GOFORMZ CASE STUDY
AT-A-GLANCE
Needed a way to alleviate the lengthy and detrimental delays in receiving job site paperwork from out of state field teams.
Implemented GoFormz mobile forms, allowing field teams from any location to complete and upload their forms and data to the cloud, where they can be instantly accessed and processed by the back-office.
THE FULL STORY
Challenger Drilling is a directional drilling service company, based in Texas, “including but not limited to oil & gas transmission pipeline construction, water distribution construction, and sewer line construction.”
The Challenger Drilling team is spread across a variety of locations, completing drilling services and collecting project information to be delivered to the Texas-based back-office. Jennifer Burke, an Accounts Payable Coordinator at Challenger Drilling, was well accustomed to the inefficiencies and obstacles that often plague remote teams and their back-office counterparts. Amongst the more frustrating inefficiencies experienced by the Challenger Drilling team, were the extreme delays in paperwork collection from remote personnel.
“[Remote teams] would sometimes take a picture [of a form] and email them to
us… sometimes they would hold all their paperwork for two to three weeks and then mail everything in together… sometimes the next time they were in the office they would just drop it all off, and that could be up to a month. Things get lost and this wasn’t ideal.”
- Jennifer Burke, Accounts Payable Coordinator, Challenger Drilling
These paperwork delays negatively impacted back-office efficiency and record-keeping. When remote teams would deliver several weeks worth of paperwork, it was difficult for backoffice team members to not only keep track of project-specific record-keeping, but also track and assign expenses, and recall project incident information. These frustrating delays inspired Challenger Drilling’s hunt for a mobile form and data capture solution, eventually leading their team to GoFormz. “We started out with three forms, because there are three forms that need to be filled out daily by each crew. A daily field report, a job site assessment and a safety meeting,” Jennifer explained of Challenger Drilling’s most impactful documents. “We basically just hit the ground running and [digitized] all three forms.”
With their three daily forms digitized, the Challenger Drilling team experienced significant improvements in project transparency, efficiency and communication. Now, a project crew leader is tasked with ensuring daily mobile forms are completed on-site, detailing the activities completed, tools used and team members present.
It is vital that project details are recorded clearly and thoroughly, in case of a project incident leading to legal inquiry. “The Daily Field Report is the information that is critical for us to have in the future if we ever had to defend ourselves in a lawsuit,” Jennifer explained. Challenger Drilling’s Daily Field Report captures a vast amount of information, detailing each element of a project. When a foreman generates a Daily Field Report and enters a job number, a variety of fields are instantly populated with project information assigned to that specific job number. These populated fields include customer details, location information, project descriptions and rig numbers.
The Daily Field Report also features fields to enter team members onsite and in what capacity they are working, along with space for extremely detailed descriptions of onsite activity. For example, Jennifer referenced a completed Daily Field Report’s description of activities, “...arrived at jobsite at seven… did our safety meeting and filled our our Job Site Analysis… drilled 200 feet… we had to stop for rain.” The form also hosts Checkboxes, allowing the foreman to check if they had used certain additives and tooling, along with space to mention if anything had led the team to pause for the day (e.g. poor weather or customer delays). Once the foreman hits complete, the form is instantly available to the back-office for review and record-keeping.
With their forms now digitized, the Challenger Drilling team has refined their safety documentation procedure and improved their expense filing workflow – resulting in significant time savings.
“Definitely we’ve saved time, and really, time is money! It’s made things easier for the guys in the field as well… I think all of them are going to really love it.”
- Jennifer Burke, Accounts Payable Coordinator, Challenger Drilling