Bihar Rajya Pul Nirman Nigam ( year: 2008 )

(BRPNN) is a government company entrusted with the development of bridges and roads in the state of Bihar, India. BRPNN successfully completed 193 bridge/ road projects in 2007-2008 alone.

Business Challenge

Quite often, BRPNN projects are located in remote areas where connectivity is sparse and uneven. Project updates and status reports were made mainly through verbal communication over mobile phones. Status reports and documentation of site progress and executed work could only be accessed and obtained after the supervisors got back to the head office. This resulted in delays and long intervals between project updates.

BRPNN executes bridge and roads construction projects all over the state and in areas with very less connectivity. Project status reports from such sites often comprised mainly verbal communication over mobile phones. Documented status reports and site progress photos could only be obtained when the supervisors returned to the head office which often added delays.

FieldReports Solution

Undertaking major infrastructure development work in predominantly underdeveloped areas of the state brought with it significant challenges that BRPNN was aware of and took it up as a challenge to overcome. The goal was to harmonize reporting across the field ensuring that supervisory staff could provide work reports quickly and easily.

In the year 2008, BRPNN chose FieldReports due to its ease-of-use, rapid time to deployment, service oriented architecture and proactive India based support system. The first deployment was on a trial basis at three remote divisions.

After comprehensively studying the usage patterns and reporting structure, FieldReports customized the solution for BRPNN and deployed it within a record period of just four days. Each Site supervisor was equipped with a Windows Mobile® 6.0 device ( yes, back in 2008, android wasn't that popular. ) which ran the mobile inspection application and was accordingly given training on mobile device and software usage. Subsequently in later years the system was migrated to android devices.

Outcomes

The transformation was apparent right from day one. Delighted with FieldReports features and usability, site supervisors started sending daily reports of work and activities, visibly increasing the transparency of the project progress at all the three divisions.

Project monitoring and progress reporting got an instant shot in the arm. FieldReports array of features extended beyond a simple form. Project progress reports were available immediately in the form of printable PDF documents populated with rich information including images of the work in progress and hand drawn illustrations. This helped significantly reduce documentation time and presented management a clear and transparent image of the project activities.

FieldReports helped BRPNN scale up on its project monitoring and reporting capabilities which resulted in it achieving its primary goal of quality compliance monitoring across its projects.