Structural Integrity is a global leader in providing innovative engineering services and proven solutions for structural evaluation and repair. Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Structural Integrity has nine branch offices throughout the US and Canada, as well as affiliates in China, Taiwan, Korea, Spain and Switzerland. Structural Integrity’s Oil and Gas Business Unit provides engineering and assessment services to support hazardous liquid pipelines, gas pipelines, gas utilities, terminals, tank farms, and subsea applications.
With recent advances in mobile cloud-based technology, SI recognized the opportunity to not only improve field data collection efficiencies on NDE projects, but also provide its customers with “better data faster”, seamlessly integrated with GIS systems and databases. With every customer and every dig bringing unique requirements, SI needed a solution that their experts could adapt for each project.
“We needed a solution that was customizable enough for the variety of client projects and flexible enough for field inspectors, engineers, and other personnel. Because NDE work is tailored precisely to the project at hand, we needed an application that was easy to configure, not a hard-coded off-the-shelf product.”
– Scott Riccardella, Director of Strategic Business Development, Structural Integrity
SI evaluated mobile data collection platforms and selected TerraGo Custom Field Applications for their operationally-proven, field-tested features, including out of the box support for Trimble receivers, smart forms and GIS integration, and also the ability for SI to build its own customized app with branding, interface and feature settings flexibly adapted to their needs.
SI experts collect, analyze and share a wealth of data elements from each site, hundreds of data elements on a single form in fact. With smart forms, SI is able to create a form field flow with embedded data logic, not unlike a Turbo Tax questionnaire that eliminates unnecessary fields from cluttering the user experience and data capture.
The TerraGo Custom Field Application also delivers advanced GPS features and includes the Trimble® GNSS Direct SDK to deliver high-accuracy positioning data from Trimble’s survey-grade receivers to iOS® and Android® mobile devices. This gives SI the flexibility to achieve the required accuracy with the most cost-effective approach, whether an inspector needs to capture sub-meter or even centimeter-level precision. With Bluetooth wireless connectivity, SI can deploy receivers whenever and wherever needed, while also enabling personnel to leverage on-board GPS for tasks where survey-grade performance isn’t required. With cloud-based data synchronization, SI can update databases, GIS platforms and provide customers with on-demand reports from the field.
“With hundreds of data elements, paper forms and spreadsheets can become unwieldy to say the least. With TerraGo Magic’s smart forms, we have drag and drop form builders and conditionals that are easy to customize per customer and dig site, making data collection processes smoother and faster in the field while ensuring the highest data quality, especially compared to traditional GPS handhelds and data collection procedures.”
– Scott Riccardella, Director of Strategic Business Development, Structural Integrity
The Structural Integrity app, powered by TerraGo, enables SI to consolidate a number of inspection tools and processes onto an iPad or tablet. The efficiencies span the workflow process cutting down preparation time and eliminating manual data entry and transcription errors. In the field, the work gets done faster and better with smart forms and data validation rules. The end result is a field data collection process that improves the quality and efficiency of pipeline integrity data updates.
For project setup, the ease of creating forms and basemaps means less prep work that helps accelerate project starts. As the data elements are gathered, databases and GIS systems are seamlessly updated which cuts the time to customer information delivery, helping ensure safe and reliable operations amidst a dynamic and complex regulatory environment.
“When dig sites are identified, for example from an in-line inspection tool indicating a pipe requires further direct inspection, inspectors can immediately utilize the TerraGo Magic app to locate the asset and rapidly gather location-tagged information that confirms defects, or the absence of them, ultimately accelerating updates to the pipeline integrity program as well as any remediation actions.”
– Scott Riccardella, Director of Strategic Business Development, Structural Integrity
