Field Operations

A Dangerous legacy
In Cambodia, almost 20 years after the last mines were laid, 1,000 square kilometers of land in the northwest are still contaminated by small plastic anti-personnel mines which can sever limbs and larger anti-vehicle mines, which can destroy a farmer’s tractor and kill passengers—there have been thousands of civilian casualties in the past decade.

What data is GreenCollar collecting?
GreenCollar Group uses Fulcrum not only to collect data, but also as a navigation and feature validation tool. Some of the applications that they use Fulcrum for are:

What type of data is DCQ collecting?
Wherever they need to collect, collate and analyze data, DCQ uses Fulcrum. They have built Fulcrum apps to collect data for:

A Project with purpose
The mission of the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) is to preserve and protect the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through environmentally responsible outdoor lighting.

The Problem

In 2019, the State of Michigan required water providers to complete a water distribution system material inventory. This inventory needed to include water service line material information and be complete by January 1, 2025. For the City of Wyoming, a community of approximately 75,000 residents with over 20,000 water service lines, this information needed to be better organized and aligned.

Program Management Solutions with Fulcrum

Century Engineering, Inc. (Century) is proud to work with the Delaware Department of Transportation Railroad Program (DelDOT) providing engineering design and technology solutions services related to over 500 railroad crossings that they manage and maintain statewide. DelDOT is responsible for ensuring that all crossings promote safe travel for Delaware citizens, visitors, and railroad operators. This responsibility comes with the task of ensuring all railroad crossing structures are operational and compliant based on Federal and State regulations (ADA and MUTCD). In addition to maintaining the physical assets of the State’s railroad crossings, DelDOT also handles public complaints, reported incidents, and coordinates / monitors all construction activities related to maintenance and redesign projects.

The Problem

Before switching to Fulcrum, Trimat had laptops assigned to its service employees to write up their inspections in Microsoft Access, on an old system that was built eight years prior. Inspectors in the field would conduct an on-site inspection, and then, while in their car or back in the office, write up their report in the Access database. This process was time consuming and often led to errors in data and incomplete information. Trimat looked into rebuilding the Access system or building a new in-house system and had received quotes exceeding $10,000.

The Problem

With 85,000 geographically dispersed planted acres, the folks at Wonderful Orchards spent a lot of time and effort getting information from their ranches back to their offices.

Find out how to choose a solution that improves your workflows today and can also adapt to the changing needs of your field organization.

Find out how the Fulcrum platform enables teams to improve the quality of their work and their processes

The Problem

Before she found Fulcrum, Carrington Risk CEO Kristin Carrington was ready to quit working in the field. “I dreaded the report writing,” she said.

Field inspections play a crucial role in maintaining safety, efficiency, and compliance, but outdated processes often get in the way. Paper-based systems, slow data sharing, and manual errors can cause delays, frustrations, and even compliance risks for field teams. It’s time to embrace a better way of working. This guide is designed to help you modernize inspections with practical, actionable steps. By identifying pain points and adopting modern tools, you can transform inspection workflows into efficient, streamlined processes that save time, reduce errors, and boost productivity.

As a technology company, focused on building software, we consider ourselves to be in a fortunate position during this global pandemic. With one-third of our workforce already working remotely, we are well-positioned to continue operations with minimal disruption.

While the rest of us are busy washing our hands, the folks in Nashville, TN and surrounding areas are recovering from damage caused by several tornadoes that touched down on March 2nd and 3rd – while also monitoring COVID-19. Seventy thousand residents lost power, 300 injuries were reported and 25 lives were lost. We can’t stop these events from happening, but when we respond with the right tools, we can help the Nashville Strong recovery take place faster.

Rivers serve as lifelines to the humans, animals, and plants in the areas where they flow. They naturally assume excess rain and minerals and nurture the growth of every living thing they touch. That’s why it’s imperative that we preserve our rivers and the natural space surrounding them. Rivers naturally change over time, but recently extreme flooding and other imbalances have caused the erosion of river boundaries, destruction of property, mold, and other problems that pose a danger to the surrounding people and area. Since 1981, the Tennessee River Gorge Trust has provided a helping hand to preserve the Tennessee River Gorge and the precious plants and animals that live and migrate in that area. The Gorge, a beautiful 26-mile canyon formed near the Tennessee River in Chattanooga, TN, is a wonder to geologists, who believe that it was formed some 290 million years ago.

We depend on millions of commercial vehicles — from semi-trailers to school buses — to transport people and goods every day. And every year, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) conducts about 4 million fleet inspections across North America to ensure they are operating safely.

Regular roof inspections are critical for detecting damage from severe weather, improper construction, and even regular wear and tear. Using a mobile roof inspection checklist can help you streamline the process and conduct more thorough inspections in less time.

Last month, we shared a video walking you through the steps of creating a custom mobile form with Fulcrum’s drag-and-drop app builder.

Last week we hosted a hands-on workshop on data collection with Fulcrum during the NetHope Summit in San Juan. As part of the joint workshop from myself and Mapbox’s Mikel Maron, we wanted to showcase how to go from the beginning to end — creating a mobile collection survey through field collection all the way to visualization (online or disconnected) with Mapbox’s Atlas server.

September will never be the same for the Bahamas. Hurricane Dorian obliterated the Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama in a matter of hours, changing the island and everyone that lived there. At the present time, there are 67 reported deaths, 777 people living in shelters, 200 reported missing and thousands of residents are displaced. In one day, the northwest region of the Bahamas was forever changed and it’s expected to take years before it returns to a livable community.

Data collection can be beneficial for just about any business. You can streamline processes and workflows by asking the same questions across your entire workforce, and receiving the information in a specified format.

Haiti is home to mesmerizing beaches, tropical flowers, great food, and beauty reflective of the sun’s love affair with the Caribbean. Unfortunately, it is also home to hurricanes, earthquakes, torrential storms, flooding and the many issues that follow disasters, particularly in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

If you’re a firefighter, you need a hose. If you’re a surgeon, a scalpel. As NetHope prepares to help assess and respond to the devastation of Hurricane Dorian, we need a full complement of digital tools to aid the work in emergency situations.

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!