Custom Mobile Application
The Challenge
The City of Guelph’s Parks and Recreation Department was looking for a user-friendly web and mobile app to assign, track, and report park maintenance tasks. The department was previously using a time-consuming manual process to coordinate and record tasks completed by park maintenance crews. MERAK sat down with city staff to understand their current challenges, as well as what they were looking for in a potential solution. After taking their feedback, within 48 hours we provided them a prototype to explore.
Our Solution
The completed solution was intuitive and simple: accessible from an iPad stored in a city truck, the Parks and Recreation app now shows crew members the closest park location that requires cutting. A crew can then record whether the park was cut or not (occupied or wet). Administrative staff can also assign crews to specific park locations; view reports on work conducted; and display patterns for specific parks.
As Guelph is a solid proponent of transparency with its citizens as well as open data, it was also important to build in functionality that shares data with CKAN.
Park maintenance staff have since reduced their paperwork by 45 minutes a day and citizens can now see when their parks were last cut.
Last Updated: June 25, 2025