New technology will give the Parks Department the tools it needs to flourish

MENLO PARK, Calif. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — February 10, 2011 — Skire, Inc. ( www.skire.com), the leading global provider of cloud-based solutions for managing capital projects, facilities and real estate, today announced that the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (Parks) has selected Skire Unifier as its capital project management system. Unifier will be replacing the existing DOS-based system to manage projects and improvements across more than 1,700 parks that Parks manages.

With an estimated capital budget of more than $500 million annually, Parks is continuously improving existing parks and building new recreation facilities. The DOS-based database that was previously being used to manage the breadth of the organization’s projects was difficult and incomplete, which led to the inability to adequately respond to the needs of Parks’ stakeholders: park users, Parks employees, City Hall and media. Leaders within Parks recognized the need for a more robust, searchable, user-friendly platform that supports the ever-expanding Parks portfolio.

“We get queries from our stakeholders about our projects every day—how many chess tables do we have, how many paths are being repaved, etc. Querying our DOS database was cumbersome and time consuming, often leading to slow responses and wasted staff time,” said Therese Braddick, deputy commissioner for capital projects, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. “The Skire system we are implementing will give us a functional, real-time and analytical database that will not only help us report out to our stakeholders, but will help us plan for the future.”

Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC program initiated in 2007 catapulted Parks’ budget and, as a result, the organization has been driven to improve productivity and visibility into its various assets. With Unifier, Parks will:

• Implement automated custom reporting: What is currently done manually will be automated to ensure the correct data is captured in necessary reports and delivered on time to the right people.
• Search broadly: When Parks has inbound queries, it will be able to search all of Unifier and documents tied to the system, ensuring a thorough and accurate search.
• Flexibility: The capital development process is long and involved; Unifier can configure to meet the exact needs of Parks’ capital process.
• Project control: With greater insight into projects and real-time information, Parks will have an accurate view of budget and schedule information, allowing officials to react immediately to data.

“Over the past years, we have established great working relationships with various departments across the city of New York, and we’re excited to add the Department of Parks and Recreation to that list,” said Trenton Brown, executive vice president, Skire. “The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation offers such important and exceptional services to the city and, by implementing our solution, we hope that it is able to continue to grow and provide the city with beautiful parks.”

Skire Unifier is the capital project management system for several departments across the city of New York, including the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (the East Side Access Project) and the New York City Department of Design and Construction.

About Skire

Skire is the global industry leader in providing cloud-based solutions for managing capital projects, facilities and real estate. Skire’s Unifier system has helped manage over $300 billion in capital projects and over three billion square feet of facilities and real estate. From Global Fortune 1000 companies, including five of the Fortune 10, to universities, local municipalities and small businesses, organizations of all sizes utilize our best-in-class system to improve operations, reduce costs and enhance service delivery. Skire was recognized by Inc. Magazine in 2010 as one of America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies and is headquartered in the Silicon Valley. For more information, visit http://www.skire.com.

Unifier is a trademark of Skire, Inc. All other products and services mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective companies.

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