Are you considering the transition to digital field inspections but apprehensive about the challenges that lie ahead? Don’t let uncertainties hold you back from embracing the future. Our comprehensive infographic dives into the world of digitizing field inspections, addressing common obstacles and offering actionable strategies to ensure a seamless transition for your team.
Watch a demonstration of Fulcrum’s integration with Esri’s ArcGIS Online!
Get the right data to the right people in the field
While we’re collecting more field data than ever, it’s still hard to get the right data to people who are out in the field. This free Directions Magazine webinar will talk about (and demonstrate, using the Fulcrum platform) some of the specific ways to integrate field data collection and SOPs with GIS to improve the situation on the ground, on our screens, and in our thinking.
The Challenges
Legacy paper-based processes that included time-consuming – and error-creating – transcription tasks
Workflow coordination and connectivity challenges are encountered when coordinating multiple crews, especially in areas with limited connectivity
Inability to easily incorporate national standards and client requirements into inspection processes
Preserving institutional knowledge
Key Outcomes
Fulcrum provides a simple, mobile interface that replaces paper forms, streamlining data collection and reducing errors
Fulcrum’s geospatial integration mapping and offline data collection capabilities allows for smoother workflow coordination, ensuring that inspection crews can work efficiently without being hindered by connectivity issues or location discrepancies
Fulcrum’s customization features enable the rapid creation and deployment of inspection applications, utilizing standardized forms as a starting point to provide guidance and minimize setup time
Fulcrum serves as a repository for critical data, facilitating knowledge transfer and ensuring operational continuity
Background
Brown and Caldwell is 100% employee owned, with 50 offices and over 2,100 professionals across North America and the Pacific. Senior Principal Engineer Sean Kilpatrick has been with Brown and Caldwell for over 25 years and was one of the early champions of adopting a SaaS field data collection and process management solution.
Mobile users can now view safety sheets, SOPs, and other critical documents as attachments directly within their Fulcrum apps.
With Fulcrum’s reference file attachments feature, mobile users can access digital versions of the documents they need to assure safety, quality, and compliance in the field directly from the app they are already using to complete their field tasks.
Download this substation inspection checklist to ensure structural and functional integrity of electrical substations.
Regular substation inspections help electric utilities maintain and repair their facilities to keep costs down and power flowing to their customers.
Fulcrum sets your program up for success with intuitive new features.
Fulcrum sets your program up for success with intuitive new features that provide you and your field inspectors with the right information at the right time.
Field operations managers face daily challenges, from ensuring compliance to tracking resources and managing team performance. However, with the right strategies, location-based field data can help streamline workflows, reduce inefficiencies, and drive smarter decision-making. This resource highlights actionable steps to modernize your processes, ensuring every project runs smoothly and efficiently.
The oil and gas industry faces complex safety and compliance demands. From harsh environments to strict regulatory standards, inspections are critical to maintaining safe, efficient operations. Identifying the right oil and gas inspections tools can transform how your teams meet these demands while reducing risks and costs.
Enhance your construction field inspections with practical, data-driven solutions. This datasheet provides actionable insights to boost efficiency, safety, and accountability. Download it to explore ways to improve your inspection workflows and ensure high standards across all projects.
Fulcrum you can develop custom field inspection management software that will help you keep up with your people and assets in the field.
Even when your team does most of its work outside an office – in remote areas, without readily-available landmarks, out of the reach of mobile networks – you’ve got to keep track of your people and assets and ensure their tasks get done well and quickly. The question is, how?
Lost equipment is lost money. Without a reliable digital asset management strategy, your organization risks wasting time, productivity, and profits on tracking down misplaced tools and machinery. Outdated systems like spreadsheets or rigid software fail to provide the accurate, real-time information you need to keep operations running smoothly.
Discover how the Fulcrum platform can elevate the efficiency of state and local governments, ensuring higher productivity, enhanced safety, and the elimination of rework and backlogs. Fulcrum has struck the perfect balance between formality and user-friendliness, now facilitating thorough inspections and data management with unparalleled precision.
Whether critical installations or safety inspections, field teams perform a wide range of essential functions for many companies. By the nature of their work, however, field teams risk being isolated from not just the main office, but from the very processes which produce quality work. When field teams fall behind a quality curve, potential rework and unchecked safety hazards can threaten both bottom-lines and business reputations. And if they’re isolated, field teams may not adopt the culture of quality that safety managers strive so hard to cultivate.
To do their jobs effectively, today’s field workforces need location-aware apps: apps that connect what’s happening — inspection data that’s being collected, or steps in a checklist that someone is checking off — with where it’s happening, or that provide users with maps to understand the location context of what they’re doing.
For the last installment of Fulcrum for Field Data Collection software, we explore the stories of some of our government clients – enjoy!
So you’re looking to do some field inspections, field ops, field data collection, field audits, field inventories, or collecting any information in the field, and are sick of walking around with a tattered notebook and an on again-off again working pen. Your team has talked it over, and have decided that digital is the best bet for your field operations solution. But where to start?
Optimizing Santa’s away team: Elf on the Shelf
Most of us have heard of Santa’s omniscience in knowing and grading children’s behavior on a simple pass/fail (bad/good) scale. But in the past few years, there’s been an exciting new development in the whole “Naughty/Nice List” tradition in the form of mass market Elf on the Shelf (shown below being all smug and judgmental). These elves are made to surveil children in the weeks before Christmas, covertly reporting back to Santa what they witness for ease of naughty/nice determination.
Welcome to the second of our series of stories around clients using Fulcrum to perform data collection in the field. For Part 2, we have non-profit organizations that use Fulcrum’s data collection forms in the field for charitable pursuits.
While at Fulcrum we often talk about inspections, what about the clients who use software not strictly for inspections, but for collecting field data? In the next few weeks we’ll be sharing some examples of clients whose use case doesn’t fit the mold of field inspections, and how they use Fulcrum to collect richer, more comprehensive data in less time and with fewer resources. For Part 1, we have corporate organizations that use Fulcrum to perform real-time data collection software functions in their important work around the world.
When the leading provider of mobile inspection services for utilities makes the switch from the incumbent – its proprietary, in-house software for pole assessments and field inspections – to an outside vendor, it’s a big deal. Osmose Utilities Services Company has done just that, swapping out its homegrown mobile pole inspections and evaluations application to Fulcrum’s SaaS field inspection platform.
Environmental, health, and safety inspections (EHS) are one of the most effective measures to identify, prevent, and remediate threats to employee and public safety, quality work, and overall business operations.
Ubiquitous across industries, a standard operating procedure (SOP) is a series of step-by-step instructions that help workers successfully and efficiently execute routine tasks. While incredibly useful to our everyday work, digital SOPs also have considerable benefits at a wider, enterprise level.
October 2020 was the turning point in the trick-or-treat journey for young Emily, now 14. “The weather was terrible that day,” she recalls. “I mean, it’s northern Illinois so what do you expect, but really? 34 degrees and sleeting?”
Hi Fulcrum fans! When looking for new ways to improve Fulcrum tools, we go to the source: our users. We did our homework. We spent time with you and your field teams to understand how Fulcrum could make your jobs easier. Our goal was to enhance your teams’ productivity. As a result of this field research with you, our customers, we’re delighted to introduce new features and functionality. These changes make using Fulcrum more intuitive, user-friendly, and powerful than ever.
Trained professionals conduct regular fire safety inspections to save lives. They ensure compliance with safety regulations. In addition, they assess the functionality of equipment, including sprinkler systems, smoke alarms, fire doors, and alarms. Inspectors also check for hazards such as outdated wiring and insulation, contributing significantly to building safety and fire prevention.
The Problem
Field-based teams face many challenges operating in the diverse range of international environments in which MSI works. For instance, remote regions often lack mobile networks, or lack of infrastructure might make it impossible to find critical locations. When teams arrive, surveys need to be conducted in multiple local languages. Teams may face challenges with local authorities who might be suspicious of activities. Finally, frequently changing inspection criteria and client information requests require field teams to rapidly pivot and shift priorities.
If it’s got four (or 18) wheels, sooner or later it will give you problems. From maintenance headaches to inspection snags to outright accidents, a lot can go wrong when you’re dealing with one vehicle, not to mention a fleet of them. A digital field inspection platform for fleet management can help minimize risk – and address problems when they develop.
Drive superior safety and quality outcomes by closing the loop from field inspections to issue resolution to insights to action
Your field teams already collect data when they’re doing inspections. Why not use that same data to give managers operational insights?
Exploring the U.S. bridge safety crisis, inspection backlogs making it worse, and how digital inspections can help.
You can get there from here: Fulcrum delivers on-site visibility, anywhere in the world
Sure, digital field inspections keep your operations running smoothly, but that’s just the beginning of their utility.
From mussels to birds, hornets to fish, invasive species of every kind are wreaking havoc on people, property, and other species in the ecosystems they invade. This growing problem emphasizes the critical importance of controlling invasive species to mitigate their destructive impact.
We’ll discuss how to break down your existing safety processes into distinct steps that can be digitized, enriched, and automated at scale.
So, we’ve launched Intelligent Team Automation. You might have seen the video, the webinar, the press release, or our launch blog – or maybe all the above. Today we’re going to do a little more in-depth analysis into one of the core capabilities of Intelligent Team Automation: unifying inspection teams while optimizing each role.
You’ve got to keep track of your people, your equipment, and their statuses. The question is, how?
Learn how implementing a digital field inspection management platform can help to prevent field worker inspection fraud.
By using consistent digital inspection processes, we can make our data more available for modern analysis.
This research report is jam-packed with data that will help you understand inspection-related challenges across multiple industries.
Your field teams are your eyes and ears on the ground. Their success–and yours–depends on effective field inspection programs for utilities.
Your on-site inspection teams are your eyes and ears on the ground. Their success–and yours–depends on effective field inspection programs.
Learn how to make field inspections a team sport with Fulcrum’s intelligent team automation.
Drinking water comes to you from the 1+ million miles of water pipes that make up America’s water infrastructure system, many of which were put in place in the early-to-mid 1900s. But with a lifespan of 75 to 100 years, this system is starting to show its age.
In late 2021, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) encountered a severe problem. A former contract worker was accused of falsifying up to 3,000 electric system inspections over two years. The deception was revealed when a power pole, allegedly inspected and declared free of rot, collapsed into a residential backyard. It sent a live electrical wire into a swimming pool, fortunately without causing any injuries.
A field inspection management platform can help them improve the productivity, agility, and auditability of inspection programs.
Although the use of lead in public water systems was banned in 1986 by the EPA, an estimated 15 to 22 million Americans’ drinking water supply still comes from lead service lines. Now, after 35 years of waffling, grandfathering, and stopgap measures, it looks as though a comprehensive lead pipe abatement initiative is imminent. The recently announced Biden-Harris Lead Pipe and Paint Action Plan seeks to finally replace lead pipes throughout the country by utilizing funds from the bipartisan infrastructure package as well as the EPA’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund.
Having problems finding skilled construction workers? You’re not alone. The labor shortage has hit the construction industry particularly hard: home builder contractors estimate that nearly three-quarters of a million construction workers will be needed each year to keep up with demand and account for attrition, while 92% of commercial construction contractors report moderate to high levels of difficulty finding skilled workers.
How can you arm a rookie (novices, temps, and seasonal employees) with the experience of a 20-year veteran?
