Trading in Spreadsheets for Shareable Data

Despite the speed of the technology revolution (the internet is only 41 years old!), our industry still relies heavily on Hasting’s sticks and wheels for data collection and make ready. 

We’ve made significant progress—LiDAR and photogrammetry have helped move data collection forward and application portals help manage the load of requests. But when it comes to the finished product, most end deliverables still take the form of massive spreadsheets or pole profiles. 

The problem with static deliverables is that they don’t provide contextual information for pole owners. They don’t show that attachers are taking safety seriously, and they don’t create trust. 

For pole owners, the stakes are too high (we’re talking about life or death) to take data at face value and assume the engineering plan follows safety standards. So pole owners end up sifting through hundreds of applications and verifying data to make sure that deliverables are up to snuff. 

No telecom attachment ever takes precedence over keeping the lights on and keeping people safe. 

So it’s not enough to just provide the bare minimum of static deliverables. It slows down the application process for attachers while pole owners try to work through huge backlogs and double-check work. And it perpetuates the idea that attachers and pole owners can’t trust one another. 

Pole owners aren’t the only ones overwhelmed. They’re not the only ones who would benefit from more context, better communication, and dynamic deliverables. Rights holders and construction crews alike are also struggling to keep up with the demands. 

Share the Job 

If we’re trying to open up channels of communication and build deeper trust with other parties, we have to be willing to make the first move toward transparency. That might mean providing photo documentation and data, to prove that you were in the field collecting information on the real state of the pole. Or it might mean sharing more details of the engineering plan so pole owners can ensure you’re following their standards. 

With Katapult Pro, we recommend sharing job links with read-access, so partners and clients can view designs, engineering plans, and data collection. Read access users can’t edit data, so we don’t end up with forked data and everyone sees and works from the same, most up-to-date version of truth. 

Plus, it puts the power in your customers’ hands to download data into the format that best suits their needs. There’s infinitely more value to the data and engineering when clients have the ability to visualize, report, and download the information themselves.

Taking the first step to demonstrate trust and transparency doesn’t just shorten timelines. It provides teams with feedback so we can keep improving and continue to rise above the status quo to deliver superior work. 

The way we approach pole attachments has the power to improve the industry. We want to find ways to provide greater value in all our work because when we work together we can build something great. For more information about read users, reach out to us at hello@katapultpro.com.