Business opportunity
ATCO is a leader in building gas pipelines for residential subdivisions in Alberta, Canada. In maintaining its own infrastructure, the company is committed to providing future residents with the foundations of uninterrupted service. The company operates its own fleet of mobile cranes to support construction at many concurrently active job sites in Alberta. Each day, the heavy equipment team must perform a multi-point inspection of the cranes before they can be used. The team also must verify each crane’s capacity and readiness to bear the loads planned for each day’s work.
Previously, the company kept records of inspections in paper logbooks stored in cabs of trucks that transport the cranes. The team had to manually perform load calculations based on equipment specifications and engineering requests for use. Both processes were subject to human error. Also, since supervisors had to physically visit all job sites to verify inspections had been performed prior to work, there were risks of work delays.
If the company could digitize inspections and automate load calculations, ATCO could significantly reduce human errors with both, increasing safety at job sites.
Technical challenge
ATCO’s construction sites have inconsistent connectivity. With as many as 70 inspectors traveling between more than 50 locations, the team needed a mobile solution that could function online and offline. Further, to safeguard data integrity, any solution would also require user access controls over a range of functions.
Our solution
Together, ATCO and Kyndryl designed and Kyndryl built a mobile and desktop app for crane inspections. To accommodate for patchy connectivity, the app was created to be fully functional in offline mode, automatically synchronizing data when connection becomes available. In case inspections reveal needed repairs, maintenance and service requests (including images) are immediately relayed to engineering teams for work, reducing downtime of the equipment, which costs $500/hour. To reduce time in inspections, the app provides checklists tailored to each crane model. Crews have efficient, secure, and consistent access to data centrally stored in Microsoft Azure, streamlining crane-related preparations. Supervisors can remotely review status details, make notes, and sign-off when ready.
The power of partnership
The team developed the application for ATCO using the Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft Azure, and Power Automate Flows, which handles the business processes and notifications for the crane inspections and maintenance activity. The application combined those technologies to drive efficiency and increase safety in daily ATCO work site operations.
What progress looks like
By digitalizing crane inspections and work site load calculations, ATCO has increased safety and efficiency at their job sites.
- Reduced the risk of manual error with guided checklists for inspections and automated load calculations.
- 20% increased efficiency of daily inspections reduces expensive work delays.
- 100% data availability and backup.
- Elimination of paper and printing supplies contribute to ESG goals.
