VANCOUVER, BC, DEC 6, 2019 -- Washington's Clark Regional Wastewater District integrated Flowfinity Wireless’ field data collection apps and Esri ArcGIS mapping software to achieve a digital transformation project with a forecasted ROI of 160%.
Clark Regional Wastewater District (the District), one of the largest sewer service providers in Washington state, collaborated with consultants from FLO Analytics to digitize their building site inspections workflow and invent new processes that greatly improved fieldwork efficiency and back-office productivity.
Robin Krause, former District Engineer summarized their challenge as "The need to accomplish more with the same number of staff, while doing it more effectively and with greater career satisfaction."
The District considers its digitization project a success as in the first year 373 hours of labor were saved, primarily in data entry and record keeping, leading to a 60% project cost recovery and they project a 160% ROI within 5 years.
With their previous processes, contractors would request site inspections via telephone or email on an ad-hoc basis. The process was dependent on paper forms and District employees found that around 20% of the time there would be missing or incorrect information that would need to be verified before work could proceed.
When the District began working with FLO Analytics to analyze their requirements they realized that they could leverage no-code applications from Flowfinity to build their own mobile data collection system and abandon paper forms entirely.
By digitizing data collection and integrating with Esri's ArcGIS software they have created a system that has greatly increased data integrity, streamlined inspection workflows and improved reporting.
"One of our first tasks was to find a good field form app, we wanted to keep our systems as GIS centered as possible. Other Esri compatible solutions that were Excel-based didn't really lend themselves to the dynamic data that we needed," said Tom Sedlacek, GIS Analyst and Flowfinity app builder.
All relevant site data and photographs are collected on mobile devices and instantly stored in a centralized database. Notifications and daily reports are automated to circulate important information in real-time, reducing the need for meetings and improving visibility into operations.
To learn more, visit www.flowfinity.com.
