Introduction
A lot has to happen on your site all the time. Setting up a WhatsApp group to communicate with your technicians is one way to manage that, but it's not very structured. Try tracking how much work your team managed to do over the past year or what types of issues are popping up most often. You need digitalisation for that!
Digital punch lists
A digital punch list is one of the key tools to manage on-site issues efficiently. It collects fieldwork as a collection of items with a geographical location. This way, you can easily locate the work on-site.
Furthermore, these items can be linked to elements from your digital twin. Examples are items to resolve a thermal anomaly or items that must address a specific module, structure, or pile.
Before continuing, we would recommend that you check out this support article to learn how to create Punch Lists in the platform.
Capturing issues in the field
A punch list is great, but you can't tackle issues without knowing what they are. One of the main sources for that information is on-site personnel. They're actively working on-site and can thus easily spot a range of problems. There are typically two things that can happen when they identify an issue:
They know exactly what the issue is and can solve it immediately.
The issue can't be solved immediately and must be scheduled for later.
In both cases, it's valuable to digitalise the issue. Even if you solve an issue immediately, it's useful to log what the issue was and what was done to fix it. This way, you can analyse which issues pop up most often and what might be causing that.
Whenever you're in the field and spot an issue, you can easily create a new task in the Field Link by using the Create Task button on the bottom left of the screen. Add a clear description to explain the issue, then accurately position it on the map by dragging it underneath the crosshairs.
Once you've created the item, you can add additional information, like images, videos, comments, etc., to highlight the issue and what you might have done to fix it.
Spotting issues from in the office
Even though the field is an important information source, drone imagery allows you to spot issues that can't be seen from the ground.
During the construction phase, for example, you can easily spot deviations from a design by comparing the latest state of the project with CAD overlays, shown below.
Here's an example of a site in the early phase of construction. Trenches were dug before piling happened. A comparison with the CAD overlay indicates that some of the piles would end up in the trench, cutting the cables further down the line. Note that you can perform similar comparisons in the field with the Field Link, as overlays are also available there.
During the O&M phase, you can spot issues through thermal inspections. They can require on-site repairs or further investigation.
To learn more about tackling thermal anomalies in the field, you can check out this support article.
Managing work from the office
The great thing about a digital punch list is that you can oversee the work your entire team is doing from your office. You can see what issues have popped up, schedule open items, and perform in-depth analysis to reduce future issues.
To view the tasks of a site, you can open any operation on that site. The layer manager on the right contains a Tasks layer. They're represented as pins on the map, where the colours indicate the item's status.
When you open up an item, you'll find the same information as you'll find in the Field Link.
For more information on tasks we recommend that you check out this support article.