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Case Study
RBA Surveying

The challenge

RBA carry out surveys of social housing and public buildings, providing costed plans for maintenance and renewal. They use an off-the-shelf app for regular houses, but for universities, schools and hospitals they were left with a huge amount of manual data collection and admin work.

The solution

A custom FileMaker solution allows RBA to capture details of all the different rooms, fixtures and fittings that they survey, with minimal entry of new data. The system collates all the information and evidence, so it is ready for analysis without a lot of manual processing and sorting.

Results

With the new system, RBA surveyors spend less time on-site entering data. Back in the office, they have eliminated many days of costly admin work for each project. With lower prices they are winning more large-scale work and delivering greater value for clients.

Background to the
RBA Surveying project

For over 30 years, RBA Surveying have been providing condition surveys for housing associations, giving them detailed insights and cost estimates so they can plan and budget for the maintenance and renewal of fixtures and fittings, heating systems and electricals. For straight-forward houses and flats, they can use an off-the-shelf application to capture all the details.

More recently they have expanded into larger contracts, carrying out condition surveys and defect surveys of large, varied buildings including hospitals, universities and schools.

The challenge
Needing more flexibility

The app which they use for surveying houses and flats does not have the flexibility required for large, varied buildings. As a result, RBA had to rely on manual data collection and photography, which was painstakingly pulled together back in the office.

The amount of time and cost required for all this admin meant that they risked becoming uncompetitive. They need a system that had the ease of use of their basic app, but with the flexibility to survey any buildings across healthcare, education or housing.

Custom FileMaker software for surveying university buildings

Using a custom iPad app to survey a building

Developing
the solution

The Director of RBA Surveying was introduced to Smart Wolf by a colleague. He had a clear idea of the capabilities that he and his team required and provided a specification which was discussed and finalised in a detailed briefing session.

He had bid for a major project which was due to start in less than two months and so asked Smart Wolf if they could create the new system within that timeframe.

The team developed a custom app to run on surveyors’ iPads, together with a cloud-based system which collects together the data and generates outputs in a format that is optimised for surveyors to review and analyse.

Following in-depth testing, the system was released in good time to be used on the new project. The app was installed on each of the surveyors’ iPads and configured to receive further updates automatically over the network.

System
functionality

The system developed for RBA Surveying has four key areas of functionality:

Importing client data

Where clients already have spreadsheets of rooms, facilities and assets, these can be easily imported into the system as a start point for the surveyors. If the client has previously tagged their premises with barcodes, these can be imported and then scanned as part of the survey.

Attaching photographic evidence

During surveys, multiple photos can be attached to a room or asset for further examination or as supporting evidence. These are captured directly from the iPad and linked to the relevant entity; they are accessible through the application and in the exported data.

Searching and creating assets

When a surveyor encounters a potentially new type of asset, the system has a powerful search facility that checks synonyms and similar terms before creating a new entity. There is functionality for management to review all new entities and either merge them into an existing one or add them to the shared library.

Generating reports for professional analysis

In order for RBA surveyors to create detailed recommendations and budgets for clients, the system generates a sophisticated Excel sheet that they can manipulate and analyse. It includes all the data in the most useful form, plus links back to photos and other assets within the system.

Outcomes
Reducing costs to win more work

Since using the new system, RBA have cut the amount of data processing down from several days to a matter of hours for each large building that they survey. This has allowed them to bid more competitive prices and deliver greater value for clients in the NHS, social housing and other sectors.

Since the original system they have commissioned further work from Smart Wolf, to enable them to take on other types of survey work.

Next steps
Contact our team

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