Lamar Advertising's Facility Inspection App
...the Facilities Management team has a tool that can give greater insights to maintenance planning and scheduling and even future costs and valuations of existing properties.
Baton Rouge, LA (PRWEB) May 15, 2014
Lamar Advertising, the nation’s leading out-of-home advertising company, has a large number of facilities to manage in both metropolitan and remote locations across the U. S. Managing these facilities with a paper-driven inspection process was proving difficult and inefficient. Coordinating schedules, collecting inspection information by hand, matching photos taken while on site, and working with out-of-date punch-list questionnaires made getting a picture of maintenance tasks and property valuations difficult to say the least.
Without an updated centralized database of accurate and up-to-date inspection results, Lamar was lacking the data needed for trend analysis, decision-making, and contract negotiation. “It is likely that we missed opportunities for preventative maintenance, valuations, and money savings,” said Michael Kulivan, Director of Process Control at Lamar. “A faster, more accurate, and comprehensive picture of our properties was sorely needed.”
Lamar enlisted the mobile app designers and developers at Envoc to create an Apple iPad app for their facility inspectors. The native iPad app, deployed through Lamar’s internal Corporate App Store, allows inspectors to survey a facility, complete the inspection questionnaire, take comprehensive facility photos, record voice narratives and submit the full survey back to the corporate office. Inspectors can also download a PDF version of the inspection with photos and send it to building managers and supervisors, all from their iPads and all using an “occasionally connected” data transfer model for those places without cellular-based data networks or Wi-Fi.
“Architecting an iPad business app which works disconnected from Wi-Fi while respecting centrally configured survey questions was a challenge,” says Envoc Mobile Developer Kyle Joiner. “There is much more to consider when reliable data communication is not available where inspections are taking place. Thankfully, the technical teams of Lamar and Envoc were able to leverage their enterprise-grade experience to create synchronized categories, questions, and survey responses that do the job well. This is a model that can be envisioned in many other industries, including real-estate, healthcare, and oil and gas to name a few.”
Once inspections are transferred to headquarters, the centralized Administrative Portal allows managers to view all completed surveys noting what has passed and what has failed inspection. Each question of the survey can include photos, voice narratives, and a recommended course of action. This allows Lamar management to identify maintenance trends, and even negotiate volume contracts for similar repairs. With real-time updates on inspections, a mobile solution that works both online and offline, as well as integration with Lamar’s existing employee and facility databases, the Facilities Management team has a tool that can give greater insights to maintenance planning and scheduling and even future costs and valuations of existing properties.
About Envoc
Envoc is a Louisiana-based Software and Design Company that provides custom software solutions for businesses and individuals from “conception to consumption.” Services range from custom branding campaigns, web design, UI-UX, mobile and web applications, intranets, portals, and content management software, to off-the-shelf software. Our mission is to bring “a better reality” to our team and our clients through radical creativity and productivity. Envoc, founded in 2003 with offices in Baton Rouge and in the Louisiana Small Business Development Center located on the Southeastern Louisiana University campus, does not outsource any of its work.
About Lamar
Lamar Advertising Company is the nation’s leading out-of-home advertising firm. Lamar offers solutions for clients in the form of bulletins, posters, digital billboards, buses, benches, transit shelters and highway logo signs. Founded in 1902, Baton Rouge-based Lamar has a broad corporate reach with over 200 locations across the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico specializing in outdoor and transit advertising. In addition, Lamar has 22 locations devoted to the highway logo sign business. This network provides clients with local market insight, as well as the services provided by a firm on a national scale. We have a lot to offer, but it all serves one purpose: helping our clients stand out. Please feel free to explore our website http://www.lamar.com for additional information.
