepi Smith team did a great job coming in, listening to our staff, asking probing questions, and delivering a straightforward user experience,” said Palmdale Water District Information Technology Manager Jim Stanton. “We are already seeing productivity increases across the departments and are receiving a steady stream of feedback and feature requests. Our staff has a strong investment in using this platform on a day-to-day basis and improving efficiency across the organization.”
Tripepi Smith continues to provide technical support, support feature requests, and develop content for the Palmdale Water District SharePoint intranet site, such as customizing department calendars and populating operational best practices for each department within the intranet’s ‘wiki.’
“It is the highest endorsement a business can ask for when you complete a project with a client and they ask you back to do more work. The team at PWD has really taken to using the intranet site and leveraging the suite of tools offered by Office 365,” said Ryder Todd Smith, president at Tripepi Smith. “Working with the staff at the District is fun, the team is solid, and they are interested in doing the right things.”
Tripepi Smith specializes in marketing, technology and public affairs consulting services. The firm’s clients include private companies, joint powers authorities, non-profits and city governments across the State of California, including several water districts such as El Toro Water District, Santa Margarita Water District and Rowland Water District. Tripepi Smith is a corporate sponsor of the Municipal Management Association of Southern California, theCalifornia City Management Foundation, the California Contract Cities Association, theAssociation of California Cities – Orange County and the Municipal Management Association of Northern California.
Since 1918, the Palmdale Water District has provided high quality water at a reasonable cost. PWD encompasses approximately 187 square miles of land in northeastern Los Angeles County, consisting of more than 30 non-contiguous areas scattered throughout the Antelope Valley with the District’s primary service area within the City of Palmdale’s planning area. The District produces an average of 6.83 billion gallons of clean, healthy water each year using more than 400 miles of pipe, 24 wells, 20 tanks, 2 reservoirs, and a state-of-the-art treatment plant.