Company creates pipeline inspection vehicles to specs
EVANS CITY — In a 7,050-square-foot warehouse in Evans City, Envirosight assembles pipeline inspection vehicles in as little as four and half days, turning out an average of six vehicles per month.
In early 2013, Mike and Nicole Vislay started the vehicle build center as a part of Envirosight LLC, a New Jersey-based company. The center serves East Coast customers, while a similar site in La Verne, Calif., serves customers on the West Coast.
Since then, the center has built more than 100 vehicles and is fast approaching 200. The center started out as a 5,500-square-foot building, but demand required adding 1,500 square feet to accommodate more vehicles.
The facility now has three full-time workers building the interiors.
“We wanted to be able to provide to the end-users a better lead time for their truck builds,” said Nicole Vislay, truck build supervisor. “We didn't want to tell them their truck was going to take three weeks for us to build. We wanted to be able to tell them we'd have their truck in a week.”
The national company provides video pipeline survey equipment for customers, such as municipalities, independent contractors, departments of transportation, power plants, and civil or environmental engineers who inspect sewer lines, stormwater lines, manholes or wells.
For example, contractors can use equipment to survey pipe condition before bidding their services or to report on work that has been completed. Municipalities can use the equipment to identify and organize maintenance issues. Departments of transportation can use it to assess underground drainage pipes without affecting traffic.
“Anyone that doesn't want to send a human being in to inspect something, they send our cameras or our robots in to do the inspections,” said Mike Vislay, director of sales.
There are 27 Envirosight sales partners in the United States and Canada.
The end user buys the vehicle from among several makes and models and sends it to the Evans City warehouse to be build. Envirosight sells the buildout and the equipment for the vehicle.
Workers divide the chassis in two creating a back work area where they install the inspection equipment. Equipment can include different types of closed-circuit television (CCTV) video inspection cameras that can tilt, pan and zoom while going hundreds of feet below the ground or scaling walls.
The front half of the vehicle is made into an office area where workers install equipment such as computers and monitors. The robotic cameras can gather either real-time or recorded video to generate digital reports on the integrity of underground infrastructure.Nicole Vislay said that, like with cars, the company can provide standard features or upgrades with options depending on the needs of the user. Upgrades can include anything from magnetic tool holders to rear awnings to color printers.“There's a package for every type of customer. There's a cost efficient package for the customer on a tight budget, but we also add-on options so that if we have a customer who's really wanting to do up the truck, they can make it as functional as they would like,” she said. “Almost every truck we make is a little bit different.”Each buildout has a specifications sheet to ensure that the correct equipment is installed and a floor plan indicating the vehicle's design and lay out.Because features are individually specific, sales partners and customers must sign off on both before and after production that they are receiving the vehicle they ordered.“At the end of the day, we want our customers to be happy with the final product,” Nicole Vislay said. “We want our CCTV mobile inspection units to be the most functional that it possibly can be for that customer.”
