Hunt-Miller

Case Study

Custom app allows two industry leaders to team up on complex projects

Overview

Hunt Electric Corporation of Minnesota and Miller Electric Company of Omaha are both industry leaders in electrical design build solutions. Their partnership was ideal for the construction of a much anticipated one million square foot data center project in Springfield, Nebraska. From its inception, team leadership knew that this partnership required a strategy for efficiency, a focus on quality, and a precise reporting process. Their strategy included lean prefabrication techniques, detailed computer aided design, and building information modeling. This team’s ability to blend processes, coupled with their combined experience, allowed them to manufacture the precision electrical assemblies required for the project.

Business

Challenge

The challenge for Hunt and Miller was the scalability of their blended processes. The creation of a structure this large involved scaling of processes that worked great in smaller projects, but it presented hurdles for a project of this size. That was the case when it came to the real-time tracking and reporting of the installation of each electrical assembly. Hunt and Miller were using a paper-based process requiring their electricians to fill out daily production reports that were then keyed into a Microsoft Access database. The combination of this pen and paper process along with double-entry of data in different locations was not just inefficient and burdensome. It was ultimately hindering the progress of the team. Hunt and Miller needed a solution that was modern, efficient, easy-to-use, cloud-based, and mobile enabled.

Implemented

Solution

As Hunt and Miller found themselves in uncharted territory, it was clear that a professional technology solution was needed, and quickly. With the use of Volano's JumpStart framework, we were able to craft a tailor-fit mobile application. Our proprietary model allowed us to build the solution quickly and at a lower cost than traditional custom software. The app implements a very simple, intuitive tile-based menu. Electricians are now able to quickly document the work they complete as each assembly progresses. In a data center this size, cellular reception is poor or even nonexistent in some areas. So the offline database automatically syncs to the cloud on an as-needed basis. No more trips from the data center to the trailer, no more paper, no more lag times in reporting. Based on key data points that were built into the reporting suite, we know that this real-time data-capture allows the executive team to confidently report on the progress of their massive undertaking. They also have the necessary "line-of-sight" needed to manage the field teams' efforts.