A complete rebuild of the app that has served Australian field operations teams for 15 years.
GBM Konect, an Australian field data capture platform, was one of the first mobile mapping solutions built for field teams working on-site and in remote locations without reliable connectivity.
Thirteen years on, that same platform has been rebuilt from the ground up.
Global GBM Chief Executive Officer Russell Shooter said the rebuild was as much about what comes next for customers as it was about the technology.
“The platform has served our customers well for more than a decade. But it was time to improve the foundation to move faster and give our customers a platform that can keep up with how their operations are growing,” Shooter said.
For councils, contractors, and infrastructure teams, unreliable field data incurs direct operational costs. This translates to crews revisiting sites because records didn’t sync, GIS teams cleaning data before it’s usable, and project milestones delayed by errors that could have been caught in the field.
Shooter said the consequences run deeper than operational friction.
“Even more so when the data isn’t making it back in the first place. The decisions that matter – asset condition, maintenance priorities, compliance reporting – depend on what comes back from the field. If that data is incomplete, delayed, or lost somewhere between the site and the system, you’re not making decisions on what actually happened. You’re guessing.”
Shooter said Konect 2 addresses the problem at three points in the workflow:
Automatic data sync ensures everything a team needs is on the device before they leave, with every capture syncing back to the office the moment coverage returns.
A new Data Tab enforces data structure at the point of capture, reducing the cleaning and rework that typically happens before field data is usable.
A Mapbox-based vector mapping engine delivers faster map rendering and lays the foundation for large offline vector basemaps. This is particularly relevant for teams operating across Australia’s more remote regions.
Shooter said the company spent the past several months running closed sessions with field operations teams across Australia, putting Konect 2 in front of real customers before making it widely available.
“The feedback has been strong. These are teams who know exactly what they need from a field platform, and having them test it in real conditions before a wider release has been invaluable,” Russell said.
Service Stream’s Automation Team Manager Chris Sheehan has been testing Konect 2 as an early beta partner for the past month and said the Data Tab has been the standout for his team.
“Being able to filter and allocate work from a list, instead of always going through the map first, results in efficiency gains of approximately 100 hours per day across the business,” he said.
Konect 2 is available now.
About GBM Konect
Konect is a field services platform that captures asset conditions and reports on them in real time. Even in patchy or no-coverage environments, data is stored locally and syncs automatically when you’re back online; so your team gets quicker data capture, fewer mistakes, and less rework.
PEOPLE. DATA. PLACES. Three things that have to work together for field operations to run well. Konect is built to strengthen that connection.
For more information, visit https://gbmkonect.com
