Mobile Field
Computing System
Abigroup is a worldwide construction and maintenance
company and has a multimillion dollar maintenance
contract to service the water and sewerage
system for the Auckland City Council owned
company Metrowater.
Abigroup is spending $1M to rollout a system
that links its field staff with back office
and call centre staff through trunked radio
connected laptops running communications software
provided by Selective Communications.
The laptops run a web enabled thin client
application developed in-house using Visual
Basic by Abigroup IT personnel and connected
to an SQL server. The Mobile Field Computing
System interfaces to Abigroups financial, asset
management and job dispatch systems as well
as with Metrowater’s call centre and
billing systems.
WiPath worked with Abigroup
IT personnel to provide an application called
MDI (Mobile Data Interface) which provides
the link between the laptops and the trunked
radios and the Gatekeeper mobile data gateway
at the base end which interfaces the back office
processes with the trunked radio network. The
MDI also controls the acquisition and transmission
of GPS data for automatic vehicle location.
The Gatekeeper and MDI are part of a set mobile
data hardware and software solutions developed
by WiPath called collectively
the WDN or Wireless Data Network. The WDN allows
real time push technology mobile data solutions
to be interfaced with a variety of job management
and field dispatch applications. Unlike pull
technology such as web browsing, the control
of the dispatch operation is at the head office
so that the head office processes control the
whole process not the mobile worker. The WDN
also manages the communications in a very efficient
manner significantly reducing the running costs
of the wireless data interface.
Abigroup will roll out the Mobile Field Computing
system to it’s utility outsourcing contracts
in Australia and is a feature of other bids
it is pursuing in New Zealand.
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