Getting to know the client

Saarijärvi Infra are experts in infrastructure construction with the focus on electricity network construction. With nearly 30 years of experience, they have grown into a multinational company with projects in Finland and Northern Europe. 

Their work is done in the field on the construction sites and it needs to be documented and reported to various stakeholders. Their main challenge was managing the data and improving the flow of information between the teams on the field and the supervisors, office personnel and clients. Their existing solution required a lot of manual work and it was inefficient and error prone. 

The Saarijärvi team had a vision and concept in mind on how to streamline their reporting, increase productivity and give them a competitive advantage in the field. Saarijärvi Infra partnered with Riimu to acquire the technical expertise in order to make the vision a reality.

The Solution

The solution was to build an easy to use mobile application and an accompanying web based admin application. The field workers use the mobile app to report the work from the excavation sites during the different phases of the work. Using the admin application the supervisors and office personnel can easily access the documents from each construction site based on the location and the users. In addition to this, a system for managing work orders was built to improve the way the projects are managed. 

The system was built using modern technologies and tools that allow great productivity and easy maintenance. Flutter was chosen as the technology for building the mobile application, allowing quick development for all mobile platforms. The Web UI of the admin application was built using React.JS, while the backend is based on a serverless architecture and is deployed on AWS.

Benefits of the solution

The project succeeded beyond all expectations. Nowadays a foreman spends about 5 minutes sharing photos that would have previously taken them 30-60 minutes. Because the app is so intuitive and easy to use, employees can share the pictures as soon as they are taken. Storing the photos is not delayed. No photos are lost nor wrongly categorized. Saarijärvi Infra has real-time documentation of all their sites – to the point where they can attend to sites remotely.

I can now remotely manage sites and I don’t need to travel to them as often as before. This saves me a lot of time

Mika Syrjälä, Foreman – Saarijärvi Infra.

The App’s Key Benefits:

• Easy, quick and intuitive 
  • The app is technically well designed and works on Android and iPhones.

• Saves time and increases productivity
  • The mobile app provides real-time data from the site, which makes it possible to control remotely, reducing unnecessary or time-consuming visits to the site.
  • Pictures can now be shared and saved to databases in a fraction of the previous time.

• Reduces the number of customer complaints
  • Saarijärvi Infra receives fewer customer complaints as they can reliably demonstrate where and when each picture attached to the invoice has been taken. All metadata, such as GPS, date and time information remains visible on each picture.

• More efficient invoicing
  • Saarijärvi Infra’s invoicing has become more efficient as the office personnel have access to all the photos in real-time. Invoices are not delayed due to slow downloads, or even worse, lost pictures.

• Increased employee satisfaction
  • It’s rewarding to work with cutting edge tools and practices that the app brought.
  • Evenings are now work-free after the continuous noise of WhatsApp notifications has ended. 
  • Employees don’t feel overwhelmed with information overload and the tedious task of manually sorting out pictures.

• Better customer service
  • Saarijärvi Infra can serve its customers better. Thanks to the metadata, they can find photos in seconds when a customer asks for them. Previously this took minutes, sometimes hours.

• Competitive advantage
  • Saarijärvi Infra’s mobile app gives them a competitive advantage over other companies that still use outdated photo sharing methods.

To be honest I don’t know how we would have coped without the mobile app. Even though it was a big investment for us, the app has paid itself back in less than six months!

Mikko Hyvärinen, Project Manager – Saarijärvi Infra.

Working with Riimu Solutions

According to Mikko Hyvärinen, it was a really positive experience to work with Riimu Solutions. At first, he had reservations about having English as a working language. He was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to express himself well enough to achieve the result that he desired.

Riimu Solutions were professional from start to finish. They were well prepared for each weekly meeting and the reporting was really clear. They had a clear vision and project structure of how this project should be realised.

Mikko Hyvärinen, Project Manager – Saarijärvi Infra.

The project was pleasant also for the Riimu Solutions’ team.

The project offered an interesting challenge and allowed us to solve a real-world business problem and to immediately see the impact of our work. It was a pleasure working with the Saarijärvi Infra team!

Goran Atanasovski, Lead Developer – Riimu Solutions.