Taking you back to the project that started it all.
Featured in this post is a collection of photos from the eThekwini low and medium voltage asset audit I directed from 2010 – 2012. This was a monumental undertaking by any standard.
The first 6-9 months was spent on the pilot project where a team of five audited all the electrical equipment in Isipingo, Kwa Zulu Natal. We started off with printed sheets that had to be filled in by hand, a couple of Trimbles (GPS taggers) and two Canon digital cameras. Data had to be transferred at night at which time equipment was also cleaned and charged. During our last month, the first Apple iPads arrived in South Africa and I procured one to see if it could be implemented into our workflow. The end result was superb and it streamlined our efforts in a way that I never could have anticipated. The pilot project was a success and we were awarded the tender to audit the entire eThekwini.
The main project started with two teams, then four, eight, sixteen and finally thirty. Each team was issued with a Trimble, iPad and Canon digital camera and the devices were interconnected with each other. This essentially meant that Olympus (our main office) could receive and populate data entries less than a minute after the information was captured in the field. During the project’s final phase receiving six thousand emails a day was common practice for me. I had also implemented a strict transparency protocol throughout the project. This meant that everybody knew what everybody else was doing during work hours. In terms of productivity, this strategy served the project very well.
At full capacity, the office was open an average of 18 hours a day, six days a week. Teams captured anywhere between 6000 – 10 000 thousand items a day and the data engineers processed anything from fifteen to twenty-five thousand photos a day. It was a massive undertaking and through teamwork, transparency and the wonders of technology we managed to complete on schedule and on budget.
