Ask Slashdot: Software To Visualize, Manage Homeowner's Association Projects?

New submitter jishak writes: I am a long time Slashdot reader who has been serving on an homeowner association (HOA) board for 7 years. Much of the job requires managing projects that happen around the community. For example, landscaping, plumbing, building maintenance, etc. Pretty much all the vendors work with paper or a management company scans the paper, giving us a digital version. I am looking for suggestions on tools to visualize and manage projects using maps/geolocation software to see where jobs are happening and track work, if that makes sense. I did a rudimentary search but didn't really find anything other than a couple of companies who make map software which is good for placing static items like a building on a map but not for ongoing work. There are tools like Visio or Autodesk, which are expensive and good for a single building, but they don't seem so practical for an entire community of 80 units with very little funds (I am a volunteer board member). The other software packages I have seen are more like general project management or CRM tools but they are of no use to track where trees are planted, which units have had termite inspections, etc.

I am looking for tools where I could see a map and add custom layers for different projects that can be enabled/disabled or show historical changes. If it is web based and can be shared for use among other board members, property managers, and vendors, or viewable on a phone or tablet, that would be a plus. I am not sure how to proceed and a quick search on Slashdot didn't really turn anything up. I can't be the first person to encounter this type of problem. Readers of Slashdot what do you recommend? If I go down the road of having to roll my own solution, can you offer ideas on how to implement it? I am open to suggestions.

Comments

HOA's aren't all nice

[Bruce Perens]

Does your HOA restrict antennas? A lot do, and thus I've avoided them all of my life. Ham radio operators should be allowed to live where everyone else lives, and pursue their hobby freely. It's sort of like the HOA has some sort of anti-nerd discrimination. People also have the right to receive television over the air without being constrained to poor indoor antennas.

Re:HOA's aren't all nice

[Bruce Perens]

Radio Amateurs don't have the same legal protection. Yet. But given that television antennas are protected, discriminating by the sort of content carried is a legally problematical stance.

One thing to check into

[mistcat]

https://www.mapbox.com/
Not exactly proect management oriented, but could be an easy bolt on to Trello or your project management tool of choice

Re:Recommendation:

[Jeremi]

Speaking as an HOA board member who tries not to suck, I think there are several common motivations for someone to join an HOA board. From best to worst:

1. To help solve problems and keep your building/neighborhood from turning into a dysfunctional shithole.
2. To attend meetings and socialize, and feel at least somewhat important/relevant to your community.
3. To revel in the awesome power of forcing your neighbors to do follow your command, and hassling them if they don't obey.

If you drive out the type-1 people, or if you are a type-1 person and don't join your HOA board or attend HOA meetings (because HOA's suck!) then you leave the HOA's voting positions open for the other types of people to fill. At best you'll get a bunch of 2's and the HOA will become a social club (possibly entertaining but mostly useless); at worst, enough 3's will show up to make everyone's life miserable.

PostGIS

[Billy the Mountain]

So you will probably want a database and you also mentioned requirements suited to a GIS. I would set up PostGIS. PostGIS is Postgresql with an add-on for assisting in the storage of geographic elements. And it's all open source! GIS used to be a messy prospect with lots of files in different formats in lots of directories. Now that PostGIS has arrived, you can store all of your data in the database. This is nice because you have the power of a relational database to manage what you can view. You can do queries that result in Maps. Others have mentioned QGIS. QGIS plays nicely with PostGIS. You can start with the database, add in QGIS and later if you need to create a website you can add on open source Leaflet which lets you create interactive maps using JavaScript.

Re:Statistics

[Sarten-X]

For a while, I worked in a financial management office. For what you describe, the best tool I've ever seen was a plain spreadsheet in capable hands.

Every expense gets broken down, and per-unit costs (like price per gallon of water) are filled out in one section. Every adjustable parameter (like number of toilets) goes in another section, and all of the system rules (like number of gallons/minute wasted) go in a third section. Finally, all of the results go in the last section, accompanied by all of the charts and projections.

When presenting, the first two sections are discussed first, and the client (or HOA board) gets to put in whatever numbers they think are realistic. Then you switch to the end, and they see the computed cost of everything, exactly as their own numbers work out. That shows in plain view how their money is spent, confronting their assumptions. After that, you can go back and show hypothetical fixes (like lowering the number of leaky toilets), and show the changes in outcome. It tends to be very convincing to see almost all of their own numbers driving the output.