The March issue of CES magazine is hitting desks as we speak and featured on pages 26 and 27 is the latest case study from KOREC.

This story sees Enviroflow Management tackling a demanding M6 drainage survey with a truly unique approach – they’ve integrated GeoSLAM’s ZEB-REVO handheld data scanner technology with KOREC’s own K-Mobile data capture software. The end result is a paper free solution that delivers data in realtime (including internal 3D profiles of all the manholes) directly to a portal for remote access by the client.

Read the full story in CES here

K-Mobile is the key to ensuring that a Canadian rock crushing company maintains maximum efficiency through a structured approach to its machinery inspection process.

Situated in a sparsely populated province of western Canada is a rock crushing company that not only has extreme weather conditions to contend with in both winter and summer but also by virtue of its remote location, a senior management team that is predominantly off site.

The company has a simple work remit in that its only purpose is to crush rock to different criteria with profit directly related to the amount of rock crushed per day.  Profitability is therefore reliant on the rock crushing equipment being well maintained and having minimal downtime.

In a move to digitise and streamline the inspection process, the company approached KOREC and the K-Mobile team to focus on two separate issues, a ‘fail-safe’ inspection and defect tracking system for the rock crushing machinery and an easy way for the remote management team to assess the amount of work undertaken – and therefore level of profit – each day.

Inspection reporting/Defect tracking

Harsh weather conditions, particularly in winter, meant that none of the crushing crew wished to be outside longer than they had to be. The rock crushing company therefore required a quick and easy to use but fail-safe system that would provide a ‘chain’ approach to form filling with each element of the reporting process having to be filled in before the operator can move on to the next.

KOREC therefore developed a system incorporating NFC tags (low cost, everlasting tags that can be read by most modern smartphones) and a customised version of K-Mobile running on as smartphone. On each bit of machinery requiring inspection, a tag was fitted which could be detected by the smartphone running K-Mobile. Depending on whether it is a daily, weekly or monthly inspection, the NFC reading brings up the relevant inspection form guiding the crew member through the inspection process, prompting replies from picklists and where appropriate, photographs. This information is then wirelessly transferred back to the site manager, wherever he may be located, and shown ‘live’ on a web-based dashboard where recorded defects are flagged up and can be acted upon immediately. These defects remain ‘open’ on the dashboard until resolved with photographic evidence.

Remote production/volume check

The management team also required a daily report of the amount of each type of rock crushed by weight. The KOREC team therefore integrated the K-Mobile software with the rock weighing scales so that hourly measurements could be taken, along with a photo, and fed into the smartphone showing the increase in weight for both the larger and smaller rock types. From this information the software automatically creates an easy to read bar chart with days of the week and blue and red blocks showing the rising weight of each type of rock. This simple approach make progress extremely easy to monitor at a glance with a line on the graph showing whether a profitable level of crushed rock has been achieved.

This has been a particularly interesting project for KOREC because the principles of the remote management aspect of the K-Mobile software are easily transferrable across many industries.

For further information, please contact the K-Mobile team on 0345 603 1214.

Rectified defect page showing photo of completed work

Asset list showing pdf links to all manuals and guides etc

Dashboard showing scale readings per day

The K-Mobile team is nothing if not accommodating and most of all they enjoy problem solving, no matter how large, or in this case, how small! Here are three of the latest that they’ve been tackling.

Help – no one delivering goods or visiting us on our motorway site can find us!

Large road construction projects are all referenced by chainage so we’ve developed a really useful little function that’s now included in all versions of K-Mobile. Designed to provide users with a free dynamic chainage display on any linear job, it’s ideal for deliveries and visitors who can be provided with access via a link.

We’re collecting information on traffic light conditions but have to open up each individual record to tick a ‘fully functional’ box.  When we have 20 sets of working lights on an intersection this can take 20 minutes. How can we speed up this process?

Welcome to ‘lassoo assets’! It does exactly what the name says and can be used on any asset type allowing for a time saving ‘batch’ approach to changing a field. In this case we developed ‘lassoo assets’ as a useful add-on to K-Mobile, making the process 20x faster. This is just the sort of small development the K-Mobile team can undertake in less than a day!

How can I QA check the offset measurements from my laser rangefinder

With the rise of Trimble Catalyst (software based GNSS) running on tablets, we’re seeing increased usage of the TruPulse laser rangefinder for offset measurements as an alternative to the Trimble GeoExporer with its built -in laser. The K-Mobile team has responded accordingly by enhancing the form that pops up automatically when a laser measurement is taken. You can now store any laser measurement and the coordinates of where you are standing as attributes. Two positions – ideal for QA purposes!

Although developed for handheld lasers, this feature works with any NEMA style BlueTooth device such as sonar devices and radiation detectors.

What would improve your productivity? Please contact the K-Mobile team on 0345 603 1214

The latest functionality that we’ve added to our K-Mobile field data capture software has been developed specifically to save time and speed up efficiency in the field, especially for those working in high density asset areas. Field workers can now select a wide range of feature points from the front screen saving at least a couple of clicks for each asset recorded.

We’ve also introduced a new form ‘Clipboard’ feature. This is ideal for anyone who has a number of forms to fill in, but not all in one go. Users can now revisit the same form at intervals throughout the day, without the risk of duplicating the form, and add information as and when it’s collected. Coloured white, amber and green icons for each form provide a quick glance progress report as to how much information has been collected for each of these forms. Useful!

The theme for the May/June issue of Geomatics World is “Education is Crucial”, a subject that touches on many aspects of our profession from recruitment to career progression. Editor, Ian Dowman, also points out that this is something that’s covered in the latest KOREC article from our GIS and Mapping Business Area Manager, Richard Gauchwin.

In his editorial he writes, “Richard Gauchwin from KOREC takes up the theme of tailoring data capture to the customer. A key element of educating customers and providing them with what they need is establishing a partnership between educators, industry and users.”

Read Richard’s article entitled ‘Let’s Be Specific’ here.

K-Mobile Updates

Progress never stands still and neither does KOREC’s K-Mobile mapping/data capture software development team! Here’s a round-up of what they’ve been working on over the past few weeks:

Android Bluetooth link to laser rangefinders

It’s been available in the Windows version of K-Mobile for a while and now we’ve added this useful function to the Android version too. Suitable for any Bluetooth enabled laser, its perfect for ensuring your offset measurements (eg shooting to points in inaccessible areas or GPS blackspots) or height and width measurements (ideal for tree surveys) are recorded directly into your data entry form.

Live Portal Update

Imagine you are cleaning gullies or checking street furniture. Permitted office users can now log into the secure K-Mobile portal and track a service vehicle through a ‘bread crumb’ trail watching dots turn from red to blue as work is completed. Updates occur once a minute and this useful information can be used to illustrate all work done in a day or even show live dashboards, for example as an interactive pie chart. Simply click on a segment to view the location of recorded defects etc bringing live analysis to your data collection projects.

New product – K-Mobile Tree Edition

All the functionality of our fully featured K-Mobile data capture software with extra built-in tree functionality and visualisation tools. Perfect for undertaking British Standard tree surveys, key benefits include live graphic representation of tree canopy measured in four directions (N,S,E,W) and calculations and graphic representation of root radius. Also visible back in the office via the Live Portal. We have a new case study on exactly this application at http://bit.ly/2FRtMRb