Leading UK contractor takes health and safety into the paperless age.
Fresh off the back of its development of a highly innovative remote controlled demolition robot, Coleman & Company has turned its attention to the field of mobile device app development. Suitable for both Apple iOS and Android platforms, the development concentrates on transforming the outdated paper based methods of hazard spotting (with HazzApp) and site inspections (with EasiApp).
The focus was to revolutionise outdated reporting systems that are in Coleman’s mind, flawed. To expand, if you look at best practice for hazard spotting, typically a paper pad is given to each person working on site or alternatively access to a card system. Each relies on the hazard being spotted and the pad or card being completed. Then if you’re lucky enough to get hazard spots returned to the box on site, they are probably wet, dusty and tea stained. Then at a point, with the typical delay of collection, the box is returned to the Health and Safety team. This in turn is pulled apart and the details, if legible logged onto a system for data analysis. After close inspection, the Coleman & Company HSEQ (Health, Safety, Environment and Quality) team realised that employees, regardless of title or responsibility used their mobile device to document works and share information electronically.
In contrast, to the paper system, HazzApps loaded on a trusted phone is available at the touch of a button. It allows the user to log in, select a site, supervisor and area of works, take a photograph of the hazard, write a short comment and register it immediately in Coleman & Company’s online database. This is then seen as an “open” safety observation, to be “closed out” by the site team. All team members are notified, action is taken, typically closing out the hazard by uploading a closure photograph to evidence the rectification of site issues.
This system is of course quicker, understandable and a platform that all of todays’ society are comfortable using.
The EasiApp (Electronically Accessed Site Inspections) is exactly the same principle, where the areas for inspection are chosen from a predetermined list, with photos and comments attached.
HazzApp and EasiApp will be available to download (free of charge) from the App Store through Apple and Android.
