Based on CAD Pockets from ZWSOFT, EX-CAD, a customized mobile CAD solution, has been jointly developed by ZWSOFT and Gwangju Branch Office of Korea Expressway Corporation, to undertake road and bridge facility inspection tasks.

Figure 1. Gwangju Branch Office of Korea Expressway Corporation

As a public institution, Korea Expressway Corporation is responsible for inspecting the roads and bridges in its administrative region and submitting relevant inspection reports every year. However, through joining their daily work routine, ZWSOFT team discovered some “efficiency killers” in their on-site inspection, which made their workload heavy and their workflow slow.

Efficiency Killers in Bridge Inspection

First of all, they carried batches of printed drawings to the field, and leafed through those stacks of drawings to find the corresponding one for the part being detected. When an issue was discovered, it would be numbered, marked and annotated on the printed drawings, and then a table was filled and a photo was taken to record it. After on-site inspecting, they went through those drawings once again to recollect and summarize the issues, matching them with their specific drawings, relevant information and photos one-to-one.

Figure 2. Inspection reports summarizing data and information

This whole workflow was far from convenience, so Korea Expressway Corporation sought further technical support from ZWSOFT to optimize the workflow, to make it quicker, easier and handier.

Mobile CAD Solution, from 80 Pages to 8 Inches

Based on the status quo, ZWSOFT team figured out that electronizing and mobilizing the workflow can help. Thus, EX-CAD, a mobile CAD solution specially for road and bridge inspection with unified mobile devices and information collection mode, was born.

Now every engineer from Korea Expressway Corporation can easily and skillfully conduct the whole inspection work with EX-CAD. Apart from professional tools for inspection, engineers only need to bring a standard tablet and a touch pen instead of a pile of drawings to the work field. After locating the part they are going to inspect, say, the pier of a bridge, they quickly open the relevant drawing in EX-CAD and search for the corresponding frame. If an issue is detected, it will be marked on the same part in the frame with a number and a pattern representing the type of issue, such as number “1” and a curve for a crack on the pier.

Figure 3. Mark the types of the issues discovered

Once the issue is numbered and marked, they fill in the problem record chart to take down detailed information about the issue, like the size and severity of the crack, and take a photo for it immediately, which is then saved in preset file name and path automatically. When they come back from the field, all the information has already been generated and sorted, and only brief summaries are needed before processing data and delivering a complete report according to their own standards.

All in all, only with an 8-inch tablet in their hands, they can take care of the whole process of inspection from search, check, annotation, record to data management and post-processing. As indicated in the testing feedback from Korea Expressway Corporation, with the implementation of EX-CAD, the drawing time has been reduced by 33%, the report writing time by 40.5% from 31.6 hours to 18.8 hours, and the time for CAD input in the office has been cut down by 12 hours.

Figure 4. An engineer using EX-CAD to conduct inspection work

Industry Customization Expert and Trend Leader

For companies or organizations like Korea Expressway Corporation, productivity and workflow optimization are the most concerning points in their day-to-day work, and EX-CAD is now there to help. As Jong-bok, CEO of ZWCAD Korea said, “EX-CAD will be an indispensable element and lead to significant changes in road and bridge inspection to make it smarter and more efficient.”

And ZWSOFT aims higher in the future. “Mobilization of CAD/CAM is one of the most momentous trends in the next few years, and ZWSOFT is ready to take a lead,” said product manager of ZWCAD, “we would like to help more users in different fields utilize the power of mobile with unique solutions for them, and eventually push the whole industry moving forward.”