Phend & Brown

Phend & Brown, Inc. is a general heavy and highway construction company that contracts for public highway, street and road construction and reconstruction, as well as infrastructure for private commercial and residential development. Earthmoving, asphalt and concrete pavement, drainage, sewer and water are self-performed throughout northern Indiana.

Thad Justice, Geomatic Machine Control Specialist, and Andy Brown, President, talk about their experiences with using OnStation while on the US 30 corridor project located in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The goal of this project, lead by The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT), is to reduce congestion and safety as INDOT expects travel to essentially double on U.S. 30 over the next 20 years. 

Ready to see the power of OnStation on your project? Talk to sales for a demo.

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Overview

By now, you’ve probably heard plenty from the OnStation team about the benefits of using our app on your project. So why not hear how the app benefits users first hand?

OnStation provides value whether you are performing road labor, managing multiple projects, carrying out project bidding, or implementing organizational wide decisions. Thad and Andy will cover feature highlights and the value OnStation supplied them to make them successful... Everyday.

Favorite Features

What caught your eye when you first found OnStation, and what gap did it fill for you and your team? 

For me, it was having that instant station availability on a project without having to go out and look at power poles or where the station lathe is.  To have that readily available in your hands is a huge bonus. Also, the flag and chat, when we had problems that came up that was a viable tool to document the issue, drop a pin wherever the issue was, and whoever needed to could take care of the problem.

Thad Justice Geomatic Machine Control Specialist

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Three Phone Mockup - Phend & Brown Case Study

It’s just a great management tool.  These projects are obviously spread out over very large areas, most times you can’t even see the whole project on one page of plans.  I’ve probably used the app as much if not more sitting in the office.  The app allows me to see the full scope of the project, without flipping through multiple plan sheets, and I can call in locates for buried utilities for teams in the field, for example. 

Andy Brown President

Providing Value

How do we measure the value of a tool like OnStation?

OnStation also provides value from a safety perspective.  Take our US 30 job, for instance, which will have a lot of night work.  All of the stationing lathe for that project are down the centerline median right now.  So at night, if you wanted to know which station you were at, you would have to cross a live lane of traffic to get to the median and then look in the dark for the nearest lathe.  Whereas now, our guys will be on the back of their paver, they can open their phone up, and figure out exactly where they are. 

Thad Justice Geomatic Machine Control Specialist

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It’s another tool that gives us a certain level of confidence when we bid a job that some of the things we’ve struggled with in the past are a lot easier to do because now we have this.  All of those little repetitive issues that come up on every project – the things that you never think about – all of them are just easier to fix with OnStation.  For example, and I authorize you to tell this story(!), I woke up at 2:30 in the morning thinking about a pipe that’s position might screw up some other pieces of the work we had to do.  I logged into OnStation, find out that my worry was true, and it helped us plan accordingly because we had OnStation! 

Andy Brown President

Field Anecdotes

Any other fun stories about OnStation from the past year? 

We had a mill and fill project for SR 13 last year.  We had milled the surface off the road, and that night we had a heavy rainstorm.  The next morning, one of the intersections of the project had a large amount of standing water and we needed to determine if it was caused by the milling we did.  One of our guys who uses OnStation went out to that quadrant of the project, took a picture of the water hazard, and then we could communicate about our next steps right in the app.  Everyone knew exactly where to go when we got out onsite, we did our measurements, and we were able to address the issue in a timely manner. 

Thad Justice Geomatic Machine Control Specialist

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I would recommend this thing to everyone.  It works well, it’s a reasonable price, and it’s a big help on all of our jobs! 

Andy Brown President

Conclusion

Thad and Andy’s thoughts are clear: OnStation makes your life on the job site easier. Whether you’re using the Flag & Chat feature to go over an issue, or if you’re trying to determine what station you’re by at night, OnStation helps you communicate and work out issues on the site more effectively. Schedule a demo below to learn more about OnStation. 

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In ten years or maybe tomorrow you WILL be using this or something like it. I lived through the revolution of GPS equipment being mounted on excavation equipment... trying at times and now it literally can't be done without it. PM, WisDOT
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