Back in the 15th century, a man named Johannes Gutenberg invented a way to rearrange little metal pieces with letters on them to easily form words and sentences, then press those phrases onto paper to create printed copies. The creation of the printing press marks a before and after; the before, a time when knowledge was exclusive and coveted, and the after, a time when it was made widely available. Knowledge spread. Ideas spread. Rather than being stuck in siloed areas, information could be shared with anyone who wanted access. Sound familiar?

Because, somehow, 600 years later, we’re still dealing with the same challenges regarding how information flows from point A to point B. We invented the printing press, and then eventually the typewriter, and computers, and the internet, and yet it wasn’t until recently that the majority of the construction industry stopped recording information in archaic, handwritten field books and started capturing information digitally. And just like the invention of the printing press led to an explosion of thought and idea-sharing, we’re still figuring out the expansive potential of digital data workflows in the construction industry.

In a recent interview for Infotech’s e-Merge conference, we spoke with construction and utility leaders who are uniting digital inspection technology with GIS data to create more informed, accurate, and collaborative digital inspection workflows. In this article, we’ll examine their own before and after and the ways digital inspection positively impacts their process. While it may not revolutionize the spread of knowledge itself like the printing press did, the right mix of digital tools can revolutionize your approach to inspection.

Before we dive into the associated benefits, we’ll quickly cover what we mean when we reference a digital inspection workflow throughout this article. It’s fairly straightforward:

1. Create a project in a construction administration platform
2. Capture GIS-enabled inspection data with a mobile application
3. Seamlessly sync that data back to the construction administration platform for review and oversight
4. Share data from the construction administration platform to map-based platforms, and ultimately, other departments
5. Leverage data for everything from driving contractor payments to reviewing project completion percentages

Panelists were interviewed about their use of Appia, a mobile-friendly inspection and administration tool and Esri ArcGIS Field Maps, a platform for collecting GIS-enabled field data.

Eliminating Manual Transcription

Drive out to the job site. Record inspection data in a tiny little notebook. Drive back to the field office. Record your inspection data. Get into a dispute with a contractor. Realize the “8” you wrote is actually a “0.” Rinse, wash, repeat.

For many inspectors and project managers, that was the inspection process before the rise of inspection software that can be used on phones or tablets. “The hard bound books, it’s really hard to keep those,” said Matt Poirot, Chief Construction Engineering for the City of St. Louis. “You’re backtracking trying to fill everything out and get it up-to-date because if you’re going to make a payment at the end of the month, all your quantities, all your daily diaries have to be up-to-date.”

Matt Barnes, Construction Crew Leader for the City of St. Louis, added that keeping physical diaries on projects that involved federal funds. “[Digital inspection] prevents us from having to carry two diaries on the federally-funded jobs. We used to have two different books to fill out, one with quantities and one with remarks and the labor and equipment.”

With a digital inspection workflow that seamlessly moves inspection data into a project administration hub for easy sharing with stakeholders, all the pains of field books are eliminated. We do miss those tiny little pencils, though.

Perfecting Digital As-Builts for Asset Management

It happens in every sci-fi movie. Take Star Wars, for example. Our intrepid heroes need to blow up a Death Star (I say “a” instead of “the” because it seems like they have to do that in every movie now), so they pull up a digital rendering of the spaceship that highlights all of the plot-powered vulnerabilities. Say what you will about US infrastructure failures, but the Galactic Empire clearly isn’t much better. Our current capabilities aren’t that far off from what’s depicted in a galaxy far, far away when you combine digital inspection with GIS data.

“The importance of geo-locating items is becoming more and more important every day,” said Poirot. “All of our street lights are fiber, manholes, water mains, things like that are all in GIS so going forward, when we complete these projects, we'll easily be able to push that data right over to these other departments that are gonna maintain that asset.”

This process is much easier than the old way of doing things, which might involve intensive review of field notes months after the day information was captured. “When you get to close out the project, it might be the winter, a year later. You’re trying to go through and read your field notes to try to make a clean set of as-builts,” said Barnes.

Mark Yerington, Utility Solutions Manager for the City of Muscatine, shared his own sci-fi approximating example: “We have a full 3D model of our entire sewer system and had some progressive people around here. Having accurate locations really helps you drive decision-making into the future.” Yerington also mentioned that they’re trying to do the same thing for their pavement management efforts to understand the layers and composition of concrete and how it will degrade over time. No force sensitivity required.

Read the complete digital inspection article here.