Trimble Unity Enables Sutton and East Surrey Water

SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 24, 2016—Trimble (NASDAQ:TRMB) announced today that Sutton and East Surrey Water (SESW) in the U.K. has implemented the Trimble® Unity™ 3.0 software suite of GIS-centric cloud and mobile applications. Developed to support smart water management, Trimble Unity focuses on workflow and business process improvement with the added benefit of better information for decision making and regulatory compliance. The software provides a single-platform solution for mobile workforce and smart water management.

With a service area that includes multiple local jurisdictions, SESW must comply with strict local authority permitting requirements. For example, when working on a highway or footpath to perform emergency water system repairs, SESW must inform the authority within strict time constraints to receive a permit number. Failure to meet authority deadlines results in a financial penalty. Faced with the imminent end of life of Google Maps Coordinate, the product that provided an existing automation solution for SESW field crews, SESW selected Trimble Unity software and rapidly configured and implemented the software to provide a modern solution for field crews. By deploying cloud-based information management with embedded Esri ArcGIS mapping technology, Trimble Unity provides increased transparency and efficiency in job control and field data collection. In addition to helping streamline the field operations, Trimble Unity also supports SESW collection of site specific information to document compliance.

Trimble Unity has automated many of the forms previously used by SESW for job control and data collection in the field. The solution’s toolset includes an application builder that enables SESW to implement customized forms and workflows to meet their exact business needs. The utility can instantly publish forms to field users to quickly and efficiently adapt to changes in its operational environment.

“The immediate need was to replace our Google Maps Coordinate-based system quickly so we could continue to fulfill compliance responsibilities during routine work and in the event of an emergency,” said Jeremy Heath, Innovation Manager for SESW. “We realized that replacing Google Maps Coordinate would also give us the opportunity to improve our field team operations which included our mobile work management capabilities. We chose Trimble Unity because it could be implemented very quickly and it allowed us to adopt a single-platform approach. We can now build customized workflow apps that not only help us address issues quickly and efficiently but also in a way that satisfies compliance requirements.”

In adopting Trimble Unity’s single-platform approach, SESW determined that the solution could solve their immediate need for improving field team operations and mobile work management. Another significant influencing factor was that the solution can be easily extended to enable smart water management techniques and provide a single view of network operations in line with future plans.

Trimble Unity provides SESW with the ability to send work to its mobile workforce and to receive information—including photographs and accurate GPS-based location data—collected by on-site field teams using Android-based mobile devices. The system also allows managers to view the locations of field teams and enables the company’s inspectors to create work orders while on the jobsite.

Working in collaboration with Trimble, SESW achieved a rapid implementation of the new Trimble Unity solution, moving from start to “go-live” in less than 14 working days.

“We are pleased that SESW is seeing the benefits of Trimble Unity and that they were able to quickly deploy the software as a replacement for their existing system,” said Marcus McCarthy, general manager of Trimble Water. “As a cloud solution, Trimble Unity was designed for exactly this purpose, namely enabling utilities to rapidly configure and deploy mobile GIS and work management software to solve real problems in the field. It’s exciting to see another success story.”

Trimble Unity is available from Trimble’s Water Division and its authorized distribution partners.