Inspect Your Sidewalks using IDSI Expert Services

Local Government Councils are elected to deliver promised Service Levels. Underperforming Sidewalks are a major problem for many Local Governments.

Regular sidewalk inspections increase the chances that problems are discovered, documented, and repaired as soon as possible. Inspections are mandated at least annually, but should be more often near schools, business districts, and other high-traffic areas frequently used by the public. Inspections can be performed by in-house personnel in the Public Works department or can be completed by a specialist Inspection Services provider such as IDSI. It is important that the records of surveys be maintained in the event that a sidewalk-related injury occurs.

Items that should be documented in sidewalk inspections include:

• Vertical displacement and/or settlement 2 cms or greater.
• Cracks 2 cms across or greater.
• Significant portions of the surface chipped away.
• Holes or potholes greater than one inch in diameter.
• Chunks of loose concrete or slabs that move or wobble.
• Fences, signs, vending machines, etc., partially blocking the path.
• Utility plugs and valves that protrude 2 cms or more above the surface.
• Low hanging tree limbs, bushes, weeds, or other plants growing into the sidewalk and/or posing an obstruction.
• Wet leaves, rock, sand, dirt, or other debris accumulating on the sidewalk.
• Areas of pooling water that may become patches of ice during freezing weather.
• Any other situation that creates the potential for a slip, trip, or fall.
  

IDSI’s Safe Sidewalk Program is a key component in providing a safe pedestrian environment and mitigating the considerable risks associated with underperformance of your Sidewalk infrastructure.

Safe Sidewalk Program

Our Intent

• To provide the highest quality service to North American Local Governments to inspect and gather vital information about their Sidewalk assets.
• To deliver the information in an easily integrated GIS-based digital format.
• To be an important part of our Clients’ Infrastructure Asset Management Programs.

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Benefit to our Clients

Safety

• Proactively detect and measure sidewalk problems as part of an annual preventive repair strategy to reduce injuries to the public.
• Inspect high-risk areas such as near Senior Citizen facilities, Schools, Fire Halls and Medical facilities on a more frequent basis than other areas.

Risk Reduction

• Minimise risk through early warning of problems.
• Demonstrate risk containment publicly.
• Contain Liability
• Reduce exposure to lawsuits and costly penalties.
• Provide full documentation regarding “reasonable” preventive measures taken.

Direct Cost Reduction

• Immediate linkage to Work Management systems for fast response.
• Lower cost personnel, but fully trained and experienced.
• No seasonal staffing considerations to deal with.
• Contracted services provided on a multi-year cycle.
• Integration services provided to minimize disruption to in-house IT resources.
• Reduced personnel time involved in legal issues.

Overhead Reduction

• No office, transportation, benefits, administrative or HR overheads associated with getting the inspection work done.
• Manage and negotiate better insurance premiums.

Engineering Support

• Provide a clear thematic and data “picture” of priorities related to sidewalk maintenance and re-engineering.
• Provide geo-referenced digital photography of defects for remote visual confirmation by maintenance and engineering personnel, reducing re-inspection expense.

Regulatory Compliance

• Provides data and reporting tools for full compliance now and in the future.

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Easy Start

Scope

• Working with your Engineering/Operations specialists, IDSI will cooperatively define the scope of the Inspection Services project for Client approval.

Data

• Client Data required for use in the Inspection process, such as Street names, intersections, and Client-selected defect codes and parameters will be identified and extracted for loading to the inspection units.

Data Integration Services

• Specific data integration requirements will be defined and tested. The Safe Sidewalks program includes a very flexible data migration capability, independent of the type of database technology preferred by the Client.

Deliverables

• Written Scope Agreement.
• Comprehensive Inspection data including geo-referenced inspections and digital photography.
• Integration services (as required).
• Web-based data browsing (optional).

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Justification

A single sidewalk-related trip, slip or fall can easily result in a successful liability claim of $35,000, or more. This does not include the related legal expenses, and perhaps most significantly, the time consumed by employees responding to and defending against such claims, even when settled out of court.

Taxpayers expect that Local Governments will provide a level of service that maintains appropriate safety standards for users of infrastructure such as Roads and Sidewalks.

The combination of ageing infrastructure and tighter and tighter budgets makes achieving mandated levels of service increasingly difficult. Unfortunately the legal system does not take such pressures into account.

A significant part of the answer is to manage such risks by implementing inspection programs that are designed to expose possible problems before they result in personal injury, and to demonstrate a reasonable approach to identifying such problems, with a reliable response process in place to eliminate them in an acceptable timeframe.

IDSI’s Safe Sidewalk Program is designed to provide the services necessary to manage these risks at a known cost that is considerably less than the potential liability claims that could result from a “respond when it’s too late” approach.

Technology Profile

• The mobile sidewalk inspection technology employed by IDSI is comprised of a sturdy adult tri-cycle, with a ruggedized tablet computer mounted on a secure shaded platform above the handlebars. The tablet computer includes a GPS receiver and a digital camera.
• The operator cycles along the sidewalk sections to be inspected and enters start and stop points, and defects as the unit moves along. The GPS receiver continuously monitors the equipment’s position and records the coordinates of all "point" and "continuous" defects.
• The Tablet (Pad) computer is a Windows platform running the inspection application with a simple database for ease of upload/download of inspection data, and lookup tables.