Testimonial: NKM

For 50 years, NKM has been an expert in the field of design, construction and management of broadband and fiber-optic networks. Quality is an important distinguishing factor here: NKM delivers fast and reliable networks with a low fault rate. For the design, construction and management of these networks, the employees of NKM recently started using Cycloramas and the analysis functionality of Street Smart. This new way of working results in significant time savings; in many cases, civil design processes are now completed in half the time.

For the last few years, NKM has been working on the deployment of telecom networks in vast rural areas, where the existing infrastructure can no longer provide fast and stable communication and where there is also a growing demand for fast internet. For instance, agricultural companies need increasingly fast and reliable connections to operate machines such as milking robots and other agricultural innovations.

The networks NKM constructs for its clients are designed by a specialized team of experts. Before using Street Smart, a draft design is made from the office. Then, someone goes to the project area to check this design during an inspection. After the inspection, any adjustments to the design are taken to the office to be processed into the final network design. Following these design steps for an area of, for instance, 500 buildings used to take several weeks, with the inspections easily taking a week to a week and a half.

Thanks to the use of Street Smart, these three steps can now be completed from the office in one go. A design engineer can now immediately see whether the route of new cables to be laid is not too close to transmission towers, trees or waterways, and whether the verge, for example, is wide enough for construction. In addition to visual inspection, the measurement functionality in Street Smart is now also used for this. The ability to view and add data layers such as land registry data and KLIC notifications provides fast insight into what is already in the ground.

With this new way of working, 80% of the problems now come to light in the office, which means employees only have to visit project locations to conduct an inspection in special cases. As a result, the time needed for inspections is minimized. This way, the duration of the civil design phase of a project can easily be cut in half.

After a successful pilot in the second half of 2018, NKM has been a regular user of Cyclomedia's products since early 2019. Currently, 20 employees are already working with the imagery and analysis functionality of Street Smart. They are very positive about the quality and coverage of the imagery, the measurement options and the ease of use. But the integration of the imagery of Cyclomedia into NKM's work processes also creates a demonstrable advantage: working up to 50% faster is a major step forward.