Oil rig inspection apps are raising expectations for what owners and operators can accomplish with their oil and gas safety processes. These Apps are excellent tools for assuring compliance and OSHA and NIOSH rig inspection guidelines. Not only are they user friendly but can also be used in mobile devices for your day-to-day responsibilities.
What are Safety Inspection Apps
Within an inspection app, you can seamlessly collect data on- and offline for safety reports, safety inspection software, safety compliance, and safety audits. These apps empower you to generate real-time safety checklists, log observations, capture photos, and document comments, issues, and corrective actions.
Furthermore, you have the capability to incorporate text and signatures into the inspection app, ensuring a permanent record of the collected information while streamlining safety audits and ensuring safety compliance.
The oil and gas industry has many risks and potential hazards associated with it. So, we'll look into some benefits you will get from safety programs available in these apps for your workplace safety.
Read How Inspection Apps Improve Oil & Gas Equipment Reporting
Systematic inspection processes, provide the consistency necessary to properly document good safety practices, and accountability for actions to address observed risks for site and worker safety.
These apps leverage safety software to harness the benefits of mobile devices and mobile operating systems. Users can provide real-time feedback, capture safety data through field photographs, and streamline safety administration by updating inspection checklists with new checkpoints as they identify recurring issues.
These are all things that you either cannot do with old paper and spreadsheet data entry methods, or that are just much easier to do with apps.
Check out the following articles:
8 Best Practices for Documenting NIOSH Compliant Rig Inspections
How to Effectively Manage Oil and Gas Facility Inspection Plans
How to create an Oil and Gas Walkthrough Inspection Checklist
8 Best Practices for Documenting NIOSH Compliant Rig Inspections
Benefits of apps vs. paper and spreadsheets
There are countless benefits apps can bring to your business; here are just a few that can make your processes easier and more efficient:
Rig inspection checklists. The best mobile safety apps provide a library of rig safety inspection checklists for safety professionals developed by oil and gas safety experts and meet the NIOSH rig check guidelines. They will also have OSHA-specific checklists for recording of incidents and violations.
Reference standards, pictures, and drawings are available from the checklist while inspecting. Some apps allow you to attach reference pictures and documents to your checklists.
This can be a useful because you can show inspectors where to focus their attention, offer details for new safety management requirements, and highlight details on high-priority risks.
Take and mark up pictures while at the rig. Many apps allow you to use the camera on your tablet or phone to take pictures any number of high-resolution while you are inspecting. This is useful for documenting work activity, safe work practices as well as illustrating deficiencies you observe.
Real-time reporting. You can use next generation rig safety inspection apps to monitor safety inspections in real-time from anywhere in the world. Be sure your inspection software includes the reports you need and that they are actionable, practical, insightful, and professional. Apps should also give you the ability to automatically email reports so you can distribute information to save your time and decrease delayed feedback.
How to get started using apps
While introducing a safety inspection app at your company might seem intimidating, any inconvenience you experience when getting started should be short lived. Moreover, if you take the correct approach, you should feel confident that the process will go smoothly, and the app will benefit your bottom line as it helps with regulatory compliance and cutting future unnecessary expenses.
Do your research. Make sure you evaluate all your options and that the software you pick has everything you need. You might watch videos, visit websites, see demos, or use a trial. You might find features you want to implement that you did not even know existed.
Make sure you are thorough. You do not want to find out later that there are problems with the software that you cannot overlook. Consider mentioning how with this process data capture will improve significantly. The software might surprise you with all you can do and the information you can track.
Predict how your people will use the software. Try to put yourself in the shoes of the people that will use your software. For example, if a rig worker or foreman might use the app, simulate their inspection observations and mockup images.
You should also think about how the safety program will be managed, including the planning of inspections, making sure inspections are performed, and tracking issues to completion.
Use a phased approach to implement your software. You might want to implement your software in phases so you can reap benefits sooner. By using a phased-in approach, you can build on what you have learned and fine tune your ideas of what you want to do next.
For instance, after you set up and customise your safety software, safety data, safety administration, inspection program, and inspection data, you might have a phase where you select team members to test it for increased speed and efficiency in mobile inspections. Following this, there's a phase where you adjust your setup based on feedback from the testing stage, and finally, another phase where you transition your entire team to use the software effectively.
It is important to let the results from each phase help you decide how and when to introduce the next phase. This can also give you an idea of how to modify the ways you use the software to give you the best results.
Read 5 Steps to Measure Oil and Gas Vendor Quality
What can I expect from Oil and Gas inspection apps
You can expect several things from these apps some of which have been mentioned in the benefits section, but the most important ones are:
1- Real-time data collection and syncing. With apps, you can log in data in real-time and sync that data with a central database or other people who use the app.
2- Very easy to create checklists. You can use inspection apps to create checklists that can double as a self-audit and can be used to track corrective actions.
3- Easy to track corrective actions. Inspection apps automatically log corrective actions and can be used to track completion.
4- Easy to keep track of documentation. With apps, it’s easy to keep a record of inspection documentation and to attach photos to that documentation.
5- Easy to stay organized. With these apps, it’s easy to stay organized and to track your findings, photos, comments, and other data.
6- Easy to share data. Data is easily sent to others via direct email, text, and other methods.
Conclusion
Next generation oil and gas safety inspection apps can help give you and your team a heightened awareness of how your projects are going with real-time feedback and detailed information to help you manage quality, safety and vendor performance.
If you want to learn how the FTQ360 Inspection App can benefit your inspection process, sign up for a free trial. You'll see the difference between the old paper and data entry methods and the next generation of quality management.
