Mobile Inspection and Health and Safety for Engineers
Mobilising your workforce, even in a small way, has lots of great side effects and benefits. We have summarised some of our client's gains and benefits from observing our work with a variety of different engineering and related services companies.
Preamble
One of the great challenges at Clarinspect is the many engineering contexts the product is used in. This ranges from geocivil/geotechnical, through structural to construction and fire system engineering. Onward from end of construction it is also used for ongoing maintenance assessment, compliance and building WOF activities.
Throughout all the implementations of Clarinspect we have kept a close watch on how our clients worked before adopting Clarinspect, how they worked during use of Clarinspect, and then observed how their working method changed subsequently. It does change - often in subtle ways; there are side benefits, savings, process improvements - all things that Lean Consultants love to talk about.
Our clients in the field
“... from a business perspective we can see that this system is training people to do things the right way, first time.”
From all our clients in these areas we have learned what works (and does not work!) in mobilising audit, inspection and assessment activities. When we began the journey of implementing the system for engineers we expected that all the savings would be in the backoffice - removing the need to download and scale/format images and in the drafting of reports.
What we actually found is that there were changes and improvements in the field as well as backoffice. Initially with the new technology, staff were slightly slower in the field, but now 100% of all clients automated have reported that there is no performance deficit in the field, and most report that they are faster.
There are always unexpected benefits - with the Structural and Geotechnical site inspections moving from unstructured paper and handwriting to a structured digital methodology there was no more "back in the office trying to work out what the handwriting says" sessions. A saving of many hours per week for professional staff.
Photos are worth a thousand words.
Having the structured format was highly useful for ensuring coverage of all aspects required, and to help the flow of the inspection. As reported by a technical manager "... from a business perspective we can see that this system is training people to do things the right way, first time."
Another outcome that was a nice surprise was summarised by an engineering manager: "I get a better quality and quantity of information into my Site Inspections than I ever had before."
The technology is now good enough that work can be completed on a cellphone, making use of online Google voice recognition, and having data available for reporting before the engineer gets back from site.
Health and Safety
“H&S was much simpler to complete now. No more paper going back and forth.”
A thread that has developed with ongoing work with our client base is the need to include health and safety. This can either be through completing a Site Specific Hazard Check, a personal Hazard check, logging incidents, or recording arrival and induction on site. The specific activities depending on client.
By weaving this into the main audit, inspection or assessment our clients have upped their compliance level, removed all latency from their H&S reporting, and are generating a persistent record suitable for auditors.
Staff in the field also commented that "H&S was much simpler to complete now. No more paper going back and forth." The technical manager for one engineering client noted that they had "....removed reams of H+S paper".
Reporting
The majority of the reporting is createdin the templates staff are used to - reducing impact on downstream processes; Clarinspect gets you to the point of completing the report more quickly and with less manual work. Some clients keep their data digital and load it into their project database (e.g. Core-GS for geotechnical engineers).
The reporting system can process data into multiple output documents for each inspection - so you may get a cover letter, instruction for site, full Site Inspection report as well as a spreadsheet of all H&S issues output from a single visit.
The smart thing is that the H&S records can be created and filed, so the field staff never have to worry about it ever again from a process perspective, but the relevant documents are delivered to the people that need them.
Engineering clients are currently benefiting in ...
Our clients undertake a wide range of works, and have produced templates specifically for clients, and also for our own public library that cover the areas shown below. Sometimes these templates are incorporated together - most frequently the H&S is included as a mandatory step in a line-of-business inspection. This has been observed to really drive compliance to the levels needed.
Health and Safety forms and hazards noted in the field go straight back to the office.
Health and safety
SSHC
SSSP
Incident and Near Miss
Process and procedure audit
Geotechnical data logging (Vane, Soil sample, DCP, Scala, SPT)
Geocivil Site Inspection
Structural Construction Site Inspection
Construction site Fire Cell inspection
NZS4541 Fire Sprinkler inspection
Job scoping
Asset audit/condition monitoring
Bridge Inspections
Retaining Wall Inspections
Post-amble
Mobilising engineering inspections in the field is not just about a 'form on a device'. There are many considerations, areas not thought of before the automation project was initiated. There are also unexpected benefits, improvements and gains.
This is where a system such as Clarinspect stands out: rapid, responsive and robust ability to change your models, the ability to incorporate new ideas and items (such as H&S). Our implementation team is very experienced in working with professional engineering teams - give us a call, and try us out. This could be the day you make your work easier!
Photos courtesy of Geoconsult and Ground Investigation Ltd, (c) 2016 Clarinspect