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Surveying Multiple Dwelling Units By Richard Reis, on behalf of Techwave
Anyone involved in the fibre roll out will be familiar with the logistical issues in surveying multiple dwelling units. Permission to access buildings, lengthy negotiations with leaseholders and managing agents, even tracking down landlords complicates the process, takes time and adds to the cost. Surveying just got a bit easier with the development of an MDU survey app.
What does an MDU app actually do? There are plenty of clients who are still surveying MDUs blocks of flats and apartments the old-fashioned way, with a pen and paper and a camera. To get permission to build a fibre network in a block of flats, you have to get the management company to sign a wayleave and agree a survey. They’re the two processes.
Tell me this part is easier. Not really. At the moment the survey is done manually and it’s a two-stage process. You can sit in a desk and go on Google Earth and plot your fibre for street works. You can’t plot the inside of a block of flats from Google Earth. Somebody has to physically go to the block of flats, enter the building, walk every floor, take photographs, write notes, go back to a computer, draw the fibre route on the photographs or use Photoshop, where they want the fibre to go and then they have to write a report, compile a PDF and then finally submit it.
The appliance of science! Obvious when you think about it. It combines two processes into one. Your surveyor delivers consistent results because you’re guiding them in what to do and it allows the data to be instantly uploaded via the cloud to the operator so they can say see that process is done. You can also publish an engineering report to the fibre build team, as well as a report for a the landlord so they can see what you want to do. It’s not quite so engineering based. Basically it’s a workflow tool that standardises and simplifies surveying an MDU. What about regulations? Has that been an issue? There are various building regulations and codes of conduct, but we’ve written the app to mirror existing paper process, just electronically. It’ll help you get an ISO certification. The app is designed to be customised for the ISP so they can put their branding on it. Not all ISPs employ surveyors, they hire subcontractors. They can give it to their subcontractors and say, “Go survey these buildings for me using this app.” And they know the quality of what they’ll get because they’ll get the app response back. There’ll be nothing missed. It’s all in there.
Which can be a protracted process.
It can be a total nightmare. There’s no point doing the survey until you’ve got, in principle, a wayleave because otherwise you’re wasting your time. ISPs have to go through an additional process to survey a block of flats. The procedure is: the street, because unless the fibre is running down the street, you’re doing nothing. And then the customer installation, there’s somebody in the flat on floor seven and if they want the service, the installation crew can’t run a fibre from floor seven down through all the piping the building. So you need to pre-wire the building and you go through this process with management agents and landlords, et cetera, wayleave subject to survey.
You’re not serious.
Now that is very old-fashioned and I don’t see why modern companies should be doing this. I asked Techwave as a software company to develop a one-stage process, all to be done while you visit the site. Instead of taking photographs with a camera, you take the photographs with a tablet, which you edit as you walk around the building, adding your notes in as you go, and you can use it as a data storage to include your fire regulations, put the wayleave, subject to survey document in etc. So when you’re finished and you press go, it compiles the PDF and it’s done as you walk out of the building.
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Volume 46 No.1 March 2024
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