Quality Management Blog

8 Great Ways to Improve Construction Site Safety With Checklists

Written by Ed Caldeira & JC Gatlin | Mar 16, 2021 5:43:42 AM

Construction checklists, a standardized list of steps created for repetitive tasks, are invaluable to construction site safety. They allow project managers to link vital elements in the construction project, detailing specific activities information and project phases. An inspection checklist helps categorize particular materials, items, tasks, equipment, tasks, and much more carefully.

According to recent data from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), 20 percent of the 5,333 workers that died on the job in 2019 were in the construction industry, which occurred as a result of a mixture of incidents and a lack of a safety culture among construction workers and construction companies. Most construction industry professionals use manual checklists to improve construction safety. Manual inspection processes are tedious and long-winded. They are als

Digital checklists are the solution to enforce construction site safety and solid safety rules. In addition to the health and safety benefits, project managers that have made the transition to a checklist application have experienced greater team productivity and agility. When a smartphone or mobile device is your go-to checklist tool, all the records and information you need are just a tap away.

There are several clear benefits to using a digital checklist application on your mobile device to help you maintain and manage your job sites.

1.Easily Create Customized and Standardized Checklists

A good checklist application allows you to create and manage lists and workflows. You can have detailed lists and sub-lists with different versions and iterations based on your unique needs and customize checklists and standardize them across your project. Customization and standardization allow you to avoid task duplication, focus on the end goal, and consistently achieve first-time quality.

2.Manage Complex Projects

Large construction projects are lengthy and complicated. Juggling a notebook checklist with dozens or hundreds of items is not the best way to manage such a project and improve construction site safety. With a checklist application, you can build a list of any length without comprising usability and mobility.

3.Fast and Detailed Audits

Maintaining your team's health and safety on construction sites is a daunting challenge. One injury or fatality is one too many – but achieving construction safety takes focus and dedication, as well as consistent safety practices and safety procedures. With a checklist app, you can conduct quick and regular audits to make sure nothing ever goes unnoticed. What's more, you can keep the entire team and project stakeholders regularly apprised on risk and emerging issues without burying them in piles of paper documentation.

4.Templates

Many checklist apps come with in-built checklist templates to help you get started with inspections quickly. The best applications come with huge template libraries created by expert project managers and a safety committee to use as a starting point for your construction projects. Besides saving you time, this also helps you leverage experienced project managers' knowledge to build your checklists.

5.Go Paperless

Going paperless is good for business. Numerous green building projects require contractors to use paperless technology and minimize their carbon footprint. There are over 100,000 registered and certified green building commercial projects in the United States alone. The global green building materials market size is projected to reach $377 billion by 2022. So, if you want to get in on the action, a checklist app will help you go paperless. Besides doing it for the potential business, going paperless makes your organization more efficient. You will no longer need to keep track of every checklist form, and you can complete your inspection on-site without having to organize your paperwork at the end of the day.

6.Easy Collaboration

Paper checklists make collaboration with your team and project stakeholders cumbersome. With a checklist app, you can rope everyone in, share ideas and make comments in real-time. Information flows faster, which improves construction safety and overall project quality.

7.Real-Time Data Capture

Access to real-time data at a construction site is critical to achieving first-time quality. A great checklist application makes this possible by saving the data to the cloud and making it instantly accessible by team members. This feature allows project supervisors to take corrective actions without undue delay.

8.Capture, Annotate, and Markup Images

Finally, a good checklist app captures, annotates, and marks-up images. Capture real-time images with your smartphone and add them to your inspection report. You will no longer need to carry around a separate camera, download the pictures to a computer, and send emails to the project team. Image annotations add clarity and detail to your inspection reports ensuring that everyone on the project understands any references.

Improve Construction Safety with FTQ360

Construction safety is the top priority on a project. Workers need the best protection from injury, and a digital checklist application is the recommended best practice to improve safety. 

If you want to make the switch from paper checklists, consider FTQ360, a construction management software that comes with all the benefits discussed above and everything to address potential safety concerns and safety hazards as a whole.

Kick-start your professional-quality program with FTQ360's tried and tested interactive checklists.

The FTQ360 Software Platform is pre-loaded with over 500 field-proven checklists ready for you to use and customize for your company's safety program. The tool comes with everything you need to conduct high-quality inspections straight out-of-the-box. There are ready checklists for all types of general construction and dedicated lists for specialty construction trades. FTQ360 also comes with easily modifiable forms for personalized checklists and over two dozen specialized checkpoint formats.

More importantly, FTQ360 isn't merely a checklist application; it is a total quality management software platform that allows you to manage all aspects of your construction project and achieve first-time quality as well as helping you understand construction site safety better.

If you want to learn more about how you can leverage the power of FTQ360 to attain first-time quality in your projects and improve construction safety, download the comprehensive guide and kick-start your journey to excellence.