New cooperation: Tracking supply networks

Col­lect­ing last­ing knowl­edge about con­struc­tion mea­sures — that is the goal of the part­ner­ship between Vaira UG and Berthold Beck­er Büro. The coop­er­a­tion aims to com­bine the col­lec­tion of new doc­u­men­ta­tion data with exist­ing knowl­edge about pre­vi­ous con­struc­tion sites.

Whether elec­tric­i­ty, gas or fiber optics: no one wants cables to be dam­aged dur­ing con­struc­tion work in their own street. To ensure the safe­ty of exist­ing cables and pipes, among oth­er things, there is a doc­u­men­ta­tion oblig­a­tion for all dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works in Ger­many. Pipe and cable routes must be mea­sured and their loca­tion pre­cise­ly doc­u­ment­ed direct­ly when they are laid. The oper­a­tors of the respec­tive net­work are oblig­ed to be able to pro­vide infor­ma­tion about the pipeline at all times.

Up to now, this doc­u­men­ta­tion has most­ly been done by hand. Equipped with a piece of paper and a pen­cil, installers mea­sure their con­struc­tion work by tape. The sketch is lat­er drawn in and then man­u­al­ly trans­ferred to a dig­i­tal sys­tem of the net­work oper­a­tor. This is where the data is stored — but res­i­dents, com­pa­nies and future home builders usu­al­ly don’t know which lines from which oper­a­tors are locat­ed in the streets. The result? Often tedious research.

“This is where we come in. Net­work oper­a­tors can enter where they have built net­works on our localexpert24 plat­form. For future con­struc­tion mea­sures, there is then a notice at the cor­re­spond­ing street about all the pipes and cables that have been laid. Pho­tos, videos and oth­er infor­ma­tion can be stored. This means that con­struc­tion com­pa­nies, oth­er net­work sup­pli­ers and pri­vate house builders can find out with just a few clicks which net­work oper­a­tors they need to con­tact for fur­ther information.”

- Markus Beck­er, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Berthold Beck­er Büro 

Advanced data is a hob­by­horse of the UG. With its epony­mous plat­form, the com­pa­ny is devel­op­ing a com­mon, dig­i­tal work­ing envi­ron­ment for net­work oper­a­tors and con­struc­tion com­pa­nies. Con­struc­tion crews can be con­trolled, work rou­tines dig­i­tal­ly mapped, opti­mized and in some cas­es ful­ly auto­mat­ed via the plat­form. Installers can enter all doc­u­men­ta­tion data direct­ly on their smart­phones using dig­i­tal forms. The sys­tem auto­mat­i­cal­ly trans­fers the data to oth­er process par­tic­i­pants. One high­light is sur­vey­ing via aug­ment­ed real­i­ty with the smartphone.

“With the com­pa­ny, the qual­i­ty of doc­u­men­ta­tion and sur­vey­ing data increas­es immense­ly. Form fields already check dur­ing input whether the val­ues entered are real­is­tic or whether a cor­rec­tion is nec­es­sary. Office staff no longer have to man­u­al­ly type out the data, which has often led to numer­i­cal errors and oth­er incon­sis­ten­cies. This makes it child’s play for installers to take mea­sure­ments with their smart­phones, elim­i­nat­ing the need for error-prone man­u­al data trans­fer. A new qual­i­ty of net­work doc­u­men­ta­tion is achieved that can pre­vent struc­tur­al dam­age.” (Max­i­m­il­ian Erd­mann, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Vaira UG).

In the coop­er­a­tion, both com­pa­nies are now work­ing on com­bin­ing their inno­va­tions. Con­struc­tion mea­sures can then be mea­sured and doc­u­ment­ed with the UG. The infor­ma­tion that a con­struc­tion mea­sure has tak­en place and by whom it was car­ried out will be trans­mit­ted direct­ly to localexpert24 at the click of a but­ton. In this way, it can be ensured in the future that knowl­edge about net­works does not gath­er dust in file fold­ers thanks to good and easy-to-find line and cable doc­u­men­ta­tion. A key result: more safe­ty for con­struc­tion work on util­i­ty networks.