Putting Safety in Executives’ Hands – With an App

By Brian Thomas and Vi Nguyen

More construction firms are investing in technology tools to ensure a safe environment for employees and partners. In California, Skanska USA is putting jobsite safety in the palm of its executives” hands with a new app.

The company developed an electronic report using the iAuditor app to enhance jobsite safety and reinforce accountability and safety practices. Known as the executive site safety visit, or ESSV, app, it is used by executives to perform site safety inspections on jobsites such as the Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s San Carlos Center and the Regional Medical Center in San Jose.

Site safety visits are an important part of the safety effort. Executives perform hundreds of safety-focused site visits each year to engage with workers and evaluate sites to ensure the entire team is working in a safe environment. All observations and any safety concerns are documented on a checklist and submitted for recording. Traditionally, each ESSV report was a paper checklist filled out by hand. The executives then returned to the office where they input the data again into a spreadsheet and emailed the form for submission. As one could imagine, paperwork takes time. With safety, the sooner any needs are identified, the sooner they can be shared with other sites to support safe practices everywhere.

The introduction of apps to the construction industry allows general contractors to stay on the cutting edge of technology. Innovative methods are used to streamline standard processes, cutting work time and increasing productivity as the industry continues to strive for new levels of efficiencies by using apps, the latest gadgets and other new technologies.

The ESSV app is utilized during a workplace safety audit, allowing users to create and tailor a checklist on an intuitive user interface. Templates are created and published to a public library where they can be exported into a PDF or Excel file for use, and the sharing of templates is optional. Previously, these reports were in the form of cumbersome Excel spreadsheets.

Favorite features of the new system include the ability to take photos of a deficiency and tag it to the report, photo annotation to more clearly describe findings, time-stamped reports, GPS enabled locator for faster worksite set up, QR code input and any digital signatures necessary can be taken on location. The final completed report can be submitted electronically directly from the app via email in a clean PDF report. This is all done much more quickly than in the past with paper reports.

With little training, executives are able to fill out safety reports on Apple and Android mobile devices and tablets to create the ESSV report with ease. The various custom audits are uploaded to a cloud database where they can be shared amongst team members almost instantly. The team now has the ability to submit the checklist and additional safety concerns with photos and corresponding annotations in one task. For example, on a safety visit, if a damaged electrical cord is present, the user can note the issue in the audit, photograph the concern and easily reference the specific area using the photo annotation feature. After the audit is complete, the user can export it into a report and email it for review.

The ESSV app is one of the many safety tools that continues to push the paperless envelope, saves time and redundancy and ultimately allows the user to focus more on the task instead of the process. The paperless auditing tool has streamlined the safety reporting process to share information quickly, building a better database and safety culture. Skanska is already seeing the benefits of integrating this technology: improved work quality, efficiency and an overall improvement in safety performance that comes from combining safe behaviors with a culture of accountability.

The ESSV report prioritizes a culture of a safe workplace environment and ensures it is done in the most effective way possible.

Brian Thomas is a vice president of operations and Vi Nguyen is a senior project engineer at Skanska USA Building. They can be reached at brian.thomas@skanska.com and vi.nguyen@skanska.com, respectively.