May/June 2005

Engineers who are out monitoring buildings for the risk of overhead falls are now managing their work with the ServiceNet Web-based asset management, inspection and maintenance system from Telepartner Systems.

The system has been adopted by HCL, a leading specialist in this very specific form of engineering maintenance. Until now the company used a paperwork system to pass instructions to the engineers, who collected job instructions from a depot, or received them by post. Now the engineers can call up the information on O2 wireless handheld terminals, then transmit job completion details back to base when each visit is finished.

The system works on a hosted basis. Telepartner holds a database of existing and potential clients, and new details are added as required. Each job can therefore be tracked from initial quotation onwards, and scheduled maintenance jobs can be allocated from a central asset register.

Software on the XDA II handheld terminals provides engineers with a forms-like display, from which they can select jobs from pullown lists and log location and details of each job. On completion, the details are transmitted back to base and fed into HCL's Sage accounting system.

HCL is being charged on the basis of a set monthly fee, which includes the O2 airtime contract.