Smartphones are the way forward. Have you considered what role they will play for you in the Water Resources Industry? Should we adopt smartphones and give them a prominent role in our industry?

We have all been searching for years for the perfect solution driven by a desire for cost-effective mobile solutions for data management- the power to hold decision-making tools in the palm of your hand. While this is true even in the Water/Wastewater infrastructure industry, historically it has been an expensive task.

Since the days of the early Palm handheld devices and before, every software development company offered their own proprietary solution, while charging a small fortune for a unified platform, strictly licensed, controlled and distributed with many features the average user had no need for.

The sun is at least partially setting, or more likely, a new sun is rising on this expensive company-specific era with the advent of the smartphone and Apple’s iOS and Google Android operating systems. Our data and communications needs are being liberated. Now that we are arriving in the new era, how can we take advantage of all that mobile technology has to offer to Water Professionals?

To a large extent, the answer depends largely on who you are- engineer, operator, system administrator, technician or service provider. Clearly, the field is ripe for technological development for anyone who operates in any sort of remote or “field” capacity- where data retrieval and manipulation, calculations, systems communication, and recording or note taking, previously done on paper that has a tendency to get lost, or fall in some unsuspecting basin- can now been done on a handheld device in a practical, more efficient way, stored securely in a single location, and even backed up if necessary.

Likewise, a whole suite of possibilities exist for traveling engineers, professionals or system providers who need instant access to information in order to run their project or system in a more efficient, productive manner, amplifying decision making in a tangible, measureable way. A future is not far off, where even the most complicated operations previously requiring someone to be tethered to a high powered PC at a desk, are now smoothly undertaken in the palm of your hand.

The phone goes where the person does, that much is clear. But the real key is to provide the context- what the individual needs, where they are located, and when they need it, with no more or less features than are absolutely necessary to get the job done. It must be delivered in a way that’s intuitive and welcoming to the User. Done in the right way, yesterdays “back of the envelope calculation” now sits at the ready, on your smartphone, waiting as an app for you to conjure the results.

Recently, Thinkov- a mobile solutions provider for the engineering field- partnered with Rain for Rent, to develop a free, simple and time-saving Total Dynamic Head calculator application for iOS.

Every water-related industry needs pumps at one time or another, for turnarounds, bypasses and various other projects. Knowing what type of pump will provide the best results is essential, and this requires an analysis of the specific jobsite needs and a determination of the Total Dynamic Head.

Rain for Rent saw a unique opportunity to lend its engineers and its name- synonymous with engineered pumping solutions- to develop this application and benefit the entire water/wastewater related industry. As leaders in the liquid handling equipment rentals and system design industry, Rain for Rent’s engineering team immediately saw a benefit to deploying this app for field use.

With this co-developed TDH calculator app, you can now instantly calculate the hydraulic conditions indicated by TDH and NPSH for your specific pumping needs. This allows you to source a pump that will be effective for any project. Coordination with complicated Hazen-Williams programmed excel spreadsheets are no longer necessary. The application also features built-in iPhone GPS data retrieval to assist NPSH determinations. We’ve focused on making this an easy-to-use app so you can make your data work for you.

Best of all, your data isn’t trapped in your phone. You can email your detailed results to anyone and get your entire team synced with the correct information.

Thinkov has developed several iOS apps for use in a variety of engineering cases. We recognize the important role smartphones play in the Water/Wasterwater industry and are working diligently to provide simple and effective apps to serve our fellow engineers. We invite you to try the app, just search Rain for Rent in the iTunes Store