Path to Digital Excellence: Municipality of Kanal ob Soči Digitalized Infrastructure Management with TagPlan

Company

Industry: Public utility service for drinking water supply and municipal wastewater discharge and treatment
Employees: Field and administrative teams for critical infrastructure management
Infrastructure scope: 105 locations
Use case: Systematic facility inspections, regular and extraordinary parameter measurements, maintenance work orders

Challenges Before TagPlan

The Municipality of Kanal ob Soči faced growing operational challenges that threatened both efficiency and regulatory compliance:

Paper System Problems

• Illegible, damaged, and lost records – forms became unreadable due to water, dirt, and poor handwriting legibility
• Data transcription just to enable subsequent analysis
• Physical document search during inspections – browsing through folders of records while inspectors waited

Operational Challenges

• Unreliable oversight of processes across more than 100 critical infrastructure facilities
• Outdated checklists that were never up-to-date enough
• Difficult addition of new tasks or measurements to the existing system
• Time-consuming team coordination – unclear who did what, where, and when

Compliance Risks

• Stressful inspection visits with prolonged data searches
• Risk of non-compliance due to poor traceability of critical control point monitoring
• Difficult verification of whether maintenance workers actually visited locations within the scheduled period
• Harder trend tracking and systematic identification of recurring issues

The paper-based system was neither practical nor transparent. Records were lost, damaged, or incorrectly archived. During inspections, we wasted time searching through piles of forms. Team coordination was difficult.

Why TagPlan

Management made the decision based on a clear explanation of problems with the previous way of working and very encouraging results from the trial period. Goals:

• Elimination of paper,
• verification of presence at location with NFC,
• instant access to historical data for inspections,
• simplified periodic planning,
• intuitive use for different user profiles.

Deciding Factor

What ultimately convinced management:

• Clear documentation of existing problems,
• very encouraging results from the trial period,
• confirmation of benefits by field workers,
• improvement of field conditions after just a few weeks of use.

TagPlan Implementation

Fast and Smooth Transition

User adoption: maintenance workers mastered basic use within one to two months, with occasional reminders needed to refresh tasks and submit data. After implementation in water supply, the wastewater team also requested inclusion.

Organic Expansion

After successful implementation in water supply, the wastewater team quickly requested inclusion, which testifies to the actual benefits of the solution.

Technical Setup

• 105 digitalized locations (intakes, water plants, water reservoirs, pumping stations, treatment plants, sewage pumping stations),
• 72 critical locations with NFC tags for presence validation,
• 33 locations without NFC (mainly intakes and facilities where tag installation is difficult),
• More than 50 NFC scans per week

Results

Operational Efficiency

• Inspection preparation: from several minutes of searching through papers to <1 minute, complete compliance and satisfied inspectors.
• Data quality: errors almost eliminated, data reliable for decision-making.
• Employee onboarding: entire transition to the new solution took only 2 weeks.
• System usage: approximately 4 hours weekly on the web application and more than 50 NFC validations per week.

Compliance and Transparency

• Measurements are recorded immediately at the location.
• NFC validation confirms physical presence and reduces the possibility of incorrect records.
• Easier display of parameters and trends (e.g., free chlorine) for inspection needs.
• Compliance: critical control points, verification of equipment operation, intake area inspections, visitor registration, pest control monitoring.

Service Impact

• Significantly fewer problems in the current year requiring restrictive measures (e.g., boiling).

Periodic Work Order Planning

Manual planning of hundreds of routine inspections across more than 100 locations was replaced by periodic scheduling within the application, which automatically generates recurring tasks based on defined intervals.

Periodic work order planning tremendously simplifies the planning of regular rounds with a large number of facilities.

Easier Inspection Reviews

It is extremely easy to find and display specific parameters and trends – such as free chlorine measurements – that interest the inspector. Our inspector was visibly enthusiastic about the implementation and praised the systematic monitoring and record-keeping.

New Perspective from Workers

Field workers accepted the solution positively. They understood that the previous record-keeping was neither practical nor transparent. After implementation in water supply, the wastewater maintenance team quickly requested inclusion.

Perhaps most notable was the level of acceptance among older field workers:

We were pleasantly surprised. These are not young workers, yet they accepted the digital solution without much resistance. They themselves were frustrated with the paper system and immediately saw the advantages.

User Experience Satisfaction

• Overall user experience is positive on both web and mobile platforms.
• Intuitive interface enables quick adoption even for less tech-savvy users.
• Responsive development team quickly resolves issues when they arise.

Client Statement

I would recommend its use to everyone still using paper records. TagPlan has completely eliminated the laborious preparation of record sheets, which were never up-to-date enough and got lost. Maintenance workers are relieved of paper handling, immediately see current work orders, and can more easily schedule work. With NFC tags, we are confident that maintenance workers actually performed the planned inspection at the location. Measurements are done and recorded immediately, there is no more subsequent data completion.

— Jakob Merljak, Municipal Service of the Municipality of Kanal ob Soči