Most small systems treat inspection like a project. You hire a contractor, they push a camera, they hand you a drive or a PDF, and it goes in a drawer. A year later the drive is stale. The field has changed, and the only person who knows what is down there is the operator who walked the lines himself.
Inspection should not be a project you pay for and shelve. It is the work your crew already does. Jet a line, run the lift stations, push a crawler, pop a manhole lid. The right software captures what you find on the asset itself. The footage, the condition, and the date stick to the pipe or the manhole they came from. Here is how that works and why a sewer system needs an asset record, not just dots on a map.
The one your crew will actually use from the field, where the inspection rides on the asset instead of living in a separate report.
For a small collection system that means a map-first app on a phone or tablet. No per-seat fee, simple enough to run yourself with the crew you already have, not an enterprise tool built for a city.
In Ziptility every piece of your collection system is on the map: gravity mains, force mains, manholes, cleanouts, lift stations, grinder pumps (see asset management). Tap a manhole and you get its whole record. When you run a Manhole Inspection, you log the cover and frame condition, the wall condition, infiltration severity (minor weep, moderate running, or severe gushing), and the photos. That writes straight back to the manhole on the map. You did not stop to do data entry. You inspected a manhole, and the record updated itself.
That is the load-bearing idea: your map and your inspection history are a byproduct of the work you already do, not another project on the pile. You already have enough to do.
Yes. The whole crew works it from a phone or tablet standing in front of the manhole, not back at a desk re-keying a clipboard.
Pricing is by service connection, not per user, so every operator and field tech has it in their pocket.
The app already knows the real shapes of sewer work, because the inspection jobs ship as templates on the asset:
The findings drive the fix, on the same asset (see work orders). A CCTV run that turns up root intrusion or a bad joint can spawn the follow-up right there: cleaning, root treatment, a spot repair, a lining recommendation. The 2 a.m. failures fit the same way. An SSO, a lift-station alarm, or a grinder-pump alarm comes in as an emergency and spawns its own child tasks, each tied back to the asset. The inspection and the repair it triggered end up in one record. That is the record the state wants to see (see compliance).
The video itself is linked, not hosted inside the app. That is on purpose. It keeps the map fast when you are standing over a manhole with one bar of signal, and your big CCTV files stay where they live. You attach photos and PDFs directly and link the video. Either way the inspection is tied to the pipe, not lost in a folder.
A flyover or a one-time CCTV contract is a snapshot, and a snapshot is stale the day it lands.
By the time the deliverable shows up you already have new information. A line went in, a manhole got paved over, a crew dug and the old pipe never got capped.
A living record gets better every day instead of worse. Assets you inherit start as gray on the map, so your crew knows to go put eyes on them. Every inspection, every jetting run, every lift-station round fills one in. Over a year of normal work you have built a real, dated condition record without a data project.
The snapshot tools still have their place. If a drone is right for a hard-to-reach lagoon, or a CCTV crew is right for a mainline survey before a project, do it. Then bring what they found into Ziptility as part of the asset's record, so it stays current instead of going stale on a drive. We are not selling a picture you rent. We are the record your crew keeps alive.
Yes, and this is where most map-first tools quit on a wastewater operator.
The great majority of your work happens inside the plant, and a plant does not model as dots on a map. A headworks, or a room with three blowers, is a cluster of equipment in one place: a parent with children. That is not intuitive to a point-on-a-map system.
Ziptility models the plant as parent-child assets and attaches the inspections and work to them. The lift station and its pumps, or the well building and the equipment inside it, hang together the way they actually sit in the field.
A drone vendor cannot lead with the limits of mapping a plant, because mapping is their whole product. We can, because we are not selling a pin. We are selling the record the plant actually needs, with the inspections attached.
No, and we will be straight about it.
Ziptility is not a CCTV video-coding engine and not a NASSCO PACP or MACP scoring system. We do not detect defects from the footage for you, and we are not a drone defect-detection tool.
What we do is hold the record. Your inspector assigns the PACP structural and O&M rating on a gravity main, or the MACP rating on a manhole. You record it on the asset, link the footage, and it joins that asset's history alongside every repair it triggers. The wedge is the living inspection record your crew keeps current and that talks to the work, not a better camera or a coding standard. The coding judgment stays with your inspector. We keep the result from getting lost.
Honest about scope: we are also not a flow meter, a rain gauge, or a hydraulic model. For a full flow study you still bring a modeler. What we do is give your crew the inspection record they keep current, and hand your engineer cleaner data when a study is due. If you are looking at the full picture of wastewater operations (not just inspection), start at Ziptility for wastewater utilities.
What is the most reliable wastewater pipeline inspection software for a small utility? The one your crew keeps current from the field, where the inspection rides on the asset instead of a separate report. For a small system that means a map-first app on a phone, no per-seat fee, and simple enough that the crew runs it themselves.
Can I run CCTV and manhole inspections from a tablet in the field? Yes. The whole crew works it from a phone or tablet at the manhole. Inspection templates for CCTV, manholes, lift stations, and force mains are built in, and the video is linked, not hosted, so the map stays fast with poor signal.
Does it do CCTV video coding or NASSCO PACP scoring? No. We are not a PACP or MACP video-coding engine. You record the rating your inspector assigns, link the footage, and keep it on the asset with the work it triggers. The coding judgment stays with your inspector.
Can one app handle the plant and the collection system inspections? Yes. We model the plant as parent-child assets and attach the inspections and work to them, which is exactly where dots-on-a-map tools fall down, since most wastewater work happens inside the plant.
How is this different from getting my system flown with a drone? A drone flight or a one-time CCTV contract is a snapshot that is stale the day it lands. A living record gets better as your crew works. Use the snapshot when it is the right tool, then bring what it found into the asset record so it stays current.
Ready to put your collection system on the map? See pricing or request a demo.