Replication gives Florida firm lasting security during hurricane season

Hurricane Milton and, just before it, Hurricane Helene captured the world’s attention as Florida communities faced and then dealt with the massive destruction these natural events caused. Within these communities, businesses of all sizes are being disrupted—but for one Florida civil engineering company, implementing a replication system and standardized information management helped them weather hurricane season.

Bill Daly, Director of Information Technology and Todd Nochomson, CAD Manager at Chen Moore Associates spoke with diginomics on Tuesday, October 8, 2024, the day before Hurricane Milton hit Florida. The storm, fortunately, was less destructive than had been feared; however, 16 people were killed by the storm as of this writing, and three million people in Florida were still without power. Hurricane Milton hit Florida two weeks after Hurricane Helene hit northwest Florida and Georgia, killing 230 people. As the storm approached business leaders revealed:

We set up an office in Tampa last week, we’ll see if it’s there tomorrow.

Fortunately, Tampa was bracing itself for the worst of the storms, even though it hit Florida 112 kilometers to the south. Hurricanes are part of Florida’s natural environment, but their ferocity, and therefore impact, is increasing:

With Hurricane Milton, it is very possible that it will affect our offices in Orlando and Jacksonville. It may lose its power.

We can cut our power for between three and 15 days at a time.

Jacksonville is four hours north of Daly, which gives those of us who don’t live in the region an idea of ​​the magnitude of a hurricane. Nochomson adds:

There is no doubt that there are more hurricanes and they are stronger.

But Mother Nature doesn’t always step in, as Daly says:

We’ve had problems before when someone crashed into a utility pole and knocked out power to one of our offices. Ironically, this was the office that provides electrical engineering services.

Chen Moore & Associates is a civil engineering provider specializing in water resources, landscape architecture, electrical and transportation engineering, and planning and irrigation. Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, the business, which was founded in 1986, also has offices in Miami, West Palm Beach, Orlando, Jacksonville, Jupiter, Sarasota, Gainesville, Tampa and Atlanta. Daly explains that municipal authorities, energy companies, retail and office park developments are common customers.

We work on all types of infrastructure design projects in the public and private sectors. Many of the employees are engineers and major users of computer-aided design (CAD) applications such as Autodesk Autocad Civil 3D, as well as Bentley MicroStation, an infrastructure design tool, and Open Roads Designer.

These technologies are the responsibility of Nochomson, who works closely with Daly.

Replicate to be safe and modern

Replication, using distributed file system technology from Westlake-headquartered Peer, became vital to Chen Moore’s business as it grew, cross-sold its various services to clients and dealt with hurricanes. Daly says:

When I joined (in 2013), we had three offices, now we have eight. As we grew and opened more offices, we started getting more projects where we had different people from different offices working on the same project, so we needed a way for people to work with shared files.

To achieve better version control and increased collaboration, Chen Moore needed a standardized method of managing information across the business, says Daly:

Before I arrived, each office grew organically and each had different ways of doing things because they specialized in different areas, so the file structures and unit naming were different.

A standardized way of working, supported by replication, enabled greater collaboration across the business. Nochomson adds:

Staff who can work from Miami and work with staff in other offices, sharing the same core files, all replicated in real-time. Replication is invaluable to our business processes.

Daly says of the scale of collaboration across the business:

We are currently replicating nearly 16 terabytes of data or 4.2 million files. We use Microsoft DFS (Distributed File System) links to set up a virtual folder structure so that a project can be replicated across all offices. This means we don’t need all the data in one office. Additionally, we have a cloud copy hosted in Azure that also runs Peer Systems technology and we treat it like another office because it has a full copy of all data.

When you look at the news footage of flooded streets and hurricane-torn homes, Daly’s strategy makes sense. Regardless of location, everyone in the Chen Moore business can access an up-to-date version of the projects the company is working on. He adds:

We have added virtual workstations that are also hosted in Azure.

They provide high-end computers to those who have limited connectivity. Nochomson says:

A huge benefit of replication is the ability to collaborate across disciplines, which is growing all the time.

This not only helps Chen Moore during hurricane season, but also has a recruiting and retention benefit for the business. Daly says:

We have a lot of hybrid work and we find that it helps us hire people in other states because there is a shortage of civil engineers. Many of our employees see remote and hybrid work as an employee benefit.

Nochomson agrees:

The benefits to work-life balance cannot be understated. We are in an industry where some skills are like unicorns. Now that we can cast our net wider and aren’t locked into regional hires, it’s allowed us to hire the right people regardless of geography. In many cases, the people we hire, the main reason they leave their job to join us is because they were asked to be in the office.

Chen Moore was already a user of replication technology, but without a standardized information management structure and a vendor that didn’t keep up with application support, Daly saw it was time to move to a new vendor, he explains:

The providers of the previous app had let it languish. If you move a file, the server will restart without warning.

His first step was to standardize the information structure:

We had everyone agree on a standard folder structure and then put everything into that structure. We standardized the file system because we wanted all files related to a project to be in one folder to make it easier to archive and to ensure that staff don’t have to look in different places. Then we looked at our options.

Along with CAD files, any material created in Microsoft Word or Excel related to a project is added to the same file. Peer replication technology was selected, and Daly’s team integrated the application within a month. Another benefit is that Chen Moore avoided the growing problem of having data stored in the cloud service from an application provider. Nochomson says:

We’ve worked hard to create a system where we consolidate our project data so that everything is in one central location for each project, because our preference is to keep our data together.

My appreciation

When faced with the power of nature, a simple approach to standardized information management and replication technology makes a business sustainable in a weather-related risk climate.