What Do You Use Your Cell Phone For (Discussion Topic)?

Today's cell phones are powerful computers that most of us carry around in our pockets.  We have all heard stories about how much more powerful modern cell phones are than the space capsules and lunar modules that got us to the moon and back, but how much of that power are *YOU* actually taking advantage of?  What sorts of applications or utilities do you make use of in the course of your regular work that is outside the typical phone calls, e-mails and text messages? 

In performing building inspections and assessments, there are a number of apps that have proven useful to me, and perhaps you can benefit as well.  Below are some that I have found to be particularly useful and in particular, have allowed me to use my phone for a task that I would have had to carry a separate tool for in the past.  I am interested to hear of others that you use and why.  Note that the apps listed below are for the Android operating system and there may or may not be similar ones for iOS.  Also, I make no warranties or guarantees as to the accuracy or functionality of these apps and I am not affiliated with them in any way nor do I receive any benefit from their use or purchase.  I offer this information simply as my own personal experience (your mileage may vary, so to speak).

On to my list:

Army Knife for Android  - This is a small group of apps bundled together that includes a unit converter, timer, stopwatch, compass, bubble level, magnifying glass, mirror and more.  I particularly like the bubble level and magnifying glass.   While the bubble level will never replace a good 4' level, it is accurate enough to quickly check the slope of ramps (for ADA compliance, etc.) and the magnifying glass can be helpful when reading small print.






GPS Essentials - This is another group of apps bundled together, with maps, GPS satellite monitors, waypoint tracking and more.  I particularly like the compass feature which displays both a traditional compass face, but also customizable fields for latitude, longitude, elevation, and even accuracy. 







Lux Light Meter Free - This is a pretty basic but very function light meter that can help you measure the illumination using the camera's sensors.  It has the ability to display the output in foot-candles or lux, and you store, recall and calibrate it.  I compared the accuracy of this to the old standby GE model 217 light meter that I have used for years and found it to be very accurate - so there is one less device I need to carry around with me.

Free42 - Many of my fellow classmates in college were using HP calculators with its venerable "Reverse Polish Notation (RPN)".  I didn't really understand the attraction back then and didn't take time to learn it.  Later, however, I did and I realized what they had been so fond of.  Once you get comfortable with RPN, you really don't want to go back.  There are lots of HP emulator calculators and RPN calculators to choose from but this one has served me well for years and it saves me from having to carry a separate calculator in the field.

GEO Tracker - For those of us who sometime have to perform site work and would like the ability to look back after walking that site to see exactly what we had covered, this is a very handy application.  Start it when you begin your work.  Stop it when you are finished. When you are done it plots your path on a map with lots of helpful statistics.  This is a useful app for lots of other activities too, such as biking or hiking but I have found it a useful work tool and so it makes this list.

Google Photos - This is a no-brainer.  We take photos with our phones all the time.  Although for much of the work I do, I use a dedicated point-and-shoot Canon HS100.  The Canon has been extremely reliable and it is easier to hang that from a lanyard around my neck and to take photos with it than pulling my phone from my pocket, launching the app, and taking the photo with my phone, I use both and then use Google Photos to back them up and organize them.  This is one app that doesn't necessarily prevent me from bringing a dedicated camera into the field, but it is great to know that it is there in case the primary camera fails, and the app itself is very useful beyond just the picture taking.

These are some of my favorite go-to apps to help me to my work.  Comment below on yours!

Total Cost of Ownership

June 19, 2019

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. We have all heard that saying before, and there is a lot of truth to it. Sometimes messing around with equipment or systems that are working satisfactorily can have adverse effects and cause them to run worse, rather than better. On the other hand, sometimes we overlook problems or costs that could be improved with the right attention. How do we know the difference?

Pictured above is a roof fan. It isn’t new, obviously, but it may not be that old either. Sure, it has a dent in the housing, but that probably doesn’t impact it’s performance significantly. In fact, visually, this fan doesn’t really indicate any current or impending problems. We can make some educated guesses as to it’s performance and reliability: the aged roof surrounding it may help us determine an approximate age for the fan, the rusted screw heads may indicated that it doesn’t get serviced regularly, and if we were standing next to it we could listen to it and observe its operation to see if it is vibrating excessively or sounds like a belt may be worn.

However, it could, in fact, be well maintained despite the visual cues from the photo. It could be that the motor and belts were recently replaced and the fan itself was properly balanced and it is running smoothly. It could have years of more reliable operation ahead. We simply cannot tell just from this photo.

So how do we determine the current condition of this equipment (or any equipment, for that matter), and more importantly, how do we determine when the right time to replace it will be? For that, we need to dig into the equipment history.

What “equipment history” you ask? Where do we find this information? Hopefully the owner of this fan has a maintenance department that uses some sort of maintenance system – preferably a computerized maintenance management system, but even manual ones (as rare as they are now) can be effective if properly updated. You don’t necessarily need a huge maintenance budget to properly track your preventive, predictive, and reactive service calls, but you DO need to be diligent and consistent about it. The information gathered there is a gold mine and should be treated as such.

Too often companies focus all of their efforts on making sure PM’s get done, or that service calls are managed in a timely fashion – and they are certainly important, but don’t forget to log the results of those activities. Properly logged data about the age of the equipment, the number of times a particular piece of equipment has been serviced, what was serviced, and how much it cost can be very important in deciding whether it is time to replace the motor in that fan or to get a new fan altogether. If you did the research on this particular fan and found that the motor had been replaced several times already, maybe there are other problems with the fan that make it a poor choice to keep investing money into it. Perhaps the motor mounts are cracked from years of vibration and it will continue to chew up motors. Perhaps the fan is not constructed with the right materials for the service it is doing. Alternatively, maybe this fan has been super reliable so far and has only needed routing lubrication and belt replacements. The equipment history is vital in determining what to do next.

If you are a maintenance or facilities manager, can you pick out a piece of equipment at random from your building’s equipment list and tell from its equipment history whether it is coming up for replacement or is still serviceable? If not, why not? If your maintenance and equipment history records aren’t what they should be it would be a great idea to get them in order or hire a company to help you do so. The investment will pay itself back several fold in both reduced operations and maintenance costs as well as improved reliability and up-time.

Do you have ideas on other topics for this feature? Post them in the comments on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.   .

Check back next week for another “What’s Wrong With This Picture”