Vol. 1, No. 1October 2026Notes from a month of building
Front page
A Tablet That Works Where the Road Ends
A month of field notes from the team building FieldOS, a data platform for the people who work in the bush.
Picture a ranger at the far end of a log bridge. No bars on the phone. A clipboard would still work. So would a tablet, if it never needed the network.
That is the rule we build to. FieldOS runs on the tablet. A ranger can inspect a bridge, walk a gully, map a crossing and write a note, all offline. The record stays on the device until the ranger chooses to send it. Every change leaves a mark, so nothing is quietly rewritten.
This month we leaned hard on bridges and the people who look after them. A bridge's whole life now lives in one place. A new hire can be coached through a gully assessment one page at a time. The ministry's rules sit beside the question they answer. Every screen was tested with gloves in mind.
We built it around Quesnel and Wells. This week it is in Winnipeg, loaded with Manitoba crossings, to see how it travels.
no signal needed, ever
Winnipeg, on the tablet, with no signal. Demo job.
Field notes
Four Things We Built This Month
Each one started as a question a ranger might ask.
A bridge, from first bolt to last
The pieces of a bridge. Demo record.
The app keeps a bridge's whole life together: when it is due for inspection, what each stringer is made of and what was stamped on its end, the repairs followed from found to done, and what happened to a bridge that was taken away or moved. A closed repair stays closed. A late photo is added as a new, dated line.
after photo: last
A coach for a new hire
One question at a time.
Someone new can be walked through a gully assessment one page at a time. Each question explains itself, with a drawing of what to measure and where to hold the tape. An old hand can use the quick form. Either way the saved record is the same. The guidance follows the BC Gully Assessment Guidebook, credited in the app.
The ministry's rules, one tap away
The BC Ministry of Forests Engineering Manual says how bridges on forest roads are inspected. In the app, a short plain-words note sits beside the question it answers, with the page to open. We credit the Manual and we do not copy it. Whether it applies to a job is the job's call, and the app says so on every note.
credited, not copied
Built for gloves
Big targets. Buttons that say what they do. Larger text. A wrong tap never decides anything. Every screen went through the same pass, and the main ones were checked at phone width too, so a cold hand can use it.
Try it
Walk a Gully With the Coach
Eight pages from a real, coached assessment on the tablet. Tap through.
demo data. page 3 asks for the reach and shows where you stand, so we skipped it here.
In Winnipeg
Manitoba Crossings, Offline
The same app we use in BC, loaded for a week with a Winnipeg job.
The demo job: a footbridge and two culverts.One bridge, ready to inspect.The map. No signal needed.
For this trip we loaded a Winnipeg map, a footbridge and two culverts placed from public data (positions unverified), and a pack of Manitoba permit forms and guidelines. The whole thing runs with the network off.
There is an honest gap. We could not find a public Manitoba bridge inspection form, so the demo uses the BC form, and some screens still speak BC. If you know where a Manitoba form lives, find me tonight.
ask me about this one
Corrections and Retractions
What We Got Wrong This Month
In the interest of a straight ledger, three corrections.
A report that skipped repairs. One export built its own list of records and left the repairs out. Nothing looked wrong on the screen. We found it by opening the file the app produced and reading it. It is fixed, and a test now fails if it happens again.
A screen nobody could reach. We built a section for the pieces of a bridge, then found on the tablet that a ranger could not get to it from a live bridge. It now sits where rangers look.
A template that forgot a section. One report template did not list a new section, so the page left it out. A failing test caught it.
Our rule since: check the paper, not the toast. A success message proves nothing. The file does.
checked on the device
What is next
One Tablet for the Whole Life of a Crossing
So the person in the field never has to choose between a good record and a good day.
We are building toward a single tablet that carries a crossing from its first inspection to its last repair, in any province, with no signal. The data stays with the people who collect it. Nothing leaves the tablet until a person sends it.
Next we want more people using it in the field, and more places to test it. If you work on roads, bridges, culverts or streams and want to see it in your hands, say so tonight.
By
Terry Bordeleau
Founder and CEO, MRF FieldTech
terry@mrffieldtech.ca · mrffieldtech.ca
Our work starts where the road ends.
All screens are demo or test data. Nothing here has been published outside the team.