DRMP is a civil engineering and surveying firm with over 500 employees and 17 office locations throughout the southeastern United States and has been in the A/E/C industry for 42 years.
The firm offers a range of services under six divisions: construction engineering inspection, land development, structural engineering, surveying and mapping/subsurface utility engineering, transportation engineering and water resources/stormwater management. The award-winning firm is ranked among Engineering News-Record’s “Top 500 Design Firms” in the United States.
The Challenge
Field work on project sites is an integral part of DRMP’s business. On any given day, hundreds of staff are visiting work sites that are miles away in remote areas or in dense areas near highways or busy intersections.
While working in the field, DRMP’s staff frequently utilizes highly-sophisticated, technical equipment including data collectors. GPS, cameras, measurement instruments, LiDAR laser scanners. and drones.
Tracking all of DRMP’s equipment has been a continuous challenge.
Previous systems that were used to manage the equipment and assets were cumbersome, inefficient and inaccurate. As a result, there was a disconnect and a lack of communication between what was happening with the field teams and the firm’s Accounting Department.
Todd Catella, DRMP’s Asset and Inventory Manager, was tasked with improving the equipment visibility at the firm with a radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging system to develop an efficient system that would quickly and accurately track and manage equipment individually and record its last known location. From an asset perspective, the Accounting Department also wanted regular updates of where the equipment was located to track depreciation of the equipment.
DRMP also wanted photo verification of the serial numbers on the equipment to be recorded on file in the tracking system. The team was requesting visual documentation to provide a quick snapshot of what these survey devices look like to make identification easier. As you can imagine, associating a device name and serial number on an invoice without an image of the actual device can be a daunting task.
While the Accounting Department wanted improved visibility and accountability, the field teams wanted to make sure that productivity was not compromised. The field teams wanted a solid tracking system that could be centrally pulled up from a web browser at any time with unique login credentials giving multiple levels of office management the ability to check the status of an asset or list of assets without affecting the field crew managers production.
The RFID Solution
Mr. Catella researched several RFID equipment tracking company solutions and quickly identified A2B Tracking’s RFID asset tracking platform as a leader in DRMP’s final selection.
From the beginning, A2B Tracking clearly communicated system requirements of the tracking platform so that all the stakeholders were on the same page. During discussions between A2B and DRMP it became apparent that there was a variety of equipment that would each require different types of RFID tags to work effectively. The team knew that selecting the correct RFID tags was critical, but they also knew they needed to test the tags before they arrived at any definitive conclusions.
A2B Tracking implemented an RFID system for DRMP by taking advantage of mobile RFID readers from Zebra coupled with Samsung tablets, which were all connected to the A2B Tracking platform in the cloud. Once the system was in place the team started testing sample RFID tags in common scenarios and environments with DRMP’s equipment.
It is important to note that a good portion of the surveying and engineering equipment is housed in protective boxes, pelican cases and other types of containers. The RFID readers needed to be able to read through these boxes to the instruments themselves. Each individual asset was labeled with a passive RFID tag. The tags were affixed directly to each piece of equipment and did not utilize a hang tag on the outside of the case.
Upon completing the testing phase, Mr. Catella and his team decided upon four different types of asset tags that would take care of their entire inventory needs. It was not until after this extensive testing phase that DRMP purchased their RFID tags and permanently affixed them to their equipment.
Read more to learn about DRMP’s total asset visibility
To learn more about how A2B Tracking developed a solution for DRMP to leverage RFID technology that helped them achieve total asset visibility read the Case Study.
