Assessing the Impacts of Mobile Technology on Project Inspection

As mobile technology becomes widely available and affordable, transportation agencies can use this technology to streamline operations involved within project inspection. A pilot project conducted with three State Departments of Transportation examined the business process of project inspection and looked for process improvement opportunities using mobile technologies. Previous work informed the development of a specific mobile technology solution, named HeadLight, which was compared to legacy construction inspection processes. Outcomes were quantified in relation to productivity, data quality, and data availability. Results indicate that project inspectors using mobile technology experienced productivity gains on the order of 25%, collected and shared 2.0 times as many observations, and improved the timeliness of daily reports and overall data availability. Additionally, the mobile technology solution is found to enable more complete and consistent data, improved accessibility throughout a project office and DOT. All these outcomes indicate mobile technology for project inspection is a substantial workforce multiplier. Further study into improved data quality and availability may identify more impacts within the construction inspection process and to an owner agency’s decision making processes.