Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/62129
Stretching from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, its landscape contains an abundance of attri- butes, including highlands, lowlands, plains, prairies, bluffs, dense forests and tens of thousands of glacial lakes. Managing a workforce throughout this vast, 65,500-square-mile area, can pose a problem to even the best communicators. For Midwest Contract Operations Inc. (MCO), this realization sparked action. MCO operates industrial and municipal water, wastewater, and public-works facilities for villages, cities and towns throughout Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. To access and share location-based asset-information data over such a large geographic footprint, it's critical to have workflows that are adaptable and, most importantly, mobile. S The Trend to Wireless Integration With operators and staff dispersed across such a wide area, the time lapse between performing maintenance in the field and entering maintenance records back in the office often led to data-entry errors and inaccurate records related to critical assets. MCO had a real need to improve collaboration among its staff and increase efficiency among maintenance operations. Becoming more mobile was critical. Traditionally, MCO field staff relied on GPS units and ruggedized laptop devices to maintain connectivity, but many mobile-workforce options exist with today's tech- nology enhancements. High-accuracy GPS units loaded with Windows CE (now officially known as Windows Embedded Compact) can run highly accurate data- viewing and collection applications such as ArcGIS Mobile, ArcPad and many other field-data-collection software programs. Many GIS users also rely on rug- ged laptops, such as Toughbooks, loaded with some of the common desktop-based GIS packages. Typically, desktop-based software packages don't translate well into mobile-workforce solutions. The rea- soning usually relates to end-user frustration and lack of technical knowledge from field workers. Common remarks from field workers can include descriptions Mobility/GPS Special Issue ituated in the north-central part of the United States, Wisconsin is shaped by a wide vari- ety of geographical and geological features. such as "too slow," "too cumbersome," "not user friendly," etc. In addition, desktop applications usually mean dis- connected editing and storing large amounts of data on a laptop. This can be problematic, because data updates aren't reconciled in real time, causing gaps in data accuracy. Also, the risk of damaging comput- ers and potentially losing critical data can wipe out a good day's work. Because of these reasons and a few others (including the ability to have a single device for all mobile-workforce needs), a shift is occurring in business trends. On the Phone Many organizations are trending away from laptops and relying more on smartphones and customized applica- tions for the iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Android platforms to improve workflow. MCO leaders saw this trend occurring and recognized the benefits these technologies had to offer. An MCO operator works on a pump in the field. APRIL 2O12 / WWW . GEOPLA CE . COM 23