Field Operations

The part of the world which I call home is a place in California that most people only pass through, or fly over, on their way between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Recently however, I had the good fortune that NetHope was conducting its Bay Area Disaster Response Training (DRT) right in my “backyard,” in San Luis Obispo County, CA.

It was extremely hot and dusty as the caravan of humanitarian aid workers from Team Rubicon pulled up to a farmhouse in Matarara, Mozambique – 40 miles west as the crow flies from Beira, but a nearly 8-hour journey overland due to road washouts and poor conditions. Team Rubicon had arrived to as part of the Cyclone Idai response after the storm ripped through Mozambique and caused monumental flooding throughout the country.

In 1996, I went to work for Cambric Corporation in Salt Lake City, Utah as a deputy project manager for a telecom operations outside-plant (OSP) data conversion project. The client was Bell Canada, and we had three primary subcontractors, based in India, that were responsible for the vast majority of the labor in converting legacy analog engineering design and “as-builts” drawings in to a full AM/FM/GIS for roughly 255 telephone exchanges covering the eastern provinces of Canada. I was largely responsible for managing the production schedules, operations and quality control of our Indian subcontractors. This required a fair amount of time on the ground in India providing guidance, oversight, supervision and management of nearly 1,000 project team members for more than 18 months.

Fourth of July in Southern California was different this year. I’m sure most were prepared to enjoy family, friends and traditional fireworks. They most likely had made their last grocery store runs and mapped out their entertainment plan, when out of nowhere the plans were literally shook up. An earthquake measuring 6.4 in magnitude shook at 10:33 a.m., causing a swift change to the Independence Day celebrations in Searles Valley and surrounding areas. In classic Cali fashion, some felt the shaking happening and kept moving afterward thinking it’s normal California stuff since they have become accustomed to experiencing these tremors.

There’s a lot more to construction work than just — well, constructing. Contractors and project managers are also responsible for meeting deadlines, construction standards, and safety regulations.

If your field teams are still conducting inspections and surveys with paper and clipboards, it’s time for an upgrade.

As the Fulcrum Community Advocate, I had the pleasure of attending the National VOAD (Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster) Conference in Nashville, TN. It was a life-changing and definitely a life-saving experience for me.

The systems that provide our world with power and electricity require enormous amounts of utility data and compliance monitoring to function effectively. Energy and utility companies must constantly monitor, analyze, and respond to events that affect these complex networks to ensure their customers have electricity. What’s more, the production and distribution of energy are subject to numerous regulations, making utility data and compliance requirements crucial for operations to be documented in meticulous detail. The ability to streamline and integrate data coming in from multiple sites is critical to staying ahead of these demands.

In 2016, the U.S. Census Bureau launched The Opportunity Project, “a process for engaging government, communities, and the technology industry to create digital tools that address our greatest challenges as a nation”.

The toxic red tide bloom that has plagued Florida since November of 2017 seems to finally have dissipated. Last week, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reported that the red tide organism, Karenia brevis or K. brevis, is no longer present in water samples.

I’ve always said: Ask me to run an office, and no worries, I got it! Then this task fell on my lap — a great combination of departments’ needs and wants, all to be managed by me. I needed to tag and inventory our assets. Sure, I think. Let’s use Google sheets and track the inventory. If only there was an asset management solution that I could use to take the information off a barcode and correlate it to an existing asset. Oh, wait — there is!

From conserving natural resources to reducing business costs, there are lots of reasons to switch to paperless fieldwork — but many companies have yet to do it. Maybe it’s because they’re attached to their familiar paper processes, or perhaps they’re simply reluctant to enact change.

One of the biggest benefits of using mobile forms is the time savings. So naturally, once you’ve made the switch from paper, you’ll want to get your field teams up and running as quickly as possible. In this post, we’ll show you an easy way to get your employees trained on Fulcrum and collecting field data in no time.

Offline data collecting from the field is an essential task across many industries, and recent advances have made it easier than ever.

Professionals across many industries — utility, engineering, and construction, especially — are giving up their antiquated pen-and-paper processes and switching to mobile forms, and for good reason. Taking inspection forms that have been filled out in the field and manually entering them into a computer is a slow and cumbersome process that takes otherwise productive hours out of the workday. With mobile forms, the information is entered just once on-site and gets synced to the cloud, where it is immediately available to clients and stakeholders. Even better? Switching to mobile forms is easy! With Fulcrum, you can create a custom mobile inspection form in 15 minutes or less. In this post, we’ll show you how.

In the last few posts, we’ve talked about the benefits of collecting and analyzing field data. Information gathered from the field gives businesses and organizations a unique advantage. It provides a foundation for more informed decision-making and helps them allocate resources more effectively.

The term “data collection” may sound esoteric, but the practice is actually quite broad. Data collection is a vital process that every business conducts regularly, even if they don’t call it that.

Collecting field data can be a complex process, requiring time, money, and people. That’s why logistics are important. A successful project design will save you from wasting time, energy, and resources, and ensure the most reliable data possible.

In our last post, we explored how and why businesses gather and use information from the field. In this post, we’ll dive deeper into some of the different methods for collecting data.

What is field data? Data that is captured in the field is some of the most valuable information available to a company. It provides a clear picture into what’s happening at a job site or point of transaction, giving managers and other executives the insights they need to make informed business decisions.

Successful enterprise asset management is key to reducing costs and increasing productivity and profitability for any organization.

 Field data collection is by no means limited to the confines of terra firma! NOAA Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary has been successfully using Fulcrum to help city, state, and federal agencies in offshore data collection, accessing, and sharing marine enforcement data across California.

Successful data collection starts with a good survey. How you design your questions will have a tremendous impact on the way data is collected, processed, and analyzed. We’d like to share some of our best advice on building a proper field data collection survey.

Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria caused widespread destruction across Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Now, engineering faculty and students from several U.S. universities are using this disaster as a learning opportunity.

Poachers beware! Counter-poaching organizations have a new app at their disposal to identify, track, and destroy elephant poaching networks thanks to Fulcrum.

I had the opportunity to represent Fulcrum at the inaugural DroneDeploy Conference in San Francisco, CA last week. One of the goals of the conference was to “focus on real-world drone deployments across industries driven by people”. The conference had people in attendance from an array of industries including end users, software providers, and developers interested in folding aerial survey data into applications.

Coleman McCormick speaker notes – IAOO 2016

Thanks for visiting! These are the notes and links from my talk at IAAO 2016 — Automating Field Data Collection. Below you’ll find links referenced or mentioned in the talk, the slides for download, and contact info to get in touch.