Diligent inspections and routine maintenance are global necessities and the fundamentals of safety in the workplace. In 2014, OSHA cited fall protection as the most frequently violated safety standard and the leading cause of worker fatality, responsible for over 36% of deaths in construction in the USA. Implementation of a digital or electronic inspection work-flow can contribute to the overall safety compliance of an organization and, by extension, the mitigation of workplace injury.
Existing paper-based inspection models or practices often exhibit short-comings. Paper forms and reports are easily lost, damaged, or otherwise compromised, rendering each inspection inadequate or unavailable against the next. Report comparisons and maintenance histories are basics of the inspection process, however the space and time required to meticulously document and file each inspection report can be deemed impractical. This viewpoint often lends itself to unfinished tasks, lack of ownership, and unreported deficiencies which contributes to safety violations and failure to manage Hazards in the workplace. Basic spreadsheet software is similarly easy to neglect or unintentionally destroy through deficient or missing work flow, notifications, follow up and planning.
Electronic Safety Inspection Solution is easy to use, diverse and completely eliminates the need for a paper-based system. The paperless solution is a highly-customizable, proven concept executed across a multitude of industries to manage any type of inspection, and its advanced features facilitate more efficient management than any other comparative models. Oil & Gas, mining, safety, property management, transportation, healthcare, education, service providers, and government agencies are among the industries currently utilizing Electronic Inspection Solution. The paperless inspection software is a comprehensive solution for any field work activity, including but not limited to safety and compliance inspections, audits, work-orders, quality assurance, and surveys.
Not only do Electronic inspection solutions promote competent work-flow, but its trigger engines are designed to ensure that periodic inspections are not overlooked. Automated email reminders and notifications improve productivity by ensuring that inspection objectives and goals are always met on a timely basis. These alerts can not only remind of up-coming tasks, but can be customized to escalate overdue or incomplete tasks to responsible parties in a timely manner. Furthermore, features, such as corrective action feature ensures that the information needed to rectify a deficiency, a hazard or failed inspection is easily accessible at all times and is proactively sent to the responsible stakeholders for addressing these deficiencies. These escalation and corrective action features are instrumental in ensuring closed-loop work-flow for any field service activity.
Safety inspectors and other mobile workforce may find paper-based tools for data collection cumbersome and inconvenient in the field. The traditional clipboard or notebook and pencil are not always conducive to detailed note-taking, or to the safe storage of recorded findings. This form of documentation also renders picture-taking, an invaluable resource when escalation is necessary, effectively unavailable. Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, (featuring cameras, barcodes, and/or RFID scanners) facilitate the accurate identification of inspection targets so findings, results, recommendations, notes and any other related media are consistently attributed to the correct entry every time. The mobile devices are lightweight, widely available, and easy to operate and preprogrammed with customized electronic checklists. They accommodate traditional written notes as well as the integral use of mobile device features including the camera and barcode scanning capabilities, Near Field Communication (NFC) for accommodation of RFID tags (mainly HF RFID tags), speech-to-text translation and automatic capture of date/time/GPS. Results recorded using the mobile devices are transmitted electronically and stored either in secure data centres or locally in-house by the user.
Electronic or paperless Inspection solutions are further enhanced via the use of web portal which can be accessed from any web browser including mobile browsers. The web portal’s features include system administration, asset and facility management, report generation, automatic notifications and metrics, data-exporting/importing and the ability to customize automatic alerts and emails. The end result is a completely automated paperless process encompassing mobile devices and web portals.
One of the many companies who successfully implemented a paperless inspection solution is one of Australia’s largest banana farms, which had previously utilized only a paper-based system to manage equipment maintenance and site safety. The previous paper- base system was found to be inefficient and costly on the one thousand-acre farm in North Queensland. Implementation of a paperless inspection solution facilitated better asset management and transferred inspections to handheld devices for improved ease-of-use on the farm. All field work in the farm is completed by employees using predefined, customized checklists on mobile devices to promote efficiency, particularly when a new inspection or work-order is executed.
Electronic or paperless Inspection solutions are essential in decreasing the time it takes to administer paper-based inspections, estimated at 30-40% of the total time required to execute the total inspection. These time-consuming administrative tasks include identifying the target of inspection or asset, determining its status and history, manually entering the inspection data, filing or scanning the physical paperwork, creating corrective actions and generating the necessary reports including the photos and recommendations.
The intangible benefits of paperless inspection work-flow are countless. Paperless Inspection solutions promote efficiency by providing highly organized records and improving employee accountability and personal ownership. It facilitates trend charting and forecasts by maintaining easy access to work histories and has the ability to independently produce logs, certificates and alerts. Most importantly, it keeps workplaces safer and companies compliant with industry safety standards and lessens the risk of OH&S violations and workplace accidents.