Absolute Beginners Guide to Tablet PCs

The construction supervisor is responsible for keeping construction projects moving forward on a tight timeline and noting any problems or potential problems.

Toolkit

• Rugged slate style Tablet PC This style of Tablet PC offers great mobility.

• Digital camera This can be used to capture pictures of construction issues and progress.

• Bluetooth adapter This is necessary for data communication with other Bluetooth-enabled devices.

• Bluetooth mobile phone This can be used to connect to the Tablet PC for wireless Internet access.

• Adobe Photoshop Elements This program is used for photo manipulation.

• Mi-Forms This program is for data capture.

• FranklinCovey TabletPlanner This program is used for time and task management.

• Adobe Acrobat This program is used for digital document creation.

• AutoDesk VoloView This program is used for CAD markups.

Value Proposition

The most important thing for the construction supervisor is flexibility and easy information sharing. Using the Tablet PC, she does not have to remain in a construction trailer to deal with paperwork, and can quickly share data and images of what is happening in the field.

Day in the Life

The construction supervisor checks her email when she gets to the site and finds out that plans have changed: An inspector will arrive this afternoon instead of tomorrow, causing a shift in some priorities.

At 8:00, she uses her Tablet PC to connect to a virtual meeting with a few other people in three offices. Everyone can see images coming in real-time from a Web camera set up at the construction site. Using Microsoft NetMeeting, the construction supervisor can open a CAD drawing on her computer and share the application with others in the meeting, allowing them to see the drawing and even annotate it. After 15 minutes, the meeting ends and everyone is back on track.

The construction supervisor opens TabletPlanner and adjusts the priority of items on her task list. She then fires off a few quick emails to some project team members to keep them in the loop about the day's changes. Then she walks around the construction site, taking pictures of the work completed the day before, noting anything that needs attention. During this process, she also uses Mi-Forms to note any critical information. When finished with the walk-through, she puts the pictures into Windows Journal and makes notes about each picture. She then prints the combined pictures and notes to the PDF Writer and posts the resulting PDF to the project's Web site for team members to review and comment on. She also submits the Mi-Forms data changes to the database server for tracking.

The construction supervisor then talks to several of the crews on-site to let them know what's happening and that they need to get some critical items finished before the inspector arrives. By lunch, the main issues have been taken care of, and the site passes the inspection and gets the required permit.

Summary of Benefits