By adopting a paperless process for delivering construction administration documents, practitioners can save time and resources while improving the process of managing construction documents. New Jersey’s State Innovative Council recommended that a STIC Incentive Funding Grant be awarded to NJDOT to advance the use of mobile devices in the administration and oversight of its Local Aid Program. The NJDOT received a STIC Incentive Funding Grant of $21,464 in FY2015.
The STIC grant funded the acquisition of tablets for use in two areas: application ratings and construction inspection. The primary benefits of the transition to tablets were expected to come from improved staff efficiency through a reduction in the preparation time prior to field visits and an elimination of the need to manually transfer data collected on paper in the field.
NJDOT’S Division of Local Aid was able to use the funding to acquire 14 tablets and Mi-fi “hotspot” cards to ensure field network connectivity. NJDOT’s IT department was engaged to coordinate the procurement process to the purchase the tablets for Local Aid staff and install cellular connection, VPN Access, security software, licensing. Electronic Field Inspection reports were designed, developed and tested in accordance with the Division’s Policy and Procedure for Construction Inspection. District training was delivered for the use of tablets for construction inspections of federal projects. The tablets were distributed to the 4 Local Aid districts and are in use.