Horrocks Engineers Accelerate Field Data Collection

The Challenge

Horrocks Engineers needed to find a way to speed up their make-ready engineering while maintaining a reputation for quality backed by years of experience.

The Outcome

Horrocks trained on IKE in a single day and was able to load poles into O-Calc Pro and complete MRE faster and more accurately than ever before.

Introduction

Founded in 1968, Horrocks Engineers has a long history and reputation as one of the western United States’ leading full-service civil engineering firms. Horrocks is committed to performing high-quality field data collection, pole load analysis, and make-ready engineering. Their staff of seasoned engineers, surveyors, drafters, and technicians are progressive industry leaders. Their technical expertise and management savvy allow them to handle utility pole projects of varying size, scope, and complexity.

Horrocks’ great reputation and trust amongst its customers led the US’s largest provider of wireless infrastructure to ask for their help with an aerial fiber deployment in Salt Lake City, Utah. The twist was that the customer wanted them to use this thing called an IKE instead of any manual collection method like a hot stick. As an engineering firm with nearly 50 years of experience, they approached the opportunity with a healthy dose of skepticism. A new way to approach make-ready engineering and attachment permitting portion doesn’t come along often. Still, they contacted ikeGPS to learn more. The team at Horrock’s was impressed enough by the initial presentation and guaranteed results to move forward. The features of IKE 4 that were most attractive to Horrocks were less time in the field, Photo Verifiable Accuracy, and integration with O-Calc Pro.

What Happened

The first hands-on introduction to IKE 4 came from IKE field training. Brian Christensen, a Principal Engineer at Horrocks, reported that the initial training was “just right.” For Horrocks Engineers, “IKE 4 was easy to learn and had a friendly user interface.” Christensen added that “IKE 4 was intuitive, and once his team members got a few poles under their belt, they were ready to go.” The Horrocks team was able to go from training to deployment almost immediately.

The new tool accelerated the MRE and permit submission portion of this 600-pole project and moved them toward completion in record time. IKE 4 met Horrock’s expectation of reducing time and improving consistency for field measurements. The big surprise benefit was the amount of time they saved in the back office on pole loading. Integration between the IKE Office cloud and O-Calc Pro saved a tremendous amount of time.  Eliminating the transcription field notes and manual building of the pole in O-Calc Pro “was an added bonus,” said Brian.

IKE 4 was easy to learn and had a friendly user interface

-Brian Christensen, Horrocks Engineers

Conclusion

It might be true that a picture is worth a thousand words, but words take time, and time is money. At ikeGPS, we like to say, “a smart picture can save a thousand hours.” That might be an overstatement for just one picture, but over thousands of poles, the time savings add up. Brian expressed that the Photo Verifiable Accuracy inherent in an IKE Photo and point-to-point measurements “has already proven to be a great backup record and something that’s helping Horrocks minimize revisits to the pole.”

“IKE 4 is a productivity enhancement tool that allows our staff to collect data with a high degree of accuracy and productivity compared to traditional methods”.

The use of IKE at Horrocks enabled them to meet customer expectations on time and on budget. And it gave them a capability that will benefit the team on other projects. In Brian’s words, “IKE 4 is a productivity enhancement tool that allows our staff to collect data with a high degree of accuracy and productivity compared to traditional methods”.