BOSTON, MA | AUGUST 23, 2022 — HaulHub Technologies, the nation’s leader in supplying state transportation agencies with digital tools to manage e-Ticketing and e-Construction technologies announced today the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued a notice of allowance for its patent application, serial number 17/720,639. This patent application is directed to the use of a system to reconcile and reformat delivered construction material data with project data between various stakeholders involved in a construction project.
“In the COVID-era of e-Ticketing, sharing a digital version of the paper ticket with an inspector was the only requirement,” said Joe Spinelli, CEO and Founder of HaulHub Technologies. As state transportation agencies and project owners have gained more experience with e-Ticketing, they have overwhelmingly concluded that integration with their project management systems is essential. “Agencies would like to assign a contract item to a delivered ticket, using a list of available contract items, but without technology to couple the right tickets to the right projects with the right contract items, staff will continuously have to memorize the contract items and hand-key them in manually on the tickets. Reformatting data into a common data format allows for the mapping of project and material data sets is part of our underlying technology that powers our Agency Portal.”
Very early in the process of the initial e-Ticketing rollouts, HaulHub identified the challenge with integrations would be the lack of a common data format. In other words, how a material supplier ticketed a project, in most cases, was very different from how a project owner, such as a department of transportation, stored their project data.
“This information was never going to match one-for-one and therefore if a material ticket was printed slightly different than how a project was labeled, those tickets could not be associated without manual intervention,” said Spinelli. “Efforts at a national level to standardize current data models into a single data format were not feasible. We developed this technology to allow the industry to keep their existing systems, formats, and processes, and we would instead adapt our systems to them.”
HaulHub’s unique approach was driven by the need for an accessible, vendor agnostic, and cost-effective solution that did not require significant change management from the entire supply chain. Even a seemingly harmless punctuation difference between project names can stop the integration between two systems from being valuable to the end users and technology needed to be developed to solve this need would grind to a halt because of its lack of ability to scale.
The newly allowed patent application is directed towards a database reconciliation system that supports HaulHub’s Agency Portal and enhances its ability to bridge that gap between the systems, formats, and processes in place today and help advance modern e-Construction practices for its partner states. More specifically, this underlying technology allows HaulHub to ingest, reformat, and reconcile project and/or construction materials data, to provide its partners with a single interoperable source of truth and chain of custody for construction materials.
Developing a single source of truth within a state is an essential baseline to build upon more advanced e-Construction practices and is a requirement to move e-Ticketing beyond long term pilots. “When the data is reformatted, and the varying materials and project systems can properly communicate with each other, they can be automated, provide insights, expedite payments, and record digital as-builts,” said Spinelli. “HaulHub will continue to invest in technology research and development that drives value for all stakeholders of a construction project.”
ABOUT HAULHUB TECHNOLOGIES:
HaulHub is committed to investing in innovative, forward-thinking solutions to reduce the barriers to entry of modern e-Construction practices for all project stakeholders. HaulHub’s Agency Portal and its novel supporting intellectual property are intentionally designed for interoperability and to support the advancement of common data formats. Working in collaboration with state transportation agencies, construction material producers, and contractors nationwide, HaulHub rapidly develops and deploys solutions to accelerate the journey to full digital project delivery across the transportation construction sector.
