App fatigue during the as-built process

Hello and welcome to Bite Size Electric, the podcast where we break down the biggest challenges and best practices shaping the future of electric networks, one bite at a time. I'm your host, Brandon Kirkin, and we are working through a five-part series on digital as-builds. My guest for this series is Matt Roberts, Director of Utility Solutions for IQGeo. In this series, we'll explore the challenges that utilities face during as-built workflows, the impact of these challenges posed to utilities, and what these utilities can do to improve their as-built workflows. Welcome to Bite Size Electric. I'm your host, Brandon Kirkin, and we're now on part three of our five -part series on digital as-built capture. For part three, we'll talk about app fatigue in the as-built process, which relates to how field teams have to depend on multiple applications while they're trying to execute as-builds, adding friction and unnecessary time to their jobs. I'm joined again by Matt Roberts, Director of Utility Solutions for IQGeo. Welcome, Matt. Hey, Brandon. Matt, I know you've heard from hundreds of utility field workers about the disparate applications required to perform their work. For the as-built process, maybe you can start by explaining what information that users need in the field and what systems they're typically using. So when I'm talking to field users, especially on the as-built process, really construction crews is the primary group. So you're seeing in that construction process, oh, you know, I think I've counted up to 13 apps at one point. And those apps range from, you know, an extension of their work management system where they might do a job safety briefing to very specific tailored apps that maybe the utilities picked up over the last 20 years that's still used for this specific bit. A bit of humor on this is I once spoke with the utility. They were using nine different applications, nine different logins, and their field teams essentially revolted and actually went back to paper processes to get away from those nine different logins, nine different user experiences, and nine different training paths to get somewhat competent with those nine different applications. Wow, yeah, that would be extremely challenging. When they're using these different systems and different applications, what does that look like in practice? Are they constantly switching between apps? Are they using multiple devices? Just paint us a picture of what this app fatigue and multiple app usage looks like. So it's a bit of both. You'll see, depending on where they start in the job, they'll be using those different applications. So, you know, at the beginning of the job, when they're doing their tailboards and safety meetings, they might be on the device. They go out and do the construction. And to close out the construction and collect the as-built information, they're on another app. And to collect the meter information or transformer information in kind of a more forms-based approach, they're on another app. So it's really at the end and at the closeout of that as-built-in process, you're seeing these users go on their iPad, go on their phone, close an app, open an app, log in, log off. And you're right on the different devices. I've even seen it to where some of their newer apps might be on their iPad. But that legacy app that's on the Toughbook inside the truck, they're actually having to go inside the truck, log in on that, and perform a bit of their work on a different device than they would otherwise. Yeah, that really would be a lot of work and a lot of challenging switching and juggling of devices to try to just get your work process done. What kind of capabilities would let field users access all of this relevant data and tasks assigned to them within a single application rather than having to juggle these different devices and different apps? It's really tailored around a single application that has an immense amount of interoperability. So the one place where, as from an IT perspective, it's connected to GIS, it's connected to EAM, it's connected to ADMS, we could jokingly go on with the other acronyms that it would be connected to. But from the field user's point of view, it's one unified application, one user experience, and they don't know that the data being served up is coming from five, six, seven different systems. Great. Well, thank you very much, as always, for the insights, Matt. We'll continue this conversation in the fourth part of the series where we discuss the lack of effective barcode and scanning tools for field teams performing as-built. Now, a clipping team with this functionality can accelerate their work and improve asset documentation.