Data-Collection App Targets Water and Environmental Sector
Working in the field to collect data water quality and the performance of water-treatment facilities, many engineers and field technicians still rely on pen and paper to capture readings. But an app designed by a former environmental engineer takes a different tack.
“It’s a very data-driven area of construction,” says Saurabh Gogate, founder and CEO of tech start-up QNOPY. “Whether it’s new construction, remediation or water-quality monitoring, the work is measured by the quality of the data and how fast you can analyze it.”
The QNOPY mobile app has custom-designed forms suited to the workflow of the engineer. Data is logged and uploaded to a cloud server, where it can be automatically populated into the forms and formats that laboratories and clients require. The data also is shown on an online dashboard in near real time, allowing contractors, owners and other stakeholders to see the water-quality monitoring data as it comes in.
“The forms are fairly straightforward—it makes the data collection more efficient,” says Derek M. Wurst, condition assessment manager with Black & Veatch’s water division. “We often encounter poor or a complete lack of electronic documentation for [water facilities], so we can start building that out.”
Wurst has used QNOPY on several projects that involved inspections of existing water facilities and found it helped the most when he had to prepare his regular reports. “The real value is, I can output all of this to a spreadsheet or whatever format the client needs.”
QNOPY charges for the app as a SaaS, without a high, initial startup cost. In the coming months, the company is planning to launch a new version that will simplify the user interface and expand the commenting and markup features.
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