Product Case Study: Technical Assurance

Client

Technical Assurance is a unique firm based in the Midwest with clients throughout the United States. It is made up of a variety of professionals and provides building and facility analysis services ranging from forensic evaluation of failures to the development of multi-year comprehensive capital maintenance and replacement programs.

The Challenge

We had a question: "How do we get the data we record in the field to be relational and meaningful so other things can be done with it?"

Our old manual process did not allow us to answer questions easily with the data we collected. Field service technicians went out to each building of an account and took notes on legal pads or drawings. Since clients are frequently multi-facility and multi-location, this generated a huge amount of virtually unmanageable information.

If the client didn’t have drawings of their buildings, pictures were taken. All of this handwritten and loose material was brought back to the main office and reviewed with a consultant. Then the technician would spend one to two weeks writing up a Word document describing what each building was made of, what the conditions were, what the test results were, and inserting photos with comments. This could happen several weeks or even months after looking at an individual building.

To make things even more complicated, after all the buildings were assigned, everyone involved would meet again to go through every report and decide the work priorities and the budget for each building. The technician would have recorded the work items during the onsite visits, but the work item costing was in a spreadsheet-once again, effort was being duplicated. It seemed that every item of data was being recorded more than once-by hand in the field and then in a document back in the office-but none of the data could be accessed for reporting, decision making, or consolidation.

The Solution

Field service technicians now go out to sites with Tablet PCs. They have an InfoPath form which is pre-populated with site data, including preparedness information like client protocol. Since some clients have check-in and check-out procedures, our technicians never enter a site unaware. In fact, the form includes an area for affirming protocol was followed.

The form has validation to prevent saving of the data unless it is complete. We’ve also required that the form be completed (with the exception of photograph insertion) prior to leaving the inspection site. While this increases up-front inspection time, it also increases the accuracy of the reporting, because it is handled immediately and on-site rather than weeks or months after the fact.

Once the form is filled out, a Work Item Cost Breakdown view gives us the detailed information we need for costing, and a print view provides us a version that we can send to or leave with the client. We had already tracked appropriate unit cost data for work items, but now we can apply it according to the location of the technician.

We had an internally developed algorithm that we use to rate buildings from a Façade standpoint; with our new forms we are able to implement it universally and unilaterally.

With our data now accurate, timely, and stored in an accessible manner, we can use it for the type of decision making for which it was originally collected. SQL reports aggregate and highlight issues, and we are able to meet less and accomplish much, much more.

Client Feedback

With our new process, we no longer have to sit in committee meetings to sort through data.

Because all quantities are reported, data can be pulled automatically. We’ve be able to cut design services down dramatically, which pleases our clients.

Another huge gain is that the data is more accurate with our new process. In lieu of senior staff working on something in the office, disconnected from the location, the ratings are based on actual field recordings. We feel the data captured is more objective, untainted by memory or time.

Screenshots

Figure 1. Form that technicians fill out contains all the information needed to generate work item cost breakdown, estimates and the building rating.

Figure 2. Since photos can now easily be stored with the other information about the building, they become part of the documented history of a project.

Figure 3. Work Item Cost Breakdowns are also stored with the other documentation. With all the information about the buildings condition in one place, client questions are easy to answer.

Figure 4. Clients are able to track progress and review documentation at personalized SharePoint sites.

Figure 5. SQL Reports use the collected data to provide us with the aggregation we need to make business decisions.