Business and Database Applications
Internal tools, portals, and reporting systems shaped around how a business actually works, instead of bending the business around packaged software.
Case study · Inspec
BEMS: Inspec’s Building Envelope Management System
The web system Inspec’s clients use to see the condition of their roofs, walls and paved areas, report leaks and follow every repair. Designed, built and hosted for Inspec by LTP Microservices.
Client: Inspec (opens in a new tab) — independent architectural and engineering consultants specialising in building enclosures — roofs, walls, windows and waterproofing — with offices in Chicago, Milwaukee and Minneapolis.
BEMS on inspec.com (opens in a new tab) Sign in to BEMS (opens in a new tab)
The brief
Inspec surveys roofs, walls and paved areas for building owners and facility managers. What those surveys find — and the leak reports, warranties and repair records that follow — needed to live in one place the owner could see, instead of in old reports and email threads.
In Inspec’s words, BEMS is “one secure place where building owners and facility managers can see the condition of their roofs, walls and paved areas, report leaks, and follow each repair until it is fixed.”
The difficulty
Several kinds of people work in the same records with different rights: Inspec’s consultants, the owners and facility managers whose buildings they are, and roofing contractors, who see only the buildings they are assigned to.
Leaks are reported from wherever the person is — at a desk or on a roof — with photos, and each report carries every update and document until the repair is finished, so the history is there the next time that roof comes up.
What was done
LTP Microservices designed and built BEMS for Inspec, and hosts and maintains it. It runs in a web browser on a computer, tablet or phone, with nothing to install.
The current version is BEMS 4. Work on a BEMS 3 was started and then set aside: AI-assisted development had become capable enough to go straight to BEMS 4 instead.
LTP Microservices also handles the design and SEO of Inspec’s website, inspec.com, where the public page explaining BEMS to building owners and roofing contractors lives.
The shape of it
- A dashboard showing where every building in a portfolio stands, each one a click away
- One record per building: roofs, walls, paved areas, survey photos, documents and leak history
- Leak reports from a desk or a phone, with photos, followed through to the finished repair
- Leak trends across a portfolio, showing which roofs cause the most trouble and when
- Roof ages, condition ratings from Inspec’s assessments, and warranty dates for planning budgets
- Contractor logins that see only the buildings they are assigned to
- Survey photos mapped with GPS
- Reports that print, save as PDF or export to Excel
Since then
LTP Microservices hosts and maintains BEMS for Inspec, and continues to develop it.
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