We’re already 18 years and two months into the 21st century.

If you’re still digging through a humongous collection of DVDs, hard drives, and VHS tapes trying to find what you’re looking for, you’re sharing sewer inspection data the old school way.  

You’re using an inefficient 20th-century workflow.

Here’s what we mean…

Take a look at the way you’re currently sharing sewer inspection data and then compare it to an efficient 21st-century workflow.

The inefficient way to share sewer inspection data in 2019

You use a patchwork of outdated software

Legacy software is inefficient for a variety of reasons:

• It’s difficult to assign user abilities and permissions – Some users only need to view data while others need to edit and share it. It’s difficult to keep track of it all when you’re using a patchwork of outdated software.   

• It’s not easy to grant and revoke access – When you aren’t using one solution to handle everything you need to grant and revoke access to more than one software solution. This can get confusing because…

• You can’t tell at a glance who has access to what – When you use a patchwork of software programs you need to open each one to find out who has access to it.

You share reports and inspection videos the old school way

We’re talking about all those DVDs, hard drives, and VHS tapes. When you need to find a video for a spot repair you spend way too much time rummaging through your collection of old school media in order to find it.

When crucial data is hard to retrieve it makes collaboration across departments and with contractors difficult.

It also wastes time which gets us to our next problem.

You sitting around waiting for inspection videos to arrive

How long does it typically take for you to see a sewer inspection video after it has been recorded? Let’s take a look at the workflow…

You send a contractor out to do an inspection. The contractor completes the inspection, drives back to the office, pulls the video from the camera, copies it onto a flash drive (or maybe a DVD), and pops it in the mail to you. If you’re lucky you get the video the same day. If you’re not, the next day.

As soon as you view the video you know it needs to be redone. So, you send the contractor back out again to repeat the process. By the time you get a usable video two days may have passed.

And then…

You are having difficulty uploading inspection videos  

Something this simple shouldn’t be so difficult. But, it is. Only your most tech-savvy employees can handle this one. Everyone else needs to ask someone from the IT department to help them upload the inspection video to the internal office server.

Finally…

You need to re-shoot videos because of poor quality

We already touched on this when we talked about the fact that you’re sitting around waiting for inspection videos to arrive.

When you work inefficiently using old school methods you can’t see the inspection videos immediately. The contractor on-site performing the inspection can’t send you the video until he leaves the job site and goes back to the office.

It all boils down to this…

If your wastewater management software doesn’t have the right features, you’re doing things the 20th-century way…in 2019.

Why?

Let’s see what an efficient, 21st-century workflow looks like.

How to Efficiently Share Sewer Inspection Data in 2019

So, what would an efficient sewer inspection workflow process look like?

You use one software solution for storage and sharing of inspection data

When you use one software solution granting and revoking user abilities and permissions is a breeze. You see at-a-glance who has access to what and you can make changes with just a couple of clicks. It’s fast, easy, and gives you peace of mind that nobody is seeing what they’re not supposed to see.

You easily share and retrieve sewer inspection data

No more searching for hours (or even days!) through massive old school media archives to find specific inspection videos. When you work efficiently with sewer inspection data you deposit and retrieve data in a matter of seconds.

And data that’s easy to deposit and retrieve is data that’s easy to share. This makes it easy to collaborate across departments and to prevent problems before they occur.

You see sewer inspection videos as soon as they’re recorded

You never spend hours (or even days) waiting for sewer inspection videos to arrive in the mail anymore. You can see them as soon as they’re taken – within a matter of minutes – because the contractor has the ability upload to the cloud and share the inspection video while still on the job site.

You easily upload inspection videos to your cloud storage solution

And that’s without involving the IT team. Even your less tech-savvy employees can easily handle it. Your IT team is thankful because they now have more time to spend doing what they were hired to do.

You redo poor quality videos immediately

Problems with video quality are nothing more than a minor annoyance now. Since you have the ability to see inspection videos before the contractor leaves the job site,  you can simply ask that they be redone right then and there if they aren’t clear enough.

Efficiently Share Your Sewer Inspection Data
In The Cloud With t4 Vault

T4 Vault is a cloud-based solution with military-grade security that makes it possible for you to efficiently share your sewer inspection data within your organization and with approved outside contractors.

With t4 Vault you can…

• View inspection videos and images on all devices

• Make a secure backup of your original data to store on the office server or elsewhere

• Search by contractor name, PACP codes, pipe names, dates and more.

t4 Vault works with your existing GIS (Geographic Information System) and makes it possible to easily collaborate across departments (operations, engineering, contractors, maintenance and supervisors).

t4 Vault users include…

• Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County

• City of Joliet

• City of San Leandro

• City of Coronado

• City of Foster City

“t4 Vault™ allows the Sanitation Districts to store its sewer inspection videos on the cloud and allows us to reduce our in-house storage, and also provides easy access for Districts personnel as well as contractors to retrieve the data and inspect the videos.” – Darrell Hatch, Supervising Engineer at Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County