Take control of your construction programs and network operations.

Trish Ealers, Hello everyone and welcome to today's Fiber Broadband Association webinar, Building Better Networks Through Digital Construction Management presented by IQGeo. I'm Trish Ealers, Vice President of Membership, Industry Affairs and Operations for FBA. Please join Fiber Broadband Association for the first of our 2023 Regional Fiber Connect Workshops. This one will be held at the Raleigh North Hills Hilton in Raleigh, North Carolina on Tuesday, February 7th. You can find out more information about this event and the other regional events scheduled for 2023 on the FBA website under the events slash regional Fiber Connect page. Also, be sure to tune in to join us for the first of a new series, Where's the Money?, hosted by Gary Bolton, President and CEO of the FBA. with our sponsor Broadband.Money. This week's discussion on Intro to Matching Bead Funds with Jace Wilson and Mike Falloon of Broadband.Money will be held tomorrow, Wednesday, January 18th at 11 a.m. Eastern. Registration details are on the slide and they will be put in the chat for your benefit. Before we get started, a few housekeeping details. Everyone is in listen mode only. If you have a question, you can just submit it in the questions box on your control panel on the right side of your screen. We'll have it at the end of, we'll have time at the end for a Q&A session with our experts. Today's webinar will be available on the FBA website for members only under the events slash webinars tab within 24 hours. Also, don't forget to join us tomorrow again, Wednesday, January 18th, 2023 at 10 a.m. Eastern for Fiber for Breakfast, Making Britain Faster and What the U.S. Might Learn from the UK Fiber Gold Rush. This will be with Richard Sinclair, Chief Operations Officer at Zoom PLC, as he shares how the UK is a case study for the rest of the world, establishing key principles to remove customer complexity and improve business value. And now for today's webinar, IQ Geo's fiber expert, Jason Morton, will discuss how a digital construction management solution can provide critical project and ticket information on mobile devices and back office workstations, giving stakeholders the geospatial context they need to improve process productivity and enhance collaboration. Today, you'll learn how to take control of your construction programs and network operations, giving your staff and contractors the geospatial intelligence they need to get their jobs done right the first time. And now I would like to introduce you to our panelists. Jason Morton is a principal solutions architect for IQ Geo. He has 25 plus years of experience in the geospatial industry, working with global telecoms and utility customers. In his role with IQ Geo, Jason is responsible for preparing product demonstrations and consulting with customers on project requirements to solve business challenges. Welcome, Jason. Very glad to have you here today. Thank you. I am going to slide control of the screen over to you and let you take it from there. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Trish. And I'll start sharing my screen now. And I'll go through some quick slides and then head to the demo. When I start the demo, I'll turn my video off as well so that you can make sure you get the full screen and the full performance of the demo. But as mentioned, we're going to take a look at building better networks through digital construction management. What we're going to look at first is just to very briefly discuss what I've heard from many of our customers here at IQ Geo of what are the business challenges or problems that they're seeing. Probably the most prevalent is that they're seeing really chaotic amount of changes to the fiber network, especially additions, which is causing fiber records to be really difficult to get updated. It's very different for different contractors, different for different regions. And just after the after things get built, it's really difficult to get that to get that documented. But it's also difficult to get that work completed and fed into that process to try and resolve some of those aspects of a fiber record chaos. Contractors rely on PDFs and printing out things and spreadsheets and and those are not well integrated into the process. We're also hearing that there's a lot of complexity and performance issues around getting any type of digital system integrated with other back office systems out to the field and out to those contractors, the folks that are actually doing the work and collecting the and might need to collect the data, which caused a lot of a lot of different types of friction in different stages of the lifecycle. So we're going to take a look at how we might address some of those. And there was some questions up front and there'll be some more questions for that, I'm sure, that that reflects some of these some of these business problems as well. So to help us with that and help us build better networks, we want to look at how we can give customers the ability to to model different types of networks or or or different types of networks, even at the same time that are integrated together between different systems and data sources. So that you can have really a seamless integration between folks that are doing the work in the field and the office teams that are that are keeping track of things and doing design work and other aspects of keeping track of the network digital twin and keeping that up to date. And how different pieces of innovation can help our operators create those networks of the future and and and and and avoid some of those problems that we saw in the previous slide. We're going to specifically talk about FDTH today, but I think there's a lot of different construction processes that this could tie into specifically IQgeo works across all these different aspects, and we're going to zoom in on a couple of different aspects that are tied together by the network digital twin. We're not going to spend too much time on planning and design. We're not going to spend any time on sales and marketing and other other aspects here as well, including operations and maintenance later on in the process. What we are going to dig into is how do we enable these types of predictable rollouts in that in that digital world using that digital twin, but but it with specific we looking at the construction part of the process. There's there's there's a lot of steps that go into all four of those things. I'm going to zoom in on a couple of them here to kind of talk about construction management and some parallel activities that we won't cover in the webinar today, but but are still important to kind of keep in context. So I'm going to focus on this this slice of construction management within the workflow itself. This makes the assumption that we've already got some high level design and some low level design complete IQgeo has customers working in that space as well. But I'm going to kind of pick up the process part way through where we're already ready to start looking at things like permitting generating tickets and work breakdowns executing on those tickets and getting as built updates back from the field associated with ticket completion. That has to be fed back in the office for tracking. So there's always going to be this parallel process happening as well that I won't spend a lot of time on, although we'll have a couple of touch points that we'll mention during the demo around project management, because this is also very important to make sure that we have the right materials ordered approval process is happening, keeping up to date with things like material catalogs, inventories, etc. So I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to touch on a few of those, but I'm mainly going to focus on the things within the within the blue squiggle for construction management today. And specifically, I'm going to go through and look at how we create these types of construction tasks based on a network digital twin to assign tasks to contractors and other staff that need to do something in the field associated with the build process. Access that useful digital twin in the field. Access that useful digital twin in the field as you're documenting the milestones checklist and filling out forms that might be associated with all sorts of things test results completion, etc. And then documenting all those construction changes and being able to provide that critical new build project information back to the office any stakeholders anybody that needs to have kind of a singular view to improve their construction process speed productivity. And enhance that collaboration. So I'm going to drop off video and start sharing my screen. There we go. So in this case, I'm going to I'm going to pick up the process somewhat partway through as I mentioned earlier, and basically take a look at a view into a network digital twin coming out of a design process that's also showing us where we have existing facilities. So in a simple web browser, we can access a map view that contains existing plant type information could be outside plant could be some inside plant in here as well. And then where we have some design areas down here to the south, where we've got a new design called the land sea phase one. We can control all sorts of things as we go through that design process. I'm going to I've already got a design created here within that red polygon that says where we have proposed information and facilities based on a high level and then a low level design. High level designs could be very automated low level designs tend to be a little bit less automated as you're figuring out what exactly needs to be done at each customer location site etc. On the left hand side, we can see control over different layers of information we might need to be able to see at different view scales. So maybe at this view scale, we don't want to see addresses at another view scale. We might want to zoom in to start seeing specific fiber, wireless and other types of information. We can actually see where there's some orange lines here in that red polygon that that shows where we have some proposed facilities that are have that are planned to be built. We're also seeing layers on top of here for tickets that basically tell us where other types of work are happening around the organization. In this case, part of this design is already been sent out to construction crews to start working on for this particular part of the of this of the new subdivision. Other ones don't have any of those blue circles yet because I haven't progressed it and I'll do that during the demo here. The idea being is that we we might want to see an overall view of where work is happening with these little blue circles where there might be a single piece of work happening or cluster of work happening down here. Or there might be designs that are work. Other folks are working on that are not quite in the state yet. They were where that needs to be happening. So we're tracking those types of workflows associated with the work as well as visualizing all the different maps that you need to determine and make those decisions about those types of workflows. And of course, you can control and see other types of layers in here like satellite imagery or traffic or anything else that you might need to see at the time. I can I can I can search for facility information like a certain manhole or certain splice cabinet or things like that or I could search for a ticket in a variety of different ways and I'll touch on that briefly here as well. The exact same UI is going to be simplified and presented to field crews as well and I'll show that a little bit later on in on a mobile device. For now, I'm just kind of simulating what we would do for sitting in the office kind of kicking off this work. Some of that might be details we need to get from the design process where we might need to see that high level. How many homes are involved? This could be a small number of home or a large number of homes and we'll talk about that later on a little bit as well. In this case here, it's just just about 110 homes. You can of course have hyperlinks that are out to other systems or attachments that are associated with this design work. And you can also create construction projects here as well. And the idea here is that we have a configurable set of environment that lets you decide what you're going to see as a part of a design and what you're going to see as part of a construction project. A construction project is probably going to look a lot like other systems that you're integrated with today in terms of the basic questions that you might answer about a construction project like what's the name of it and what state is it in and who's working on it, etc. We can receive that from other systems or you can go through here and click and manually change things to make sure that it gets assigned to the right group or that it's a certain type of work. Because a lot of these tools are designed to work with construction, but maybe they could also be used for maintenance later on the process as well. And of course, the groups would be things like, is it our internal construction team? Is it a certain contractor that things are assigned to, etc. Once you set up those things and updated any associated files you need to have, etc. Then you can start to kick off the workflow for this particular part of the project. And I could have had a project that covered the whole design. I could have had a project that was smaller than this. And we'll talk about how projects and tickets or tasks within that project get related together. But the granularity is really up to you guys to decide in terms of the configuration work. And all that configuration work with IQ.geo is done within an easy to use web based environment to just not have to write any code in order to configure things. Not just for the process, but also for different types of networks within that digital twin. So it doesn't matter really to us whether it's a different type of architecture, etc. And whether the data we're going to look at a little bit later in the process is designed for network A versus network B. The idea being that you have this overall workflow that lets you map the large project construction management processes that need to be followed along with to assign things to multiple crews, regardless of the type of architecture or maybe based on the different type of architecture based on their skill sets. And you can have those multiple types of networks in a way that gives you an integrated solution between each one of the different stages that we talked about there earlier within that within that diagram. So I'm going to go ahead here and basically use a use a button here that's going to scan the contents of that design. So someone's already done that low level design work to decide. We can see it in orange here of where we're where we're planning to have overhead and underground facilities where we're planning to have manholes where we're planning to have splicing happening, etc. That's just been done in our in our GIs like package to design things in a simple layout. And then I'm going to scan that design by clicking auto create tickets here and then zoom in and out a little bit just to refresh it. And start to break down to see where we might have actual work locations that need to drive work that needs to happen within that project itself. That thing gives me the framework to start tracking the progress as well. Those tickets that are being generated within each of the blue dots are completely configurable for the granularity and the contents. All I'll talk about the contents here shortly, but first I'll comment on granularity, which is that you could have had a ticket just for this whole area or for a larger area or for a smaller area. It's really up to your workflows and other systems that you're integrated with to make sure that you're kind of just matching those processes that are in place already. You don't have to enforce a whole new business process here. The idea being that a ticket and a definition of a ticket and the size and the granularity of it might be different for different customers. So once I've created those tickets and I can see them on the map overlaid here, they're also linked to the facilities that we that we were seeing on the map, like stuff happening at this manhole or stuff happening at this manhole over here or in this transition from overhead to air underground. Those are then tracked as part of a progress summary. There won't be too much progress going on here yet. So you can just see, hey, we've got a bunch of different tickets of different types for things happening at utility boxes, a general ticket for all the splicing happening in that part of the design, and then some other QA QC work. We could have had other tickets for things like, hey, permitting has to happen or some linear things that have to happen like cable pole and things like that for underground facilities. Right now, none of that's been done because I just created the tickets. I can also view the tickets in a tabular view because this is nice to see these things on the map and to start the process of automatically creating all those tickets based on the things happening in the map. But a lot of times when we're executing on the work kind of in the middle where we're deciding who's going to do what work and dispatching that to different contractors and tracking the progress of it, it's not important until a little bit later in the process to again look at the map for red lines and as-built updates and other markup type work that has to happen. So for now, I'm going to switch into a tabular view here and down at the bottom, I've got other options where I can toggle back and forth between the map and a tabular view. And if I scroll down here to that area three, I can now see, hey, here's the here's the tickets that works was created for this particular area that I was looking at called area three. It's in a it's of a project of type construction. I could create more tickets here so I could say, you know what, I also need to do some permitting here. So I get these automated tickets created for me based on the contents of the design, but then I can add extra things into here as well. And of course, that list is all configurable, too. Within this tier of tickets, the first concept of tickets are really just very common things like what region am I working in and what type of ticket am I working on, as well as things like milestones that are happening along the process for each different type of ticket that are consistent regardless of whether I'm doing cable pulling or splicing or permitting or something different. So these things each have dates and time to get marked down on here when it was first created when it's due, which was derived from the project itself when I entered it. And then we'll also see more of this detail get filled in as I work each of these tickets. Like when was it assigned to someone and when was it changed to a status from someone in the field to say that, hey, they're on site working on it now or they're finished. So these help us with reporting and dashboards and everything else to have a common framework of tickets that we can look at. A ticket is it can be assigned, but it could also have follow up tickets created by it. And they're all track things like how long did folks work on a ticket to get things done. All this information is stored within a database. Traditionally, for a lot of our customers, these are stored in separate spreadsheets that get really difficult to manage by loading all these things into a standard high level data model that's configurable and then tracking them in the database. It enables us to keep track of all the hours and assignment changes and everything else that's happened associated with the ticket in one spot for our reporting and dashboarding and everything else that we might look at. In this case here, I could select one or more tickets. In this case, I'm going to pick one just to show some some basic examples of what you could do on a ticket. And on the left hand side, another screen flies in here that basically says, OK, well, I'll confirm that I'd wanted that assigned to the construction group. Maybe I want that assigned to a certain user who's going to see that in the field. And I could then say, well, the status is now assigned. These statuses are also configurable to say, well, what do you want to track for each different type of ticket? Do you care about when they get when they're on the way or just when they're on site or just when they're or just when folks are finished? These are all going to get filled in on the back end using the mobile tools, which work offline and get synchronized up automatically with these with the view that I'm looking at here. So I'm going to make some assignments here just for this ticket, or I could select multiple ones and select multiple tickets to assign to this particular user. So maybe I want all the utility box tickets to get assigned to a particular user to show up on their mobile device and update all those. They're going to get notice but notifications of it depending on how you have configured could be within the app could be a text could be an email. That's also all kind of, you know, customers get to decide what the right notification methodologies are. But these tickets now are assigned and when if we scroll over, we can see which group who they've been assigned to and when they got assigned to that user as well, as well as more information about when they maybe have confirmed that they've received it or anything else. But each one of those tickets also has details associated with it. So the detail of the ticket at a high level is the same, but maybe I need to ask certain questions doing work on utility boxes and different questions if I was doing work on splicing or cable pulling. And that's gets into what we call the ticket details over here in the left hand side. Those have automatically filled in some things, but they're also waiting on field crews to fill things in. So we don't want field crews to try and capture that on a PDF or a note or even an email. We want them to access this database on a mobile device so that they're contributing to that network digital twin without having to figure out how to enter all that data in later on. And the next step might be to provide them with the same map view that we've seen in the office here, or it might be to attach additional documents that they need to see. But we still want to transfer that all to them digitally to be able to have them work on things in a seamless integrated manner as a part of that workflow. So in this case, the ticket details are still pretty blank. There's no comments or photos. There's still a little bit of history. So we want to track the history associated with kind of what happened here. How did it get created to begin with and what's happened with this ticket over time? So we want to track that in the database as well. Also, it should be noted that when I make assignments to a ticket, certain folks are only going to see their tickets. So we often have contractors who are more like competitors to each other who are also working within the same districts within the same regions or even on similar jobs. So they'll get to see the tickets that have been assigned to them, but not tickets from another project that might be assigned to someone else. So I'll get to see it because I'm the administrator and the dispatcher. So I have an overall view of all the tickets that are coming in back here on my map view. I'm going to see all the tickets. But when I get out to the mobile device, I might not see the 13 over here, or I might not see some of the ones over here that are worked on by other contractors because we want them to have their own kind of independence and not see other folks work that might be a competitor that they would gain an advantage of by knowing that that competitor is behind schedule or ahead of schedule or anything else. So we want to make sure that data remains private based on your configuration of who can see what in order to do the job effectively and still contribute back to that digital twin that we're seeing here. So for now, though, I'm I've got my table. I've made my assignments and and and I've I'm going to switch over to a mobile device now to show what it looks like to receive some of these assignments often that mobile device. So if I do a quick switch over here to my mobile device, so now we're in the dashboard, which is a mobile view. If I was a supervisor on my mobile device, I could still go in and access the table and look at things in a tabular view where a bunch of tickets have been assigned to me within a project or I could go back to the map to see what things have been happening around within the map itself. I've been assigned the six new ones that appeared right away on my mobile device. Now, that's because I have this little green light down here means that I've got an Internet connection, which obviously I do because I'm talking to all you folks on the webinar. If I didn't have an Internet connection, this would turn red and I wouldn't see the ticket until I synchronized up. But once I have received my ticket, I could go offline and keep working. We know that a lot of these new areas, there's not great cellular or Wi-Fi coverage yet. So we need the ability to keep working to see the map, to see the tickets that have been assigned to us, even if we lose that Internet connection. We might lose some things like the Google traffic that I talked about earlier, but you're still going to see the core things that you need to do your job safely and efficiently to be able to see jobs and designs that have been assigned to you, to see the background data that's important to you, as well as to be able to even drill down and see more detailed information from the system of record and from the design. So as a field user, I could actually drill down and see what's going on in this manhole. So then we can see a hierarchical view. Your system of record might be different. The IQ Geo system of record lets you see all of the information and attributes associated with a manhole, but also lets you drill into a hierarchy to say, well, what was designed to be included in this manhole? How many splice trays did we think we were going to include? And where was the splitter going to be? And which splice trays were there for future expansion? And what's the cable connectivity look like? This is an orange because it's still in a design state, but I can see that when I'm in the field. But I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. Let's look at the assignments that have been made here as well. So we've received some assignments for things like the utility box work that was assigned to me from the office. Maybe I start with getting driving directions using this icon to go out to where this exact spot is within my area. Or maybe I need to go to the map to look at it. But I can see all the basic project and ticket information based on what's been assigned to me on the right hand side. And I can update this and say, hey, I'm now on site. And it's going to send an update back to the office, provided that I have an internet connection. If I don't have one, then it'll queue that up and wait until I do. And it will either automatically sync or for certain changes you can have the same number to sync right now. But I'm going to send any updates back there to the office as well. From there, we can fill out some data collection in the field. And it can happen at a couple of different levels. One is that you can just have users filling in forms. So maybe it's a contractor that hires some lower skilled labor that you don't necessarily need them interacting with your GIS map. So in that case, you can just click on this edit button here and start filling out forms to say that, okay, as I did that utility box work, it was for a small MDU. It was a manhole. And as I was working through it, it was through dirt. I buried it at a certain depth and it was lockable. And we can have other tabs that show other parts of this form in here. And this form is all configurable. So using that web based UI that I talked about earlier, that someone in the back office can make changes to these forms at any time. They'll synchronize up with the same as the ticket assignments did and the same as the data and form updates are going to send back to the office as well. So if I save that form, it's going to go ahead and save that. It'll also start to track that in my history. So they'll say, hey, here's what's been happening, right? This is when it was assigned. This is when I was on site. And then I updated a form in here as well. Or maybe I need to start taking some photos that I need to be able to either upload from my device or to take a picture right from here as well. And you can, of course, add as many photos as you need to there as well. It'll bundle that up within the project and with the ticket that's been assigned. So it can be used for progress reports to update the system of record. To keep track of all that data. So it's not just residing as a bunch of loose files and emails and things like that. And of course, we could collaborate with that and say, maybe that needs to be assigned to be assigned to someone else. Or maybe I need to go in and add some comments in here about things that need to get done. And that'll be attached associated with all the comments and things like that that happen within that ticket, which is also linked to the overall project as well. So different types of tickets that might be assigned are going to have different types of forms. So if I was doing splicing instead, then I get a different type of form. If I was doing QAQC work or a site inspection, then I might get more or different forms that had to be filled out. But this way you can keep track of that all. And those forms will also be sent back into the office that can be synced up with data fields that need to be filled in with the system of record or just things that you want to keep track in the database. So you can go back and either report on things or hold folks accountable or update processes later on as well. But this gives us that one kind of single pane of glass into all the work that's happening associated with that ticket within the project. Now, some of these things you might have more advanced users who want to interact more with that map as well. So then you could go back and just like I did before, select things. I could go into a markup mode and add red lines. I could also go into modes where I'm actually putting in full corrections of, hey, this is what we actually built. These are actual structures and equipment we actually built versus just confirming the ones that were designed and building it as designed. So you've got the ability to either confirm the facilities that you built them as designed or to go in and drop in red lines to say, hey, we actually just built this a little bit farther to the south. Or you might have more advanced users that are going to go into more of a design fix mode and access a palette that enables them to capture the actual conduit information, all of the information associated with the customer location and enter that right in from the map base view as well, which is also going to be attached to the project and the tickets that we were working on before. So if we swapped out a different wall box, we could click the edit button here and say, hey, we used a different spec for a different wall box. Or if it was in a different location, I could edit that geometry and move it somewhere else or add a red line with an arrow. So we want to be able to do all that as part of that digital workflow so that we're getting the folks who are in the field who really know best about what actually got connected to what, what got spliced which way, what got built which way. And to be able to use a mobile device that is easy to use and intuitive, just like you were picking up your phone and using Waze or Google Maps or your favorite navigation system. So we're going to have to have the buttons and the user experience be as simple as that so that you don't have to figure out, well, how do I get this off of that piece of paper that was done three states away from me in a different region. It's all going to be captured digitally and ready to be promoted and approved into your system of record as part of that design workflow. At the same time, of course, we're going to be tied in with that project management workflow as well. And all those concepts of tickets and projects give you the capabilities to link into project management systems like those from IQ. Geo, as well as other ones available on the market to then provide updates to say, well, how much did we get done and what materials did we use? Those can be reflected in the forms or on the map based editors that we saw there earlier as well. So regardless of the type of architecture, this gives you the ability to model and display that for field crews to work on and for the office users to have created tickets based on, hey, here's the assignments that we need to make to make sure that we're having integration through the whole workflow between the plan into the construction process and reporting on things like as built, closeout, et cetera. And also some of the reporting things once I get back into the office here next as well. But this then lets you manage these large construction projects and take tickets that in my case, I'm only seeing the tickets that are assigned to me. But you could have had multiple construction crews operating around the city that essentially are all going to then synchronize back to the office, even though I'm just working on my mobile device. By the way, we also try and make sure with IQ Geo that any of these mobile devices are going to work. So we don't know necessarily whether the contractor is going to bring an iOS and Android or Windows device. They might want to use it within a web browser versus within an app. All that we want to make sure is the same user experience, the same simple dashboard, the same simple map based view to be able to collect data. And some of these, especially things on the dashboard, work very well just on a smaller real estate device like a phone. Now the map ones are a little bit tougher on a phone just trying to fit in all the real estate that you need to get that work done. But you can have folks who just have a phone because they couldn't find their iPad or they forgot it that day. They can still access things on their on their handheld phone and be able to still update the forms that we saw here as well to fill out the drop things in the drop down list and everything else that went along with filling out the form with this particular ticket and then move on to your next ticket. To say, OK, well, I was also assigned this other ticket while I was out here for some QAQC work. And I'm going to start on that now to check some other users work as well. So I'm going to say that one I'm on site as well. Oh, I forgot to complete this one. So maybe I'll go back to this ticket and say, hey, I was done this one. So it's field complete and update that status. You can have more automation built into that as well. And by the way, it's also tracking time here, too. So the idea is that I've got a shift and I've got some hours tracking that's going to be logged with this. Now, the user is not hitting the face with that. They don't have an extra an extra field to fill out in the data. All they did was log into the system and start their shift, which happened back here on the settings tab. But once you started your shift, it'll just keep track of how much time that you are going to spend on each individual ticket as well. So we can use that in our reporting to help measure not just completion, but also things like efficiency. All right. So we've done a lot of good work in the field. And if we scroll down here, I should probably update some of these other ones that came in from area three that we were working on. So I'm going to field complete a couple more of these just so that we've got more interesting things within our within our report that we're looking at. So let's do some complete this guy here as well. But this one I'm going to leave to say that one I'm still working on. You know, we had some issues, you know, started rain, got dark, whatever. We're still we're still on site for this one for tomorrow. We'll know where to pick up on that one for tomorrow, but we'll communicate the completion of these other tickets down here based on that. Of course, I should have mentioned as well that with these forms, you can also have mandatory fields so that tickets can't be completed until certain data is filled in. And then that is then going to help you reflect and make sure you get the critical data that you need to update that digital twin back in the office. So I've updated a few of those things. I'm going to fly back to the office here now and I'm going to force a quick refresh. It's going to refresh for me eventually anyways, but I'm going to force a refresh here anyways to make sure that we get all the information right away. So here's those tickets that I very quickly updated right at the bottom. I can see the one that is still on site when they started the work and I can also see when this ticket was completed for field completion. I can click through and see under the ticket details any of the forms that were filled out associated with that work. I can see the comments. I can see the history and all the photos that were uploaded as well when I'm back here in the office. And then as I scroll over, you can see more of this. These kind of dates and times got filled in to say, well, this is the amount of time it took from assignment to field completion or so basically logging all that kind of high level common ticket information that you might need to drive those reports and completions and things like that. And there's a we can, of course, now use this to make more assignments or less assignments based on what's happening. This tends to be a fairly simple ticket based assignment process. We're not so concerned about ticket load and the schedule within someone's day. You know, most contractors aren't necessarily sharing that with us at the at the at the fiber company. So we're just going to make those assignments of the tickets and complete how they're and track how the completion is going and then report on it in a couple of different ways. If you remember, we were looking at the start at a view of these construction projects. Right. So I can go through here to these projects and go back and find area three. I could have put a bookmark. I could run a query. I could even share that with other users, share that as a text or an email. Or if I was back on that mobile device, even share it as a QR code to say, hey, why don't you look at the progress and what's happening here on area three? Right. And then I click through the progress summary and based on the only I've only completed those two tickets. I didn't have any of the linear kind of feature ones for cable pulling and conduit build assigned to me yet. But based on just what I've done for the utility boxes, we're at about 33 percent completion. We get a list of the tickets that are maybe behind schedule down here. But this gives us a high level view. And of course, you could access those same types of data from within the database. At IQ Geo, we use a Postgres database, which is an open source database that you can point your favorite reporting tool, your favorite dashboard or GIS tool to and look at data from there as well. So a big part of that network digital twin is making sure that the data both for the asset information that we're laying out in the design and in the as built, as well as all of the ticket information is not locked away in some sort of proprietary system that you can only get to through a complicated API by hiring a high priced developer. We put that into an open source database so anybody could go in and point click as long as you, of course, have security access to it. So not anybody can. But you have to have a login and password, et cetera. But anyone with a with a with a skill set and the password can get in and run reports against these things. If you don't want to design your own reports, you can also go to the settings tab and go to reports. This is also where you do things like configure what users are within what what region and what and what roles they have and who's their supervisor. And what's their contact information and what hours do they work so that we can track regular hours versus overtime if you need to. But also up here on the reporting tab, you can basically go through and say, well, I want to see all my tickets based on by all the ticket information that we have and pick different formats for the report to pick different date ranges that you might want to go through and to decide, hey, you know what? I don't actually care about work that I'm doing around around break fix or truck checks or PPE checks. I'm going to exclude those from this report, but I am going to include the hours of the tech actually worked on it. And then I can find a report based on a on all the tickets happening. I could have also done tickets within a certain project that I was working on or tickets of a certain type. How's all my cabinet installs going? How's all my splicing going? Etc. So we can have all that different types of ticket information reported from here or from again your favorite reporting tool since since we're putting things into an open source accessible database that other people in the organization can access. So I could I could share that link with anyone within the organization, either on a mobile device or sitting in the office just through a web browser like I'm looking at things here. And of course, I'm receiving changes back in through the table and then I can pass things into the next stage of the process. So once we're from field complete, we might go all the way back to this design that we started out here and assign that to another user in a different state to say that, you know, we're we're we're we're done it and we're ready for as well updates that have been received from the field digitally. So they can then go through and do approvals and then say when the as build updates have been complete. But a big part of this is really just making sure that that people aren't drawing things multiple times, you know, whether it's on the map or filling out things on the form. Let's do that data entry once and then have it digitally flow through that entire construction process without having to have a whole bunch of manual steps in there and have integration that that drives that in a digital fashion to really power that the us to build those better networks. Before I get into questions, I have one more slide to cover just to talk about what we kind of covered here in the demonstration. So we looked at how we could have this end to end real time project progress view because we're getting that interactive digital input from the field, whether it's on the ticket process or whether it's on things that are happening within the map. So that really lets us accelerate the engineering and construction timelines because we're not just sitting around waiting for these things to get sent to us or for somebody to scan it in or update a PDF or or figure out which of the 18 different spreadsheets that they're working with. We've got it all in the database and one workflow that also helps us to improve that efficiency of the construction crews and our own work internally as well as the safety and getting getting us things out to the market faster as well. But we're still keeping that kind of competitive vendor environment and helping them to hopefully drive cost reduction that will help us to save money in these many fiber builds that we're going through here as well. All right. So with that, I think we're going to be into the next stage of this webinar into the questions. So I'm going to stop sharing my screen and go back to my video and also check on the chat about what's been what's been going on in the chat as well. Great. Thanks, Jason. This is Crawford Frazier. I'm joining Jason from IQ Geo, and I'm going to give him a hand with these questions that have come in so far. So thanks to all of you who have submitted some. We have a handful that we are grouping as kind of tangential to the construction process. So, Jason, I'm going to read those four for you kind of as a group. So number one is I'd like to understand how to automate FTTX planning and design, as well as how that interacts with other applications. The second one is how do I get trained in fiber planning tools such as IQ Geo, GIS, OSPI, OSP Insight. Can you show facilities where other connections and assets might exist? And then fourth, can you create a digital twin for telco networks, which we have talked about a bit. So, Jason, I'll turn it over to you. Yeah, thanks, Crawford. As I mentioned, we kind of zoomed in on the on the construction management process. IQ Geo, though, has has has tools for automated fiber planning. We also have tools for that low level design that helps you with with the design process. And right at the start, when I kicked off the demo, I was using those as the input for automatically creating all those different types of tickets. So check out the IQ Geo website and check out future webinars as well with the with the fiber broadband association to see how IQ Geo is is managing that in combination with that that that digital twin, that network digital twin, as we call it, to help us help us make sure we're getting all those all those things out of the design process and then back in at the at the back end of this construction process. Yeah, great. And we have had a few other questions come in. I think these are more related to the demo that Jason showed, but we want to make sure that your questions were answered adequately. So, Jason, the first one is how can I add multiple networks? Yeah, it's a great question. And one of the important things, whether it's your system of record or a design tool, what we've seen from all of our customers is making sure that you can't you're not just modeling today's networks, that you're that you're able to change the model to change to support different architectures. But then standardize and hand things off into that construction management process. So whether it's it's a it's a it's a it's a it's any type of fiber network that we're working with today from any of the different vendors or whether it's one that we that that is going to come out in a year from now. Having a configurable environment that really lets you model anything, any type of network is key because we don't want the construction process to slow down just because we're coming out with a whole different type of network that we're going to change to a different architecture. The basic processes of how we're interacting with the contractors generally stays the same. So we just make sure that during the design and and and network digital twin process that we actually have a configurable environment that lets us add those new types of models or work with multiple models in different parts of the city. As I was zooming around in my demo area there, you could probably see some different types of architectures and that's that's all still available to transition through the construction process that we're talking about today. Thanks. The next one we have is I'd like to see an example of a large construction, a large project construction management, and that would be something like multiple construction crews operate operating around the city. Yeah, absolutely. And and and and it was something that I got into a little bit. We just looked at where you had 110 homes, but you also saw to the west where there was another design with another big chunk of homes. And the way that we think of it is that you've got projects which have to be aligned with project management tool. But within that, you need the ability to break things up at the granularity that you want to be able to have tickets that can be assigned to different construction crews operating around your or your region. That way we can really help to scale up the activities that are happening and track across all those different vendors that are that are helping us with the large with large construction projects. All right. And then we have one last question. So that is explain the solution integration between route plan construction progress reporting to the as built and close out project phases. Yeah. And hopefully that ended up coming out in the demo that, you know, this this this this digital approach that we're that we're talking about here, you know, that it's it's so critical to have. That actual integration and not just a swivel chair, not just sending files around, but to have actual integration that runs between different stages of the workflow between each of those. Plus, the other ones that I outlined to to really seamlessly integrate in between all those different phases and having a tool like IQ geo that can that can integrate both based on open source standards, but also offers a lot of functionality and configure configure configure, configure configure ability. I think that's critical to helping us build those better better network. Let me see. There was a question about importing shape files. This is a great question. You know, customers often have GIS packages out there like in small world and IQ geo, where you want to be able to look at data from other sources, import and export CAD data, etc. And with our open source approach, you can use standard tools like QGIS and FME to be able to import and export the files that you need, because we want to make sure that you've kind of got all the data participating in that digital workflow for digital construction management. It also helps you see the power, water and other utilities that you have around there just as a different layer. So you could see that on the iPad or you could see that in the in the in the in the ticket view that I was sitting in the office, connecting up to web services or importing shape files or CAD files, things like that. So so all that is easy to add in with with with IQ geo, as well as on the back end, producing things like PDFs and construction prints using using tools that you're comfortable with already from CAD and QGIS and other platforms like that. And so I just noticed that question came in as well, Crawford, so I'm sorry that I interrupted you there. No, I apologize. I'm having a little bit of trouble with my viewer. So that's I see that there are some in there, but I can't quite read them all. There's another one in there about managing revisions to designs once construction has started. And this is something that is really helpful when you have that that that digital integration, because you can also create feedback loops. We see this as well as part of the planning, automated planning process up front, where you have a visit to the field and collect some data and then you want to go in and rerun the design as well. So having kind of managing the revisions to the designs and looping back based on a walkout up front, as opposed to just an as built at the back end that I showed is another is another big part of of this of this type of approach as well. So thanks for asking that question. Yeah, Jason, I do see one now that says, how would IQ geo be used during the design process? Yeah, so that's probably a whole other webinar. But but IQ geo offers the tools either in the office or in the field to do low level design that is either from scratch or that comes in from an automated tool like our Comsoft product. So the idea being that that that that we make sure that we provide automated, semi automated and manual design tools to be able to actually create that design that I kicked off the process with. And we saw some of it with that orange line work that was on the map where the design was was was already done with an IQ geo. But but yeah, we try and try and simplify that. When I didn't answer yet was about compatibility. Of this program with all other ticket and task management platforms. Yeah. You know, it's rare that a customer will come in and say, OK, well, IQ geo. Why don't you revamp all of my project and ticket management functionality? So at every at every customer, we end up having integration based on our open source techniques, standard APIs from REST, JavaScript and other ones to make sure that we might be receiving tickets. You may not have noticed it in the in the dispatch view of all the tickets. But one of the columns in there was a source system. So just kind of tracking where the ticket came from, it could be from Utilisphere Earth, it could be from JIRA or Rev.io to be able, you know, we want to make sure that, yeah, there might be tickets that are coming in as part of the from the design, as I showed, automatically created. But there might also be tickets of different types for the same or different projects that are that are coming from some other ticket process. And we want to be able to participate in the in the process and the in that digital process for platforms that you already have in place as well. So IQ geo includes a bunch of API touch points that enable you to have that, as well as our open source database approach that lets other systems reach in and pull out things like the status or information about how things were actually built, et cetera, from from from from those other systems. Great, thanks. And it looks like we are down to five minutes before the end of our time. So we want to make sure everyone has a chance to get back to what you need to do next. Thank you very much for attending, though. And thank you, FBA, for hosting us. We appreciate the partnership. If you have any additional questions, please contact the FBA and we'll do our best to answer. Thanks a lot. Great. Thank you, Crawford. Thanks, Jason. We appreciate everyone joining joining us today. And don't forget to turn in to FBA for breakfast tomorrow morning and where's the money tomorrow afternoon. So thanks so much and we'll see you soon. Take care. Bye bye.