Highways, bridges and viaduct inspections
INDUSTRY:
Infrastructures
The engineering consultancy branch of one of the world’s largest certification bodies has chosen InspectionSite as the tool to support inspection and supervision activities on a long highway section in Italy.
Main activity
The company provides a broad range of engineering services in industries such as Oil&Gas, Infrastructures and Maritime. These include feasibility and specialist studies, preliminary and final planning, project management, site engineering and Operation & Maintenance engineering on plant and systems.
The company conducts visual inspections in the infrastructures industry on behalf of clients and motorway section operators. The purpose of inspections on bridges, viaducts and footbridges is to certify the safety and state of conservation of highway infrastructures, for both newly-built works and for maintenance on existing ones.
The ultimate aim of this activity is to have a complete and precise overview of any defects, to monitor them over time and to implement a maintenance plan based on the priority of the necessary actions.
Main activity
The company provides a broad range of engineering services in industries such as Oil&Gas, Infrastructures and Maritime. These include feasibility and specialist studies, preliminary and final planning, project management, site engineering and Operation & Maintenance engineering on plant and systems.
The company conducts visual inspections in the infrastructures industry on behalf of clients and motorway section operators. The purpose of inspections on bridges, viaducts and footbridges is to certify the safety and state of conservation of highway infrastructures, for both newly-built works and for maintenance on existing ones.
The ultimate aim of this activity is to have a complete and precise overview of any defects, to monitor them over time and to implement a maintenance plan based on the priority of the necessary actions.
Main activity
The company provides a broad range of engineering services in industries such as Oil&Gas, Infrastructures and Maritime. These include feasibility and specialist studies, preliminary and final planning, project management, site engineering and Operation & Maintenance engineering on plant and systems.
The company conducts visual inspections in the infrastructures industry on behalf of clients and motorway section operators. The purpose of inspections on bridges, viaducts and footbridges is to certify the safety and state of conservation of highway infrastructures, for both newly-built works and for maintenance on existing ones.
The ultimate aim of this activity is to have a complete and precise overview of any defects, to monitor them over time and to implement a maintenance plan based on the priority of the necessary actions.
Before introducing InspectionSite, the client analysed the solutions available on the market for renewal of the monitoring management system in use. Digitised systems were already widely used in the infrastructures industry, so the client was not starting from a “pen and paper” style management of inspections. However, the system used at the time had a number of shortcomings that prevented efficient and effective management of planning of inspections and, above all, rapid transfer of information from the field to the back office. The main issues were:
1. STREAMLINED INSPECTION PLANNING
Lack of a solid and streamlined planning of the inspections that could be easily shared with the team of inspectors.
2. LACK OF SOLID SUPPORT FOR ON-SITE TECHS:
not only for orderly collection of data and photos, but also for rapid consultation of the reference guidelines for classification of the defects found and an instant assessment of them as compared to the previous inspection.
2. INSPECTION REPORTS WITH LENGTHY PREPARATION TIMES AND NUMEROUS ERRORS
The reporting activity associated with individual inspections is the bottleneck in a situation in which the time taken to communicate and resolve the defects found is of vital importance.
3. DIFFICULTIES IN FINDING AND CHECKING REPORTS AND DOCUMENTS
Difficulties in finding and checking reports and documents. Lack of a single and shared repository in which to find documentation immediately and lack of homogeneity in presentation of reports by the inspectors engaged to perform the inspection.
4. UNAVAILABILITY OF DATA
Lack of a continually updated database from which massively and rapidly to extract periodic inspection and defect reports ready to be sent to the client.
Solution
The company decided to contact Orangedev in order to work together to find a solution that would allow both greater operability on site and a substantial simplification in management of reporting of monitoring activities on the motorway infrastructures concerned. InspectionSite was tailored to this purpose with the following functions:
SHARED INSPECTION PLANNING
Possibility of creating long-term and short-term plans, shared on the calendar with the teams, producing inspection reports pre-compiled with the data on the motorway section inspected.
AUTOMATED DEFECT QUANTIFICATION
Compilation form designed for rapid collection of data on site, acquisition of photos, videos and voice notes automatically associated with detected defect, automatic computation of the extent of the defect, based on the parameters detected.
GRAPHIC PHOTO ANNOTATIONS
The inspector can also add notes and drawings on each photo to indicate the defects.
OFFLINE INSPECTION CAPABILITY
Possibility of filling out the form even when an Internet connection is unavailable.
REGULATORY ASSESSMENT GUIDELINES
Furthermore, based on the components inspected and the defects found, the form provides the inspector with guidelines on the reference standards for assessment of the defect, further simplifying activities on site.
ON-THE-SPOT HISTORICAL REVIEW
The inspector can open the report on a previous inspection directly from the App, allowing on-the-spot comparison with the ongoing inspection and immediate assessment of the defects found, without waiting to return to the office and search for the inspection on the laptop.
INSTANT REPORT SIGN-OFF
On completing the inspection, the inspector can display a preview of the report on the App and share it with back-end, automatically signed, in just a few seconds.
GEOLOCATED ASSET MAPPING
Each inspection and each individual photo acquired can be geolocated and displayed on the map through web portal.
STRATEGIC ANALYTICS & REPORTING
InspectionSite uses data collected on site to update KPIs and statistics and back-office staff can, at any time, extract periodic reporting on the monitoring activities performed, on the defects and on the alert classes resulting for each asset inspected, which are immediately ready to be sent to the client or to the authorities.
Final Results
InspectionSite has led to the following improvements in the monitoring activity that the company performs on behalf of the operator of the motorway section concerned:
1.
Coordination and assignment of inspections takes just a few minutes and is performed automatically by the system, without needing to send assorted e-mails.
2.
Improved correlation and coordination between on-site and back-office work.
3.
Improvement of on-site activities, with the App allowing quicker, more orderly and error-free collection of data.
4.
Inspection reporting takes place almost simultaneously with on-site inspection activity itself and time taken to complete and deliver it is considerably reduced, allowing plans of action to be assessed and drafted more rapidly.
