City-Wide School Structural Inspection and Budget Assessment:

The New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) and School Construction Authority (SCA) wanted to assess the state of all NYC Schools for their upcoming budget review. The DOE and SCA needed to evaluate the structural integrity of schools so that they could comprehensively evaluate repairs that needed to be made throughout the NYC area as a whole, in order to prioritize and allocate funding. 

To do this they needed to conduct a large-scale survey and inspection of the 1,600 school buildings in the system and identify structural issues. Previously, DOE performed this inspection on paper. During the new project, there was a need for more efficiency and higher quality of data so that costing and prioritization of citywide school construction could be very accurate.

DOE looked to a handheld solution to organize and speed data entry while providing authentication, revision control, and data checks to ensure that high-quality data was collected.

Intellis developed the Capital Plan Development System (CPDS) and more recently developed an online version, aptly named the Online Capital Plan Development System (oCPDS). oCPDS is used by a team of Capital Plan analysts to plan projects to respond to building deficiencies and needs for new schools. The system will also be available to the School Construction Authority and other agencies for updating information about actual project cost.

Intellis performed the following:

• Input and evaluation of the project plan in conjunction with DOE and SCA
• Review and business analysis of previous data collection efforts and development of new strategic data collection methodology
• Provided FOUNDATION platform (formerly Mobile Validity® questionnaires) for mobile data entry deployed on mobile devices, providing authentication and revision controls
• Providing logistical support for data transfer and equipment tracking
• Training and onboarding for all team members involved in the project
• Ongoing technical support and maintenance
• Ongoing technical maintenance and data analysis expertise

The system developed by Intellis allowed DOE and SCA to evaluate school structures onsite with mobile devices. These devices were equipped with the Intellis FOUNDATION platform (formerly Mobile Validity®), an inspection software that facilitated the collection of critical data with user-friendly menus and data security features.

Intellis incorporated industry-standard inspection methodology developed in tandem with prominent engineering and architectural firms.

Intellis software provided user authentication, revision control, and quality assurance menus for the inspection data. Intellis provided logistical organization and equipment tracking services and tools to streamline the inspection process and facilitate upload and download of inspection data. Intellis facilitated and oversaw the collection of data and integration of the data into the system. They also provided all necessary technical support to ensure that the project progressed smoothly, and assisted DOE and SCA in ongoing project evaluation.