Improving the Building Condition of Schools

SWBR is an architecture firm that came to us hoping to improve their workflow for managing deficiency-tracking for schools. Every few years the schools need to submit a report to the government requesting funding to keep their buildings in good condition. This report contains an extensive list of building deficiencies along with photos, contractors, and cost estimates.

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Moving Beyond the Spreadsheet

SWBR had been tracking building deficiencies internally with a spreadsheet, but that made it impossible for the schools to enter deficiencies directly and hard to coordinate among multiple users. They also wanted to improve the organization so deficiencies were easy to locate on the floor plan and they could attach photos.

Building the App

During the strategy phase we decided to optimize the app for multiple user roles performing various tasks. School employees can walk the building with a tablet noting deficiencies by dropping a pin on the floor plan, snapping a photo, and writing a short description. SWBR employees can review deficiencies and add information like cost estimates, contractor types, and status. Once all the deficiencies have been entered and reviewed, SWBR employees can view summaries in the reporting view and export to Excel so the information can be attached to the report submitted to the government.

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Maximizing Flexibility with an Admin Interface

The process of creating deficiencies, reviewing them, generating a report to request funding, and then fixing them happens repeatedly in a multiyear cycle. To allow SWBR to seamlessly transition between cycles, we created a flexible admin interface where they can manage users, create new cycles, and upload floor plans. We designed all of this to handle changes in the process, which will give the app longevity.

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