Transforming Underground Survey Business with BigChange Mobile Apps

Subscan UDS, the nationwide utility, drainage, and survey company, has implemented a high tech mobile workforce system from Leeds technology company BigChange. The system, which provides a paperless means of planning, managing, scheduling, and tracking mobile operations, has provided Subscan with a 30 percent saving in time and a million-pound growth boost to its business.

Subscan provides a wide range of services aimed at the detection and avoidance of underground utilities, as well as drainage maintenance and repairs. A team of specialist technicians operate across the UK undertaking everything from topographical surveys to underground utility tracing, drainage, CCTV surveying and the lining of drains.

“We go and map areas identifying all structures and utilities above and below ground and then sort out any issues – we deal with all major infrastructure. We offer a full service package from initial survey to remedial work and when needed, new works including design and planning,” says Kirk Mason, Operations Director, Subscan.

Subscan has been a success story since formation only 7 years ago with steady year on year growth. However the previous IT system was proving to be a barrier to growth and with the move to BigChange the company has been able to expand and turnover is expected to increase from £6 million last year to £9 million in 2020.

“Our previous system only offered partial automation and we wasted a lot of time double touching to keep different systems up to date,” says Mason. “What we needed was a seamless flow of data from start to finish with an audit trail of activity. In the end there wasn’t anything that matched BigChange for functionality; it gives us that seamless connectivity and it has replaced 5 separate systems - saving us time and money.”

Subscan has equipped 50 of its field operatives with rugged tablets running JobWatch, the BigChange app for paperless working. Jobs are scheduled and sent to the assigned operative who can proceed straight to the job and with trackers on the fleet, the office has real time visibility of their locations.

“With BigChange we are now very much paperless; it has been a complete digital transformation and the savings are significant. For time alone we are achieving savings of 30 percent and that’s before we even begin to look at the improved job scheduling and productivity,” explains Mason.

Subscan has a particularly strong commitment to quality and the company is ISO accredited for their management of quality, environmental, and health and safety.

“Our pursuit of quality drives the business - the quality of equipment, quality of people, quality of work and quality of service. BigChange provides an audit of activities and all the information we need to meet the required standards,” says Mason. “Since implementing BigChange we simply don’t get KPI failures as we are right on top of the workload and that’s meant we meet out SLA commitments and deliver a level of service we simply could not provide before.”

On site the JobWatch app takes operatives through workflow to ensure the correct procedures are followed and data is collected. The system ensures there is a complete record of every job which is including time and location referenced photographs; this is important for minimising invoice queries and also for supporting ISO accreditations.