by Saif Ahmad [WHRP, UAE]
Construction firms must understand and reduce reliance on paper forms and manual processes used for regular procedures at sites. When we talk about giving up something there must be an efficient and cost-effective substitute to which would replicate the existing procedures.
The average cost of paper per employee is US$80. It takes an average of 18 minutes to find a paper documents. Paper forms decrease worker productivity, increase risk/liability, and decrease operational efficiency.
Currently custom app development is less expensive and time consuming than in the past, thanks in part to the cloud and high-quality app builder tools. Now, even small firms can afford to construct and implement E-forms into their business.
Recently, there has been effective use of electronic document management systems in firms at great scale but still routine activities at sites which require more than 50 per cent of single use papers are not covered in electronic systems. Some of live examples at site are listed for which we can derive an alternative.
Site Inspections
Paper forms can produce several vulnerabilities and inefficiencies for site inspections. Switching to a mobile app or E-forms for site inspections will greatly improve efficiency. An app can collect the same information in a fraction of the time that paper requires. you can use drop-down lists and you can pre-populate information like location or equipment and E-checklists from your database.
Using mobile apps for site inspections is not only efficient but apps also reduce errors. Handwriting on paper forms can easily be unclear or misread while apps provide clear text. In addition, apps have checkboxes and many different types of value fields to ensure users get the type of answer you want. E-signatures can also be added for approvals and endorsements. These features also force employees to provide better descriptions.
Site Safety and Compliance Reporting
Using paper forms and manual processes for safety inspections and reporting’s can increase your firm’s liability risks and cost hundreds of hours of employee time tracking site safety rather than ensuring it. With paper, it is harder to verify whether it has been read to whom it was intended to be reported. If a safety issue arises, it could take days to get the information to the right person, thus greatly increasing the chances of accidents and injuries.
Electronics systems create a standardized process for collecting important data. With these apps, you can make certain fields required so that an inspection cannot be submitted until required sections are complete. Apps also allow users to take photos to provide additional visual information to back up an inspection. A final feature that apps provide is that they can collect digital signatures. Instead of collecting and filing multiple rounds of paper inspection form signatures, digital signatures can be collected directly from database.
Checklists
Start-up/closeout checklists and permits are essential to project-based work. A checklist app can include photos of the completed job, and signatures from the client’s on-site representatives. With a customized PDF, you can send findings immediately after a mobile form submission. There, you can integrate the information into your own systems quickly, so that clients receive the checklists faster, and get an easy format to store in their own database for future use.
Cloud mobile business app solutions are easier to use and are more powerful than ever. Using apps will increase your firm’s productivity and greatly reduce costs compared to using traditional paper forms. Don’t keep getting buried with paperwork.
Work Orders
Field workers are the lifeblood of many construction firms. The ability to track how many jobs each employee does in a week is critical to creating and maintaining a profitable business. Tracking work being done can be cumbersome and time consuming using paper work orders. Paper work orders can be hard to read, inconsistently returned to the office, lost or damaged and difficult to get in real time. Many take shortcuts and fields are sometimes not filled in fully or correctly, and pricing is entered or calculated incorrectly.
Mobile work orders create a system that is reliable, accurate and accessible in real time. Unlike paper forms, mobile apps provide flexibility and customization. Apps allow firms to customize work order form fields to include specific customer requirements and pre-populate pricing for equipment and parts. Once this information is collected in the mobile form, it is transmitted immediately via the cloud.
Employee/Contractor Timesheet
Businesses with mobile workforces often struggle to see in real time what workers are doing on a daily and hourly basis, where they are at any given point in time, and if they are being as productive as they could be. Many businesses currently rely on traditional time cards. These time cards present challenges however, such as they don’t provide real time data and they can be inaccurate.
Cloud-based mobile apps provide greater visibility into workforce productivity than traditional timecards ever can. By creating a time card mobile app, businesses can have the time automatically entered to ensure accuracy, and that information can be sent in real time via the cloud to the office. Managers will be able to know where each worker is at all times and know what they are doing. Using time card apps allows your business to spend less time tracking employees and spend more time on enhancing their actual work performance, thus increasing profits.
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