Case Study . Altex Coatings
Altex Coatings Ltd uses Clarinspect for a variety of inspection types and quick, efficient, standardised reporting.
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Captures the coatings condition and thickness electronically.
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Produce detailed reports with marked up images - ready when they get back to office.
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No more need for paperwork or double handling of reporting
About
Altex Coatings Ltd. are a leading manufacturer and distributor of protective fireproofing, flooring and marine coatings. They work extensively within New Zealand and also Australasia and the South Pacific. Altex Coatings Ltd. proudly hold exclusive licences for some of the best internationally recognised coatings available and Carboline is an example of one of these high performing brands.
What Altex Coatings needed
Altex Coatings Ltd. perform inspections on their applied products for either maintenance and condition purposes or for validating the application of the coatings is up to standards and will perform as expected.
What the team needed was an easy-to-use app to log the inspection data efficiently and to quickly produce a standardised report. Altex Coatings Ltd. needed a few different templates to meet the variety of inspections they undertake whether it was wet film thickness (WFT), dry film thickness (DFT), or coatings conditions, taking into account rust grade and damage assessment.
Altex Coatings Ltd. needed the app to support spot checks with date stamped narrative to produce a coatings diary as well as incorporate multiple photos that they could annotate to illustrate any issues they had found.
The range of locations that Altex Coatings Ltd. staff have to work was an added complication - sometimes there is no network connection as they are knee high in water deep inside the penstock of a hydroelectric dam! Other times they are in a new build situation, or in a paint spray shop.
After a recommendation from a leading fireproofing coatings inspector, Garth Moran decided to investigate Clarinspect and see how this technology could benefit the business.
The Fire QA (Clarinspect) approach
Working from examples of the reports that staff produced, and taking into account the way they work on-site, Clarinspect created a prototype of the spot check form.
This was reviewed by the end-users, and suggested changes were incorporated into a second version, which was issued for review along with an automatically generated Microsoft Word report that contained all their information, a daily log section and all photos formatted and sized with their annotations.
As Clarinspect works 100% offline as well as it does online that meant the app met the requirement that it operate deep inside a structure such as a dam, or locations where there is no signal.
To support the onboarding of the inspection team Clarinspect also produced some specific user guides for the Altex Coatings Ltd. system.
Freshly applied fireproofing coatings in a hospital construction.
DFT on Nullifire SC902
Business outcomes
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App designed to work the way they do
One of the aspects of Clarinspect that was pertinent to the Altex Coatings Ltd. staff was that the app was designed to suit them and the way they work, and they could continue to mould it to fit their practices. Altex Coatings Ltd. are experts in their field of coatings so combining that with the tech capabilities of Clarinspect ensured we came up with an app that ensured their knowledge and experience was incorporated.
An ”Off the shelf” product was not going to cut it.
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High resolution photos automatically included with the report
Working with coatings meant that photo quality was essential, so Altex Coatings Ltd. equipped themselves with Android phones with high resolution cameras to get high quality, close up images of the surface of coatings. Clarinspect is designed to deal with very large images, and by default supplies the end-users with the report along with a zip file of all photos at the original resolution - with and without annotations.
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Synchronise the app on site and receive a report within minutes to your inbox
As the Altex Coatings Ltd. staff are on the road the ability to synchronise the app, and then receive a draft report within minutes was a major result - it enabled staff on site to rapidly edit and then issue their clients with a report that previously took many hours to compile.
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“The offline ability is very useful when I work in large pipes or locations without any coverage.”
- Elliot Gaensickle, Technical Support Specialist
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“Altex saves anywhere from 2 to 4 hours on each report using Clarinspect - depending on the size of the job. Improved consistency and formatting is another benefit."
- Elliot Gaensickle, Technical Support Specialist