Facilitating real estate transactions, revolutionising services in the construction industry, managing buildings and helping companies to keep tabs on an increasingly mobile workforce – these were some of the creative geospatial applications that emerged from the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore’s (IDA) recent i-Singapore@Work Call for Collaboration (CFC).

“The i-Singapore programme under the Singapore Geospatial Collaborative Environment, or SG-SPACE initiative, is a step towards a geospatially enabled nation in a smart city. IDA issued the i-Singapore@Work CFC in April. The CFC aims to promote the integrated use of Government's geospatial data with the private sector's data to derive benefits for our citizens and businesses. It attracted 14 proposals with more than 35 companies participating. Projects proposed were related to workforce productivity, demand-supply matching, lifestyle services, planning and decision-making,” said Chief Executive Officer of IDA, Mr Ronnie Tay.

Mr Sam Baker, Mr Jeremy Lee (seventh and eighth from left respectively) and the StreetSine team behind the geospatial service Professional Co-Broking Network.

The five companies - StreetSine, V3 Teletech, Maek Consulting, Mevo and ShowNearby - were awarded grants under the CFC to develop geospatial applications in November 2011 and are already at work developing these new geospatial applications.

Collectively, the programme is expecting at least 500 enterprises and 300,000 users to benefit from the geospatial services. When fully deployed in 2012, almost 3 million location-based business transactions will be generated.

An example of a geospatial service is StreetSine’s Professional Co-Broking Network (PCN). Developed in collaboration with Singapore Land Authority’s OneMap , PCN will provide participating estate agencies, agency leaders and agents with a map-based workstation for advising their clients, co-broking transactions, and managing various administrative and compliance obligations, said StreetSine’s Chief Executive Officer Mr Sam Baker.

Mr Adrian Long: The recognition and support given by IDA will provide leads for more users to make use of the proposed solution.

The goal of the project is to incorporate geospatial applications (tagged to OneMap) and collaborative tools such as free messaging and electronic networking, to make the real estate market more interactive and transparent and, thus, more efficient for consumers and agents, said Chief Technology Officer Mr Jeremy Lee.

Targeting a different group of users is V3 Teletech’s CASPE (Construction Auxiliary Services Productivity Enhancement) System, which is aimed at encouraging the use of geospatial location and wireless technologies among auxiliary services companies serving the construction industry. These include, for example, companies providing geotechnical instrumentation services for the construction sector.

According to Mr Adrian Long, General Manager of V3 Teletech, CASPE enables such companies to reduce the need for manual processes, such as having their field engineers record readings from various equipment and measuring tools onto pieces of paper. Instead, such information can be entered directly into the system. The controller will also be able to pinpoint the location of the field engineers on a digital map and get updates on the job status on-the-fly.

As for Mevo, the objective of its project is to develop a Mobile Workforce Tracking application to enhance management control, giving its managers full visibility over every field service personnel from the backend office.

“It allows the company to track whether off-site work is done punctually, consistently and efficiently,” said Managing Director Mr Tan Kah Heng. “For an example, with the application, a maintenance company will know whether its technician visits the customer punctually, how often every customer is visited and how much time is actually spent doing work at the customer’s premises. With this information, the management will be able to better boost productivity, pre-empt under-serviced customers and formulate a differentiated reward system for its mobile workers.”

While Mevo’s application is focused on managing human assets, Maek’s Asset Inspection & Management System enables users to monitor less animate entities – such as buildings and facilities. The system comprises a mobile inspection data collection module and a defect score and condition rating module, and its users would include asset owners, government agencies, facility managers and building inspectors.

According to Ms Foo Chin Peng of Maek, the current inspection process for such assets often involves manual entry of data into the computer in order to generate reports. “The mobile inspection data collection is aimed at minimising manual data collection and entry. In addition, the defect scoring system enhances value of inspection, increasing objectivity in subjective inspection process,” she said.

The fifth project under the CFC is ShowNearby’s proposed solution to create mash-ups using government and business geospatial data and applying analytics to help businesses decide on the kind of campaigns they should run to get the most potential customers. Geospatial analytics is of particular interest to traditional food and beverage and retail businesses where location is a key factor in the success or failure of the business.

Under the i-Singapore @Work CFC, the five companies will be given grants to support part of the development costs for their proposed projects. However, as Mr Long of V3 Teletech pointed out, “It is not so much about the quantum of the funding for the project, but rather the recognition and support given by IDA, which will provide leads for more users to make use of the proposed solution.”

Parties interested in submitting ideas and proposals for i-Singapore collaborations may write to [email protected] for more information.