27 May 2005, Aylesbury - ESRI (UK) Consultancy group has recently completed its latest national OS MasterMap Bulk Load for Microsoft SQLServer for the Office of Government Commerce’s e-PIMS project (electronic Property Information Mapping Service). This most recent load ensures that the latest national Ordnance Survey mapping is available across the Government Secure Intranet.

 e-PIMs is a cross-government application of all government’s civil property. Used on a day to day basis, it displays the precise location and outline of a department’s properties, holdings and occupations on computerised maps and enables efficient management of property across the government estate, making it easy to align vacancies with needs.

 ESRI (UK)’s bulk load service provides a number of other benefits:

- OS MasterMap is delivered in database ready formats, removing the need to convert from the GML delivery format and greatly reducing load times

- Multiple database vendors are supported: IBM DB2, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle

- Periodic updates are available which are designed for those behind with applying Change only Updates

- Improved data quality – database and geometry validation are carried out as part of the load process removing the possibility of data errors causing applications to fail.

 “OGC’s MasterMap installation was in need of a complete data refresh and we also wanted to upgrade the underlying ESRI technology” explains Chris Statham, e-PIMS Project Sponsor at OGC. “Due to the expanding use of e-PIMS, a decision was also taken to purchase a new, more powerful map data server. The most cost effective and timely solution to handle these simultaneous requirements was to bring in ESRI (UK) to commission the new servers with the latest software and perform a data refresh of the latest OS MasterMap data. This was achieved quickly and with the minimum fuss at a time when OGC was very busy.”

 Customers of ESRI (UK)’s Bulk Load Service include DEFRA, Land Registry, Metropolitan Police, ODPM, Ordnance Survey and the Planning Inspectorate.

About ESRI (UK)

ESRI (UK) delivers enterprise geographic information solutions to organisations in both public and private sectors in the UK. Founded 25 years ago, and with over 3000 customers, it is one of the largest and most experienced Geographic Information Systems (GIS) companies, combining market leading products, UK specific services, applications and data, to local authorities, central government, utilities and telecoms, defence and business markets. Examples of ESRI (UK)’s customers include Channel 4 Time Team, The Environment Agency, Leeds City Council, Metropolitan Police Service, Norwich Union, Transco and Westminster City Council. ESRI (UK) is the sole distributor of ESRI Inc.’s world leading ArcGIS suite of products. For more information on ESRI (UK) please visit the website at www.esriuk.com

About the Office of Government Commerce

The Office of Government Commerce, an office of HM Treasury, exists to act as a catalyst in procurement issues and to work with central civil government and the wider public sector to achieve best value for money in their commercial activities. Against an initial target of £1 billion, OGC achieved Value for Money (VFM) gains of £1.6 billion up to March 2003.

 Between 2003/04 and 2005/06 its target is to deliver £3 billion VFM gains from more effective government procurement.  A new target was set for the Spending Review 2004 period to deliver a further £3 billion VFM saving by 2007/08 from public sector procurement through improvement in the success rate of programmes and projects and through other commercial initiatives.