Your ability to act quickly on asset data is critical to the success of your projects. But if you’re still operating with an engineering document management system (EDMS) and geographic information system (GIS) that exist in silos, too much time is eaten up. On average, employees in the U.S. are spending 25% of their workweek looking for documents. At the same time, engineering is an asset-heavy space, with the average job or project creating hundreds or even thousands of documents that need to be kept accurate and organized so they are easily accessible at any time.
When your spatially enabled assets such as pipes, valves and transmission lines need engineering documentation and location context for decision-making, a lack of integration means lost time, duplicated efforts and an inability to move quickly or respond. Integrating EDMS and GIS bridges the gap, providing you with unified access to both technical content and spatial logic. This reduces search time, improves reliability and helps to transform your passive data into actionable insight.
In this article, we cover top challenges from disconnected EDMS and GIS data, the industry shift towards connected data ecosystems and why integration matters. Keep reading for more on how Accruent’s partnership with Esri brings these systems together for unified intelligence, including a real-world case study.
5 Challenges from Disconnected EDMS and GIS Data
Operating your EDMS and GIS in silos hampers insight into the lifecycle of your assets. This isolation can lead to a number of costly problems, pain points and challenges; here are five:
- Fragmented Data Access: You lose time and increase the risk of missed information when engineers, maintenance crews and asset managers have to toggle between document repositories and mapping systems.
- Inconsistent Asset Context: The “where and what” picture disappears when spatial location data,document histories and specifications aren’t unified. This undermines inspections, maintenance planning and capital renewal.
- Duplicate Work and Data Drift: Mismatched records, duplicate entries and “orphaned” documents occur when GIS and EDMS evolve independently because things like asset replacements or re-ratings might not propagate.
- Reduced Operational Agility: A siloed system will always slow response times. For example, your field crews may need to request documents, wait for exports and compare them with maps instead of having real-time access to integrated data.
- More Risk and Compliance Exposure: Disconnected systems often lead to gaps in data. Safety reviews and regulatory audits require accurate spatial asset inventories and up-to-date engineering drawings that you may be missing.
Related Read: Assessing Your Document Management Needs and Building a Holistic EDMS Approach
The Industry Shift Toward Connected Data Ecosystems
At this point you’ve realized that isolated systems, data silos and fragmented workflows don’t work, especially in an industry marked by operational complexity, tighter margins and high expectations. Companies at large are unwinding decades of point solutions and repositories in favor of connected environments.
What we’re seeing now is the formation of a mature strategy. One that treats data as a product, decouples applications from underlying information and makes interoperability the default. And you need to make the move from simply collecting asset data to actually building an architecture that allows all records to feed into a unified ecosystem.
The bottom line? To reduce friction and improve reliability, you need to be working from a single source of truth. Digital twins, reliability programs and advanced work packaging all depend on engineering, operational and spatial data being accurate, up to date and findable in one place without the need to switch between tools.
What matters now is having a digital thread across all asset lifecycles, so “what the asset is” and “where the asset is” don’t live in separate systems.
Why Integrating GIS and EDMS Matters
When you hear “a single source of truth” that doesn’t literally translate to one big database, but a governed and connected model that resolves the identity of assets, synchronizes changes and preserves the history of your documents. For example, your teams can trust that “pump 23” across maintenance, engineering and GIS is the same thing with traceable history. Here’s why that matters:
Faster and Better Decision Making
Integrating GIS with EDMS gives your teams more than faster access to documents; it gives them location-aware context that improves every decision. With Esri’s ArcGIS capabilities embedded in Accruent, engineers and field crews can see an asset on the map along with its drawings, manuals, redlines and history in a single view. This lets you quickly understand what surrounds an asset – nearby hazards, underground utilities, environmental constraints or changes over time – and instantly reference the right engineering documents as your teams assess an area.
Whether planning upgrades or responding to outages and leaks, crews can see what pipes, power lines or critical systems run through the space before they act, reducing risk and avoiding delays. The result is faster handoffs, fewer errors and more confident decisions in the moments when they matter most.
More Operational Reliability
How reliable your operation is hinges on using the right information at the right location. Integration ensures all updates and changes to as-built documentation propagate to the assets in space and vice versa, eliminating data drift. Your crews arrive with the correct specification and isolation plan for the asset actually in the ground, not the one last approved on paper.
Better Lifecycle Management
Your capital projects, turnarounds and end-of-life decisions require lineage: what was installed, where, by whom and under which revision. A connected EDMS and GIS maintain that provenance for you. This can lead to more accurate scoping, fewer surprises in the field and cleaner closeout packages that can serve as reliable inputs for operations.
Related Read: 5 Trends Shaping the Future of Document Intelligence
Accruent Heps You Make Faster, Informed Decisions Across the Built Environment
To empower organizations like yours, Accruent has partnered with Esri to connect geospatial data with asset, engineering and maintenance information. Bridging a long-standing gap between GIS and asset management systems, this single, location-aware view of critical infrastructure and facilities allows you to easily visualize where assets are, how they are performing and any actions needed to ensure up-time, safety and operational efficiency.
The integration of Accruent RedEye and Esri’s ArcGIS® delivers faster retrieval, greater reliability and reduced staff workload, helping you connect the dots between where assets are, how they perform and how to optimize them. This move towards a truly interconnected asset ecosystem eliminates data silos and brings heightened levels of safety, efficiency and insight.
Related Read: Five Multi-National Companies Thriving with Engineering Document Management Systems (EDMS)
Take the Next Step in Building Your Connected Data Environment
Bringing your EDMS and GIS together means every asset is understood in both technical and spatial context. This kind of environment helps you shorten decision cycles, reduce rework and strengthen reliability. It also lays groundwork for the future where predictive analytics, digital twins and AI-driven insights thrive.
Connecting your data now doesn’t just solve visibility and reliability challenges, it builds the foundation for smarter, more resilient and ongoing infrastructure management.
See Accruent RedEye and Esri’s ArcGIS in action – book a demo today.
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