Virtual tours of City of Lethbridge facilities offered through Infrastructure Services : My Lethbridge Now

Virtual tours of facilities are on-tap for the City of Lethbridge’s Infrastructure Services department, as part of a new education and outreach initiative. 

Project Lead Asheley Cowie says these immersive, 360-degree tours provide a unique opportunity for residents to explore the City’s key infrastructure spaces, including the Water Treatment Plant and Organics Processing Facility in a fun and educational way.

“We’re a fairly new team. We started last summer. One of the things we recognize is it’s not well known what the infrastructure services are because they’re not facilities a lot of people explore,” adds Cowie. “We want residents of all ages to see what we do in the city with our infrastructure services.” 

The team built some interactive tours, Cowie notes. “It’s not easy to go to all of these spaces, so we built interactive 360 tours that are also VR tours.” 

“It’s an opportunity to see seven different facilities we have tours of – where you can explore, you can see the facilities, you can see how things work and it’s an interactive opportunity to engage and get some education around our infrastructure services,” Cowie explains. 

A website is also being built for educational purposes, says Cowie. “We’re also using these, as part of a program – where we go out into schools, particularly around waste and environment, water and wastewater – but anything that works within the curriculum for K-12. We’re taking these as part of presentations we’re doing in schools.” 

Students will have an opportunity to explore these facilities without having to be there in-person. 

“VR is an exceptional way to have that experience. If you get maybe a little motion sick and that’s not so much your thing, the 360 tours have the same experience,” notes Cowie. 

Cowie believes it’s important for residents to understand how the City works. 

“Especially when we do have projects coming up and people maybe don’t understand the expense or the work that needs to go into these projects. It’s an opportunity to see the insides of those facilities. It builds a bit of transparency and a bit of trust around what we’re offering and who we are as a city and our infrastructure services.” 

Virtual tours will include an electrical substation and transit buses. 

All-in-all, Cowie says, the project took about four months to complete.  

“We’re not done yet. We’re looking at how we can continue and trying to get feedback from local teachers to see if there’s other ways we can support their curriculum with other facilities or other parts of our infrastructure work we could potentially bring to the classroom,” adds Cowie.