Challenge

 

The system gives a manager or decision-maker access to information about the current state of a building. It also diagnoses immediate future state of this building (schedule replacement of associated systems, such as water supply, conditioning), calculates costs of required works, shows both current and potential problems according to normative requirements. The system bases on provided data and Critical Infrastructure ratings.

Unfortunately, this program was unable to send data into the system directly from the building. The data was sent to the database after the analysis and filling in forms had been completed. As a result, the rate of the analysis and business operation was seriously slowed down. That is why FM projects experts decided to develop iOS mobile application, which enables to automatize the working process and to work remotely from a computer.

Requirements

• Duplication of the most important functions of the site
• The service development of data integration with the backend of the existing system
• A user-friendly interface
• An ability to edit content and change settings
• Online and offline operating modes

Solution

As a ready-made operational sample was available, we conducted reverse engineering and rather quickly agreed all the details with the customer. While working on the interface, we were guided by the rule of simplicity and functionality in order to save a manager’s time and, as a result, to cut the company’s costs. A user can enter all the necessary data such as an address, a construction date, the number of floors, materials, system state or the terms of the last repairs on a facility. The application has ready-made options for the most common questions. It is also possible to add own options if the existing ones do not suit.

Finally, we obtained a functional user-friendly iPad application, which completely met the customer’s requirements. We used iOS library UIKIT for the interface creation and, technologies REST and JSON to work with the server and the library AFNetworking for query execution. We also used iOS CoreData for local cashing in the database SQL.