This is the second installment of a four-part series. Click here for Part 1.
Safety is one of the major concerns in the construction industry, especially with its high rate of attrition and serious work accidents. That’s why companies are constantly investing heavily in methods which uphold it. Luckily, not all of the latest safety methods require too much time and resources to be rolled out. Safety mobile forms, for instance, are a quick, easy, and highly effective.
In addition to the advantages discussed in part 1, safety mobile forms can enrich your enterprise’s safety culture in three ways:
- Improve Your Firm’s Safety Compliance
- Enhance Worker Safety on Busy Sites
- Ensure Risk Management throughout the Project’s Cycle
How Safety Inspections via Mobile Improve Compliance
Regulatory compliance is a challenging yet critically important factor for construction firms. Luckily, technology has made achieving it relatively easier. In addition to generating accurate regulatory reports, safety management technology reinforces employee compliance with safety processes. For instance, managers can send emails to alert employees to perform an inspection.
Construction firms carry out regular inspections in order to ensure compliance, efficiency, and the safety of workers. Relying on paper, however, results in numerous issues which can put the firm at the risk of heavy fines at the very least. By substituting paper safety forms with mobile equivalents, you can reap the following benefits every time you carry out an inspection.
Accurate Reporting
Incomplete forms may be submitted despite your efforts to highlight important sections. As paper forms may take days to reach the main office, it may be too late to get the information firms really need. Mobile forms can be designed with required fields, ensuring forms aren’t submitted until complete.
Risk-Free Information Collection
Paper forms can easily lose their credibility. Even a cup of water can render them useless and waste the time put in filling them. True, mobile devices can break. However, firms can opt for sturdier devices and invest in protective cases. That way, safety professionals’ hard work will never go to waste.
External Validation for Inspections
With paper forms, firms have no way of confirming if their site safety managers entered the accurate time and place without spending hours. Going mobile, however, protects and validates inspections through automatic date and time stamps and geo-tagging features. As these support external validation, they keep businesses safe.
Easier Safety Audits
In addition to time wastage, lost inspection paper forms are a major liability risk. On the other hand, mobile forms are securely saved in the firm’s database. This makes retrieving inspections easier. Moreover, it streamlines the audit process and gives firms an accurate bigger picture.
Getting Your Employees to Embrace Safety Mobile Inspections
Getting your staff on board mobile inspections may not be easy, especially if they strongly believe in the following misconceptions.
“Typing Will Slow Down the Process”
You can actually bypass typing through features such as drop down lists, image uploaders, and segmented controls. Moreover, you can use devices’ talk-to-text capability to fill in textboxes.
“Worksites Don’t Always Have Wi-Fi”
When working in a remote site, internet connectivity may not be available. However, some mobile forms can be saved as drafts or in a submission queue to be submitted automatically once a connection is available.
“Too Many Carriers and Devices are Involved”
Despite your workforce having different devices and carriers, mobile forms are flexible enough to work on all. In fact, platforms such as makeen transform allow you to design mobile forms and then publish them onto iOS, Android, and Windows devices.
“The App Won’t Be Ready Before the Next Inspection”
With Transform Studio, you can easily drag and drop elements and features to create mobile forms. The process won’t take long and you can even do it on your own. Alternatively, you can have TransformTek convert your safety mobile forms for you.
Discuss other reservations your team may have and even have them test out a prototype if you created one. You can gain more tips from this blog post as well.
