Trident Reporter

Article Index
Trident Reporter
Page 2
Page 3
All Pages

The Belwind project offshore Belgium is used to develop a tool to keep track of health, safety, environmental and quality issues during the building of a windfarm. During the building of the Amalia windfarm offshore IJmuiden (NL) no such tool existed and reporting and administration of issues was done with individual documents. It became clear that organizing this by means of a software tool would make live much easier. Reporter is the result of this idea.

People responsible for the reporting of HSE (health, safety, environment) and quality issues use a laptop and a camera to register issues. Data are stored locally in a database. As soon as the reporting person has a stable access to the internet (from a ship back into a hotel room for instance), he or she can synchronise his or her local database with the central database at the office. When only e-mail contact is stable it is possible to send the latest entries to the local database by mail to the office, where they can be added to the central database.

Most of the reporting is done by making choices from pull-down menu's. This means little extra effort, standardises the reports and allows for easy searches within the database. Multiple pictures can be attached to issues by uploading them from the camera to the pc, and then dragging and dropping them to the issue. Pictures are stored securely within the database so issues cannot lose their pictures. Picture size is reduced interactively to keep down synchronisation times.

The same pull-down menu based interface can be used to search the database and to make listings of specific issues. Individual issues as well as listings can be exported for use in other programs. The central database keeps track of the complete history of all issues, the local databases only contain the most recent references to the issues.

New issues are added by first choosing between HSE or Quality issue. Then a small description is added for quick reference meant for communication over phone or during meetings. The issue then has to be addressed, that means attaching it to an object, or to a place on the map. When a monopile issue arises in the factory or during transport, one has to have some sort of product identification number physically attached to the monopile. As soon as the monopile is put in place (if the issue allows that !) one can change the addressing by a place on the map. HSE issues also can be attached to vessels. The pull down menu's have to be set from top to bottom. Menu's are dynamic: the contents of the menu's lower down (partly) depend on the values chosen higher up.

With the search button pressed, the following figure shows how one can use the same menu's to get a listing of all quality issues related to foundations (FND); all menu's left empty will not be used in the search:

The listing can be exported as a csv file for further use in for instance Microsoft Excel. Double clicking an issue in the listing will open the issue, together with its possible pictures, ready for editing.

Synchronisation with the central database is done from the third (settings) screen:

by clicking the 'sync' button. Apart from the password for login, all other information shown in this window has only to be given during the first use of Reporter. Users can have different roles, and the administrator also has access to the database that feeds the Ecofys Trident OWM tool.

Technical remarks
Reporter is tested on Apple Macintosh OSX and on windows 2000 and above. A version for Linux can be created as well. The database used is open source: SQLite, so no additional licence is needed.