2 page Case Study - Posted 5/21/2007

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SafeSite Utility Field Services

Utility Inspection Service Doubles Productivity, Guarantees Accuracy, with Mobile Solution

There’s the traditional way to inspect utility poles, and there’s the better way. SafeSite Utility Field Services needed that better way to win a contract covering 80,000 poles for an electric utility. It found it—and won the contract—thanks to a mobile computing solution from Microsoft® Certified Partner Asurio Inspection Systems. Inspectors collect more than twice the data they otherwise could, while still operating twice as fast as before. 

Business Needs

Guy McIntosh III—president of a startup company called SafeSite—was familiar with the traditional way of inspecting utility poles. And he didn’t like it.

The companies that own utility poles, such as electric utilities, can lease access to the poles to other companies, such as cable television providers and telecommunications companies. That makes the poles a profit center for the utility that owns them. And that means the owner has an incentive to keep poles in peak condition and to know what third-party companies are accessing them.

But inspecting poles and recording the results manually was a time-consuming, expensive, and error-prone process. Inspectors could generally collect about 15 data points per pole before the process became too cumbersome to be feasible, although there was often more data that pole owners wanted.

Metadata such as global positioning system (GPS) coordinates and photographs—necessary to record damage or other conditions—were tough to collect and coordinate with manual records.  And accuracy was always an issue.

“If you’re inputting data on thousands of poles, a lot of things can happen,” says McIntosh. “Papers can disappear. Data can be recorded incorrectly or inputted into a system incorrectly. You have to guarantee the client a high accuracy level and, if you don’t meet it, you’re on the hook to re-do the inspection at your own cost. You can’t afford to be wrong.”

So, when McIntosh had the opportunity to bid on a massive, 80,000-pole contract for a electrical utility in Texas and New Mexico, he needed a better way to implement inspections. Without that better way, it seemed unlikely that he could win—let alone handle—the business.

Solution

McIntosh turned to Asurio Inspection Systems, a Microsoft® Certified Partner based in Loveland, Colorado. Its solution brings together both mobile computing and database technologies from Microsoft.

The technology gives us the confidence that we can implement very large jobs on time and on budget—and it gives our customers that confidence in us, too. Guy McIntosh III President, SafeSite Utility Field Services

The software allows the inspector to capture up to 100 data points about each pole, including location, pole type, materials, age, compliance issues, condition, and nearest address. Drop-down menus and touch screens facilitate capturing large amounts of information with minimal data entry. The software even reminds inspectors if they fail to record key data.

At the end of the day, the inspectors return to SafeSite and dock the mobile devices, which then send their data over the Internet to a SQL Server computer at Asurio, where the information is prepared for analysis and reporting by SQL Server technologies. The next morning, SafeSite managers can review the newly collected data through a Web-based reporting portal.

They download the data to laptops running Microsoft Streets and Maps software, to create maps showing each inspected pole and the data associated with that pole. Quality-control agents then take the laptops into the field and check a random sample, generally 10 percent, to confirm the inspectors’ observations. When inspectors are found to have entered faulty data, it’s corrected, ensuring the guaranteed level of accuracy.

The inspection data and the quality control check are then packaged as reports and forwarded to the customer. The detailed information, combined with photos of the poles and their GPS coordinates, allow the customer to make needed repairs, or to contact third-parties regarding their use of the poles.

Benefits

“Without the Asurio mobile solution, I couldn’t have bid on this job and I couldn’t have completed it accurately and cost-effectively,” says McIntosh.

Not only does the solution enable SafeSite inspectors to gather more than twice the data they could reasonably collect manually, it still enables them to complete the inspections twice as fast as they could before. “The entire economics of pole inspection changes because we can operate more quickly and at price points we couldn’t otherwise offer,” says McIntosh.

Accuracy is crucial both in its own right, and because an accurate inspection doesn’t have to be repeated at extra cost. McIntosh says the Asurio solution has a clear impact on accuracy.

“We have a level of quality control that we didn’t have before,” he says. “It’s so much faster and easier to enter data that our inspectors do so more accurately—even though they’re capturing more information.  We didn’t feel comfortable before offering the 97-to-99 percent accuracy guarantees that major customers wanted. Now, we do.”

SafeSite is also ensuring that the data it provides is more useful to its customers.

“We can slice and dice the information any way we want and so can our customers. That’s a benefit of using a database with a built-in reporting mechanism. We and our customers can even export data to Microsoft Office Excel® for additional analysis in a very familiar and comfortable environment.”

“Beyond the tangible, quantifiable benefits of greater productivity, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness, there’s an intangible benefit to this solution,” says McIntosh. “The technology gives us the confidence that we can implement very large jobs on time and on budget—and it gives our customers that confidence in us, too.”