Water Utility Replaces Paper-Based Field Operations with Power Apps Mobile Platform

The utility's 2,400 field engineers were working from paper job sheets and 8-year-old ruggedised MDTs (mobile data terminals) that were costly to maintain and lacked connectivity in rural areas. Job dispatch was managed by a 24-person control room via phone and radio. Average time from fault report to engineer attendance was 4.8 hours, first-time fix rate was 61%, and asset condition data was inconsistently captured, creating maintenance planning blind spots.

We built a Power Apps mobile canvas app with full offline capability for areas without 4G coverage. Engineers receive job assignments, asset history, and site safety information on their devices. On-site they record fault diagnosis, parts used, work performed, asset condition readings, and photographic evidence, all syncing to Dataverse when connectivity is restored. Power Automate orchestrates dispatch, parts ordering, and escalation. Power BI gives the control room real-time engineer locations, job progress, and SLA status. Azure IoT Hub sensor data feeds predictive fault alerts directly into the job queue.