Site Survey Capture
Guided prompts for attic, rafters, service panel, meter and shading photos, with required fields the designer depends on.
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- Mobile App Development
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- Staff operations app for Solar panel installers
A Solar Installer Field App for Surveyors, Crews and Electricians
We build a solar installer field app that gives site surveyors, racking crews and electricians their assigned jobs, the right checklist for each roof, photo capture that satisfies inspectors and a running feed back to operations.
01
Where Information Leaks Between Survey, Design and the Roof
The work starts with a site survey: attic photos showing rafter size and spacing, the main service panel and its bus rating, roof condition, shading obstructions and the meter location. Those details feed the designer, who produces the plan set for the permit.
Leaks begin right there. A surveyor misses the panel label, the designer guesses, and the crew discovers on install day that a main panel upgrade is needed. Or the roof photos are too dark to show cracked tiles, and the job stalls while someone goes back.
On install day, the crew lead juggles racking layout, flashing, conduit runs, rapid shutdown equipment and labeling. Photos go into a personal camera roll, and the inspection packet gets assembled later from whatever the office can find.
02
Buyers Compare Quotes on Price and Trust the Crew on Workmanship
Homeowners often collect several quotes, sometimes through a marketplace, and compare system size, panel and inverter brands, price per watt and financing terms. The deciding factor in the end is usually confidence that the company will still be around if the roof leaks.
That confidence is earned or lost on install day. Owners watch for tidy conduit runs, careful flashing around every roof penetration, and a crew that explains what it is doing. Neighbors notice too, and solar sales spread by street.
For a staff app, this means the installation checklist should protect the quality points buyers care about most, and photos of each roof attachment should be captured so warranty questions years later have an answer.
03
Working With Aurora, CompanyCam and Your CRM
Solar companies commonly design in Aurora Solar or OpenSolar, track deals and projects in a CRM such as Salesforce or a solar-specific platform, and many crews already take photos in CompanyCam. The field app should not compete with these tools where they work well.
Our approach would pull job details and the approved plan set from your project system, present checklists and required photo steps to the crew, and push results back. If your crews love CompanyCam, the app can link each checklist step to the matching photo there rather than storing duplicates.
Where APIs are limited, we would use exports or shared folders keyed to the job number. Every integration is confirmed during scoping before it appears in a quote.
What you get
Key features
Install Checklists
Step lists for racking, flashing, conduit, rapid shutdown and labeling, tailored to roof type and equipment.
Inspection Packet Builder
Required photos and readings assemble into a packet the office can send or print for the inspector.
Crew Update Feed
Posts from the roof reach operations right away, such as a damaged tile or an unexpected panel issue.
Role-Based Access
Surveyors, installers, electricians and subcontractors see only the jobs and steps meant for them.
04
Peak Season Crews, Heat and Short Winter Days
Install volume usually climbs through spring and summer and can spike near year end when buyers want projects finished before a deadline. Crews grow with temporary helpers, and the app must make it easy to assign a simplified checklist to someone brand new to the trade.
Summer roofs are hot, and crews start early to avoid the worst heat. The app should load the day's jobs the night before and work offline, so a crew leaving at dawn is not waiting for a sync in a driveway with weak signal.
Winter brings shorter days, snow delays and weather reschedules. Assignments need to change quickly, and every crew member should see the update without a phone tree.
- Simplified checklists for new helpers
- Overnight preloading of the next day's jobs
- Offline capture with automatic sync
- Instant reschedule notices for weather delays
05
Field App Mistakes Solar Companies Regret
Making every photo optional is the most expensive. Inspectors and warranty claims depend on proof of attachments, grounding, labels and rapid shutdown equipment. Mark those photos required, and let the rest stay optional.
Another is designing only for installers and forgetting surveyors. A sloppy survey causes more change orders than any install mistake, so the survey checklist deserves equal care, including prompts for the panel label and rafter measurements. A third is leaving electricians on a separate paper process. Main panel upgrades, meter work and final terminations belong in the same job record.
A fourth is ignoring the roof itself. Tile, metal and composition shingle roofs each need different attachment steps and flashing photos, and a checklist written for shingles alone will push tile crews to skip steps that protect against leaks.
06
Numbers That Tell You the Field App Is Working
Most of the useful measures already sit in your project system. Capture a baseline before launch and compare once crews have used the app through a busy stretch.
Listen to crew leads too. If they say the checklist slows them down, find the step that causes it and simplify it before the next season.
Warranty claims are a slower signal but an important one. When a leak or attachment question comes in years later, note whether the photos in the app answered it without a site visit, because that is the long term payoff of disciplined capture on every roof.
- Failed inspections caused by missing labels or photos
- Return trips to finish surveys or install items
- Change orders traced to incomplete survey data
- Days from install completion to inspection request
Can the solar installer field app work with CompanyCam?+
Yes. If your crews already use CompanyCam, we can link checklist steps to photos there through its API rather than replacing it.
Will it handle battery and EV charger installs?+
Yes. Each job type can have its own checklist, so a battery or charger add-on gets the steps and photos that work needs. Your operations team can add new job types from the admin panel as your offering grows.
Can subcontracted crews use it?+
They can, with restricted access to their own jobs. Their logins can be removed when the contract ends. Their photos and checklists stay with the job record, so the documentation remains yours.
What is the starting price?+
Mobile apps start at $4,500 with SIZ Group. Checklists, integrations and offline needs shape the total, which we confirm in writing before any build.
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Get the Survey Right and the Inspection Packet Ready
Bring your survey, install and inspection steps to a free scoping call, and we will plan a field app built around them.