Survey analysis and document management for a construction company

Our client is a global leader in building critical infrastructure in the energy, water, telecommunications, and government industries. One of its major construction projects is located in the United Kingdom, where construction is subject to a number of laws, including those related to environment and sustainability. One of such laws protects bats as an endangered mammal and obliges development companies to minimize a negative impact on bats residing in the construction area.

According to the UK regulations, development companies should prevent avoidable impacts resulting from significant alterations to the immediate landscape during the pre-construction (site clearance) and construction phases. To this end, a company should contract a team of surveyors (bat researchers) to conduct a bat roost potential survey on all impacted trees on the construction site.

The bat researchers were contracted from outside of the organization and used the SurveyMonkey app to fill out surveys. However, the application didn’t allow collecting all the necessary data, such as photos, sound recordings of bats, surveyors’ working hours, etc. It was also difficult for the company management to track the survey status and expenses.

The team at EffectiveSoft was chosen to develop a web application (dashboard) for structuring, validating, and storing the data collected by surveyors as well as for managing other company documentation.

Our team developed a web application that allows our client to view full-featured survey reports and store other company documentation in one place. The software solution made it easier to work with documents and effectively manage processes and resources.

The solution consists of two big modules:

• Third-party documentation — to manage surveys on bat roost potential trees: dashboard for surveyors and QAs, dashboard for admins and company management.
• In-house documentation — to organize company documentation.

Third-party documentation management

This module is used by surveyors, QA specialists and admins who coordinate the work and cooperate with surveyors. Our team created two dashboard panels. Both dashboards look the same, but the admin panel, which is intended for the admin and the company’s management bodies, possesses greater functionality.

A dashboard for surveyors and QAs

All the information related to researchers and surveys, such as inspection reports, audit status and expense reports, is stored in this module. The surveyor starts drafting an inspection report by completing the SurveyMonkey questionnaire. This data automatically syncs with the web app. Additional information, such as the accurate location of inspected trees, their photos, and bat recordings, can be uploaded directly into the dashboard.

Dashboard for admins and company management

In the Admin panel, the following information can be viewed and edited:

• survey details;
• status of surveys being in audit;
• information about bat researchers;
• timesheet and survey-related expenses.

In-house documentation management

The documentation management (DM) module helps to structure the company’s documentation and provides intelligent searching, indexing, and data management. Electronic versions of documents integrated into the DM module reduce the amount of paper in the office and speed up the document flow.

This module comprises two sections:

• Documents — to organize and view internal documents of the company in a tree structure.
• Report — to view, download, and export internal company reports to Excel.