Boston, MA, (June, 2015) — Mobilengine, “the complete end to end mobility solution for your enterprise”, announced that UK based construction firm McGee Group will be featuring Mobilengine NFC inspection tags on its truck fleet. This is a continuation of a partnership that began last year and was highlighted by an award from the Construction Health and Safety Group (CHSG) this spring for this organizations’ use of innovative mobile applications. The McGee and Mobilengine team was presented with the Commended Award for the development of two innovative mobile applications that automate and digitize McGee’s site safety inspections and daily vehicle inspections.
John McGee, Director, said: “The Construction Industry as a whole is challenged by the significant number of paper-based forms, reports and other documents that have to be processed on a daily basis. We therefore decided to develop a series of bespoke mobile applications to enhance daily vehicle inspections and site safety inspections to revolutionize time consuming paper-based systems by ‘going digital’ and above and beyond the minimum requirements of law in relation to vehicle and road safety. The main goal is to fully mobilize a number of company processes and to merge several different management tools into one single application for enhanced safety, improved workflow safety and more visible and controllable processes.”
“With Mobilengine’s mobile technology know-how and McGee’s industry expertise, a solution has been created that enables McGee to enhance site safety and vehicle and road safety.” says Michael Kelly, McGee Group’s Head of IT. We could not have done this without our partnership with Mobilengine and their innovative solutions.” Mobilengine was uniquely positioned to help McGee as they specialize in helping companies create apps that mimic their business processes perfectly in order to improve them.
Revolutionizing Vehicle Inspections
Using an Android smart phone or tablet, McGee truck drivers inspect their vehicle using a new and bespoke vehicle inspection app using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. By carrying out a 360° vehicle walk around and by scanning their device against their vehicle’s NFC tags, the technology automatically records the vehicle registration and location, whilst any vehicle defects can be noted down by the driver. Each vehicle is fitted with four NFC tags which are located on the front, near-side, off-side and inside the cab. An additional two tags are fitted to vehicles with trailers.
If the driver reports a vehicle defect when carrying an inspection, it will reach the Workshop Manager within a matter of seconds and the issue can be actioned accordingly. If there are no defects to report, the driver simply signs to say the vehicle has been checked and will ‘save and submit’ the report. Should the report need to be referred to later, it is available to view in PDF format, via McGee’s Content Management system, or in an email to the driver.
Commenting on the NFC technology, John Kelly, Group Transport Manager, said: “The initial testing of the Vehicle Inspection app is now complete and have now rolled out the app to all of our HGV Fleet. It is remarkable how NFC technology is helping to transform the way we carry out daily vehicle inspections. All our drivers will be able to capture their vehicle’s data by simply scanning their phone against a number of NFC tags which are fitted to the vehicle. With the introduction of this technology, drivers are prompted of everything they need to check; ensuring vehicle and road safety.”
Enhancing Site Safety Inspections
Safety Managers conduct all necessary safety inspections on Android devices. While going through a comprehensive list of items to check, they rate every item in a scale of 4 (from -2, to 1). If the rating is below zero, the Safety Managers add comments and take photos of the problematic area/item. Moreover, they define the recommended action for the Site Manager and set the deadline of its completion for each item.
After saving and submitting this digital form, a PDF report is generated automatically – including all the findings of the inspection. These results are saved retrospectively and warnings are automatically transferred to relevant managers for resolution. Once resolved, the managers record their actions and close-out the issues.
John Hennessy, Director of Health & Safety said: “Due to the straight-forward digital
forms, photo taking feature and the NFC technology, the system has helped to speed up the resolution time of safety issues since we started using the app.”
The Future
McGee’s advancements in mobile technology don’t stop here. Mobilengine is also assisting with customizing and automating other complicated, unstructured paper-based processes so that Safety and Site Management Teams, Drivers and Workshop Managers can focus on the job in hand instead of administering time consuming paper-based processes. Every case and transaction is recorded, therefore traceable and auditable.
“McGee is an exciting client” adds Adam Dalnoki, CEO of Mobilengine, “as we are together digitizing every single activity on their construction sites. The goal is to be 100% paperless, everything on tablets. We are putting, one by one, each workflow on the Mobilengine platform and piloting it. The Mobilengine platform, as a service, enables complex customization for McGee with super fast development time.”
“We congratulate McGee for their 2015 CHSG Award and their commitment to preventing accidents in the construction industry.” said Adam Dalnoki, CEO, Mobilengine. “In the opinion of the distinguished judges, McGee Group Ltd has proven to be among the best construction and specialist contractors on the market, committed to innovation and the safety of its workers. I look forward to continuing a long and successful partnership with McGee Group.”
Learn More About Mobile Vehicle Inspection
Adam Dalnoki, Mobilengine’s CEO, brings IT and telecommunications expertise as an ex BCG consultant. He made a previous exit in a mobile payment start up and has held sales executive positions at Provimi and Kraft Foods.