Washington College Interactive Digital Map Project Proposal

The goals & objectives of this interactive digital map are simple: enhance the experience of potential new students and their parents/guardians.

College is a new and exciting steppingstone in a persons life. One can be filled with enthusiasm and anxiety as they visit and tour a multitude of different colleges to find the right one.

When visiting Washington College, we can provide these individuals and their families an interactive digital map to tour the campus and enrich them in Washington College history and culture.

In essence, this also showcases Washington College ingenuity as it demonstrates an environmentally friendly, student created and maintained piece of software that can be adapted to suit a multitude of uses such as:

• Risk Management
• Weather Warning System
• Closures & Maintenance Tracker
• Emergency Planning

The beauty of utilizing ArcGIS to create this interactive map is the potential and adaptability to alter the map to suit not just the college, but anyone that has to utilize or operate on the Washington College campus. With this in mind, current and potential stakeholders include:

Current:

• Washington College Administration & Faculty
• Washington College Student body & GIS Students
• Potential Students & Parents/Guardians
• Center for Environment & Society
• Public Safety & Emergency Management Offices

Potential:

• Town of Chestertown
• Kent County/State of Maryland
• Construction Contractors

I wholly believe that the involvement of project stakeholders is critical on delivering a quality product that everyone is satisfied with. The plan is to involve project stakeholders in every step of the creative process with open discussion and implementation feedback. This will be explained further in the project schedule.

The data required to complete the base project is quite simple:

• Campus Building Information (accessible hours, contact info, building purpose, etc.)
• Points of Interest
• Historical Information
• Blue Phone Locations
• Access to Microsoft Office
• Access to Esri's ArcGIS software
• SharePoint or OneDrive

As stated previously, the objective of the project is to provide a simple, concise, and easy-to-use interactive digital map for prospecting students and their families to utilize while touring the college.

At the same time, adaptability and modularization is important to the project team. Therefore, we'd also like to make the map configurable so it can be easily utilized for a multitude of purposes. To accomplish this, our current deliverables are:

• A complete, fully interactive digital campus map
• Individual configurable data layers for the map
• Raw data collected for each layer

To keep the team on track and to give stakeholders a rough estimate of completion, the drafted schedule for the project is as follows:

June 1, 2021 - June 8, 2021 ----- Gather necessary data to complete project

June 8, 2021 - June 9, 2021 ----- Divide layer distribution among team

June 9, 2021 - June 16, 2021 ----- Work on individual layers begins

June 17, 2021 - June 23, 2021 ----- Showcase layer progress and rough project implementation to stakeholders; receive constructive feedback and design requests

June 24, 2021 - July 8, 2021 ----- Implement changes and deliver final product to stakeholders

Estimated Completion Time: 1.5 - 2 Months**

**Stakeholder involvement is crucial to the final design of the deliverable product. The schedule above is subject to change and potential roadblocks and issues are factored into the estimated completion time of the project.

Budget for this project is taken under consideration as if we were professional GIS analysts. With that being said, the budget for this project is as follows:

• Three GIS Analysts @ $25 hour/37.5 hours a week ----- $12,189/month
• Per Diem for three GIS Analysts (if travel required) ----- $4,500/month
• Software requirements ----- $500
• Equipment (if required) ----- $15,000

Estimated Project Budget Total: $55,000**

**Again, this is under the assumption that professional GIS Analysts would be utilized. This is also a rough budget and is completely subject to change.

Every project faces potential risks that could hinder progress. In the case of this project, there are a few risks to consider, such as the following:

• Team member sickness/illness
• Outdated or nonexistent data
• Software bugs/glitches
• Equipment malfunctions

The risk responses for these risks vary.

For team member sickness or illness, we plan to have a few extra team members on standby in cases of emergencies that could potentially work remotely.

For outdated or nonexistent data, it could potentially push us above our planned project completion time (though I did factor potential risks into the time). We’d consult the stakeholders on whether they feel time should be invested to update existing data or gather new data to continue the project.

Software malfunctions and bugs, unfortunately, are a problem that is never guaranteed, though it is something that must be planned for. This is another risk where we would consult stakeholders to assess the value of troubleshooting and the time it would take to troubleshoot the issues.

When it comes to quality management and project monitoring and reporting, I have decided to enroll these sections into one.

The reason being is that I wholly believe that to provide an acceptable quality management plan, we must establish and efficient feedback and communication loop between the team and the stake holders.

The stakeholders control the final deliverable product and their involvement in each step of the projects lifecycle is critical to ensure that the final deliverable meets their standards.

The goal is to make a project that meets the needs of the stakeholders and thus communication and feedback loops are clear necessities to achieve this goal. When it comes to project longevity and information reporting post-publication, it is entirely up to the stakeholders. I would recommend the project be placed in the hands of the Center of Environment & Society and assigned to a student GIS Analyst for occasional updates and quality of life improvements.

The basis of this project is to provide new students with an easy to use, environmentally friendly digital interactive map so that they can navigate and immerse themselves in the Washington College culture and history.

College is an important steppingstone in a lot of young adults lives and taking a little slice of fear out can make all the difference.

It’s a project that also provides a multitude of uses to college administration down the line. It presents itself as an open-ended tool that can be altered and adapted to suit a multitude of applications and it’s a project that could only be possible with the power of GIS.