Bruce Bodmer

Bruce Bodmer is the Technical Consultant to the National Sea Rescue Institute in Cape Town South Africa and responsible for the development and implementation of the digital evolution from paper based system making use of Forms Director

Read what he says about the digital transformation:

"The National Sea Rescue Institute in South Africa is a non-profit organization located in South Africa. The organization is dedicated to “Saving lives at sea and inland waters”.

There are about 50 Rescue stations that provide this service to the public.To launch a rescue boat is similar to that of an aircraft. Rigorous safety checks and making sure that the rescue boat is ready to go to sea on a mission.

For a rescue boat to be ready to go to the sea there are four checklists. To launch there is one checklist. To recover the rescue boat after the mission there are two checklists. All these checklists were paper-based, resulting in excessive amounts of paper collected and never looked at again and stored in boxes.

A Digital Transformation to evolve from paper to online digital checklist was the only way forward"

The Google Workspace and Google Form

"The investigation looked at a number of options including:

Using existing mobile apps

Developing in-house mobile apps

Creating a website

Using Google Forms

Using Microsoft Forms

Using Jot Forms

After much testing and related financial considerations, we decided to implement Google Forms.

Google Forms is relatively easy to use and is accessible using a browser. As just about “everyone” has a Google account for personal use, it made sense to use this ecosystem.

The challenge was to make it easy for the end-user to capture the data and at the same time be able to deliver comprehensive data storage of the results, good reporting, and instant communication to the rescue crew members using the system.

To achieve this reporting requirement, we investigated the Google Forms Add-ons from Google Workspace and tested many vendors apps"

The selection of Form Director

"A key factor in selecting a solution was that there should be no coding to implement the solution. This makes the solution easier to manage in terms of implementation, support, and maintenance.

After intensive testing, we selected Forms Director Add-on from Jivrus Technologies

Forms Director provided the resilient backend services to deliver the reporting and communication requirements. However, there was a backend service that Forms Director did not provide. That of instant communication to our rescue crew. We decided to approach Jivrus Technologies and see if they were willing to develop an Add-on Service to implement this requirement. After receiving a quick positive response from the Jivrus team and agreeing on the deliverables. Thirty days later we were asked to test their Telegram messaging Service. We were delighted with the result and as it was a perfect fit to meet our requirements of delivering quick instant automated messaging from Google Forms submissions."

The Implementation

"During our development cycle, we replaced 15 paper-based checklists with Google Forms and Forms Director services. In addition, we delivered 6 more Google Forms to help in the management of the rescue station. These included:

Attendance Register for COVID management

Membership application

Indemnity health and safety management

Here is an example of a paper checklist that was digitized using Google Forms together with Forms Director

The Rescue Boat Recovery checklist

On completion of a rescue mission, data is collected that is needed for reporting, this costs of:

Engine Hours

Fuel Used

Fuel added

Cost of the fuel

Crew names

Rescue mission details

Once this form was completed and submitted the following Form Director services were used:

SHEETS - For updating Google Sheets with mission details

GMAIL - Sending automated emails to various groups

TELEGRAM - Sending instant messaging to rescue crews and management

TRELLO - Updating Trello boards with mission information

"

The Result

"The Adoption of this solution by the rescue station and the crews was very successful. It has been three years since digitizing our checklist and implementing automated processes. Rescue crews have not had to use a paper checklist and the resultant reporting has delivered results beyond our expectations.

Without the Form Director add-on services, we would not have achieved the level of automation and reporting. Needless to say, there were challenges in implementing this end-to-end solution and Jivrus Technologies were with us all the way offering solutions and suggestions to help us achieve delivery on time.

"Plans for the future are to rollout the digitization of checklists to about 50 rescue stations"