Do we need DEFECTED if we already run Procore or ACC?
Procore and Autodesk Construction Cloud are general-purpose platforms: they serve every trade and every document on a project. DEFECTED is not a replacement for either. It is a register built for one stage of tunnel work, the rectification of defects in the lining, and for the people who do it: injection and labour crews underground, and the engineers who accept their work. It models what that work is made of, rings, clock positions, packers, resin kits and batches, before and after photos, and an engineer's validation, and it keeps working on a phone with no signal. On Sydney Metro West Portion 1 the main contractor's document system is ACC, and the rectification record is kept in DEFECTED, with validated defects exported from DEFECTED into ACC. The two sit side by side, each doing its own job.
How does DEFECTED send defects to ACC?
Through an ACC upload export, switched on per project. An engineer runs it from the exports screen, and DEFECTED builds a ZIP of Excel files laid out with the columns the project's ACC issues use: title, status, category, type, tunnel drive, ring number, clock face, description and the rest. Segment defects and tunnel invert defects go under their own categories. By default the export takes validated defects that have not yet been sent, because an issue is closed in ACC once an engineer has validated it, and it asks before it stamps them as sent. A defect that was reopened and validated again after its last export is picked up again. Every export is kept in an export history, with the number of defects and files, and any past batch can be regenerated.
There is no Procore connector in DEFECTED today. The defect register exports as CSV, and as PDF or Excel by day, week, month or ring range, which is the way to move the data into another system. If you run Procore or something else, tell us what you run.
What does a tunnel-specific register add?
It records the work in the terms the work is done in. A defect sits on a tunnel drive, a ring and a clock position tapped on a clock face, and the ring list shows a tube ring by ring. The defect type comes from a taxonomy of segmental lining defects, each tied to an injection, labour or investigation work stream, and crews see only their own stream. Injection defects carry packers installed, injected and patched, and product drawn from a kit with its batch and litres. The issued master defect list imports with its item references, so the register reads back against the engineer's document. Done means awaiting validation, and only an engineer or project admin can validate. Each shift comes out as a daily work record, and the history of every defect is written by the database.
- Rings and clock positions as the location of every defect
- Packer counts, kits, product batches and litres on each injection defect
- Injection, labour and investigation work streams, split by role
- Engineer validation, with a required comment on every send-back
- Import of the issued master defect list, keyed on its item references
Does it work underground with no signal?
Yes. Every record a crew makes in DEFECTED is saved on the phone first and sent when the phone finds signal again, so logging a defect, updating packer counts, drawing product from a kit and taking photos all work at depth with no connection. Photos wait on the phone in a queue that retries a failed upload rather than dropping it, and signing out keeps the work that has not been sent yet. The crew can see what is still waiting to go. Two things need a connection by design: an engineer's validation or send-back, which goes straight to the server so it can check the person's role and the defect's state, and the exports that are built from the server's register. Reading the evidence does not need signal.
Who uses which tool?
In the arrangement DEFECTED was built for, the crews use DEFECTED on the phones they already carry: injection technicians and labour crews see their own work stream for the tunnel they are in. Supervisors and leading hands use the same app. Engineers use it from the surface, on a phone or a desktop, to work through the validation queue, check photos, packers, product and history, and validate or send back. Project admins import the issued list and manage the project. The wider project, its drawings, documents and its own issue register, stays in the platform the contractor already runs, and on a project that uses ACC, validated defects are exported from DEFECTED into it so the document system ends up with the closed issues and the rectification record keeps the detail behind them.
Further reading
The tunnel defect register page covers the register in full, and injection records covers what each injection defect carries. For a project running DEFECTED with ACC, read the Sydney Metro West Portion 1 case study.