Johannesburg Water
Water Utilities
Mobile Work Management Supports Johannesburg Water’s Maintenance Operations
Johannesburg Water is responsible for the supply of potable water and the management of wastewater services for the City of Johannesburg, serving a population of over 4.5 million residents.
Challenge
Managing water and wastewater services across a large metropolitan area requires close coordination between customer engagement channels, field teams, maintenance operations, materials, and network information.
Johannesburg Water wanted to further digitise its outage management, maintenance, and related field service operations by moving away from paper-based job cards and providing operational teams with more immediate access to field information.
Greater connectivity between field and office teams was also important to supporting work allocation, materials management, outage response, and communication with residents during service disruptions.
Objectives
Johannesburg Water was looking for a solution that could replace paper-based job cards with a real-time mobile workforce environment and provide greater visibility of field activities through GPS/GIS integration and live digital work updates.
The organisation also wanted to strengthen materials management through integrated inventory tracking, provide residents with timely information during outages, and give field teams access to relevant network information while attending to work.
Capturing structured operational data at source would further support post-incident reviews, reporting, maintenance planning, and longer-term infrastructure management.
Solution
Johannesburg Water implemented Forcelink to digitise field operations and improve coordination between field and office teams.
Field technicians receive work orders directly on mobile devices, while GPS shift histories and digital time stamps provide a record of field activity. Updates, progress information, and job completions can be captured directly from the field and made available to the back office in real time. Forcelink also integrates with multiple customer engagement channels, including the contact centre call-logging system, fault-reporting email address, Forcelink customer portal, and My Smart City mobile app. Automated responses acknowledge logged faults, while SMS and email notifications can provide residents with relevant updates relating to outages and restoration progress.
Work can be routed and allocated to appropriate field teams according to factors such as service type, job location, required skills, and service commitment standards. Using Forcelink Mobile, technicians can attend to assigned work, record adherence to specified processes and protocols, capture job-related information, and provide supporting evidence of work completed
Benefits
Forcelink provides Johannesburg Water with a digital connection between field and office operations, enabling jobs to be issued electronically and field updates to be shared with operational teams in real time. Dispatchers and supervisors gain greater visibility of field resources and job progress, with GPS and live status updates supporting work allocation and reassignment. Integrated inventory processes track materials from reservation and issue through to job completion, providing greater visibility of material usage and stock requirements.
Integrated customer engagement channels, including My Smart City, enable residents to receive acknowledgements and SMS or email updates on faults, outages, and restoration progress. Structured information captured at source—including work durations, materials, locations, and cause codes—supports maintenance planning, budgeting, reporting, and infrastructure decisions. Configured inspection lists, automated escalations, and centralised reporting further connect contact centre, back-office, and field operations, strengthening overall service delivery visibility.
Connected field operations
1.
Issue jobs electronically and receive real-time field updates, GPS data, and job status information for greater operational visibility.
Smarter resource & stock management
2.
Coordinate field teams, reassign work, and track materials from reservation through to job completion.
Improved customer communication
3.
Use integrated channels such as My Smart City to provide residents with fault acknowledgements and outage or restoration updates.
Data-driven service delivery
4.
Capture structured work, inspection, location, material, and cause data to support reporting, maintenance planning, budgeting, and infrastructure decisions.
