If you asked who the perfect two people would be to develop an app that was designed specifically as a map service for the crane industry, the ‘Peoples Brothers’ would be pretty close.
Tom and Bernie Peoples began their journey with Hevway back in 2017 after Bernie – a crane operator – came to brother Tom – a software engineer – with an idea for an app that would make the life of operators easier.
Hevway is a revolutionary app in the crane sector – a navigation service that understands the roads cranes cannot access due to Vicroads restrictions and creates an optimal route for a driver based on the crane they are using.
Tom has spent time at numerous software companies, including telecommunications providers, trailer manufacturers, air traffic control software developers, and many others, honing his craft.
Bernie has over 10 years of experience working for a range of crane companies including Boom logistics and Advanced Crane Hire in Ballarat. He recently took a position with Metcalf based in Melbourne. He explains where the idea came from for Hevway.
“I was driving cranes for Advanced Cranes, out of Ballarat. Getting around, obviously you’re in a big machine, so they give you the permit you’ve got to follow and they’re difficult to keep up with if you don’t know the area,” he said.
“I said to Tom at Christmas one year: ‘I have this idea for an app that would make life so much easier for crane drivers, do you think you could do it?’ and he turned me down a couple of times. There should be something better than the system that’s there. Whether we can make that into some sort of business is another thing, but there’s definitely a problem to be solved within what we’re doing.”
The program is currently being trialled across a number of companies utilising current and previous colleagues of Bernie’s.
Getting the Hevway program off the ground was always going to have a number of challenges for Tom.
“When I agreed to have a look, I could see all of the government maps were open source and the routing options were there and, to be honest, we thought someone must have already done this,” Tom said.
“It’s not as simple as just putting the map data through a routing system – there are a lot of challenges in making the routes represent the roads you’ll be driving on – but this is the way.
“I think I called Bernie the night I figured it out. I got my first route out of our routing engine that had conditions with it, I was so excited.
“So, after three and a half years, I got it working and I got the app up and running, but I’m not a designer, so to be honest it was very ugly.
“We brought a design company onboard and they just sent me designs and a flow chart showing us what it should look like and how to transition from what we had to the better design and that is how we got to the app as it is today,” Tom said.
As soon as the pair got the correct routes and we were confident in the process, it was another year part time for Tom honing Hevway to ensure it was meeting their standards and then at Christmas 2021 he quit his job and went full-time on it.
Bernie explains how he utilised his contacts within the industry to ensure the product was the highest quality for when it eventually hit the market.
“A lot of the guys I have had testing it are people I have worked with; they all have different backgrounds and different experiences, which has been perfect for getting a broad understanding of what is needed,” Bernie said.
“They gave us great feedback, initially it was just the bare map like you see on Google or Apple maps. They gave us the feedback that we should have the red roads on the map as operators travel in case they quickly need to deviate off course. This led to us putting the Vicroads data in the app so it was clear to users which roads were the ones that could be travelled on,” he said.
Bernie goes on to explain how he believes the app will be used by operators.
“I can see this app being used the night before by operators. Instead of going home and using your two screens to plot out a route and spending an hour or so working out where you can go, you get your job card the night before and simply key it into the Hevway app and it will give you the route. You can either make adjustments or leave it as is. I think, for me, we all love what we do but we work long hours so when we go home we want to spend time with our families. This gives us the chance to go home and clock off from work and be prepared for the next day.”
The 24-hour nature of the crane industry posed extra challenges for Tom and Bernie. This included anticipating night works and noise restrictions on a journey. The app will show nightworks so you can ensure you are not taking a route that is inaccessible at specific times.
When an operator is travelling towards a road with specific conditions, the Hevway app will count down the distance to these conditions starting, to ensure the driver is prepared. This is just one of the ways the app is designed by a driver for drivers.
“If a driver takes a wrong turn the app will not automatically re-route them, this is to ensure they stop and check the new route conditions so for example they do not travel down a road that they need a pilot for when they don’t have one,” Bernie said.
The pairing of Tom and Bernie and their individual experience became an asset when planning the app. This was centred around not simply being an app that worked but one that understood the challenges of getting a crane from point A to point B.
“I had to make sure that the app understood it may be simpler for a crane driver to take a left turn, to go around a roundabout and come back instead of making a difficult right turn. Building this into the app was a challenge but important,” Tom said.
Whilst Tom and Bernie are prepared for the launch of the app, they believe it will only improve from its first iteration.
“Soon we will look to incorporate permits into the routes, where someone working in the office can add these permits when they arrive and the app will route over them. The whole system will be continually improved,” Tom said.
The duo is taking the launch of the app very seriously, ensuring it will get off the ground without any issues.
“These guys are working with beautiful pieces of technology. They do not want an app that is subpar, we knew we had to be 100 per cent confident when we launched it,” Tom said.
“We have had over a dozen different guys, from different companies and in varying machines, testing it. Of course, it had issues but we asked them to be brutal with the feedback but it has never taken a driver down a road they cannot use.
“After the first month or so the
issues stopped and, now, we are extremely confident in the product. We will be continually working on it and listening to feedback to make sure this is the perfect app for the industry,”
Tom said.