Safety app a crucial element in building site safety

August - september 2021 Safety app a crucial element in building site safety

There are a lot of moving parts to a company’s health and safety programme but an app can bring them all under the same platform

In an environment of stringent regulation, it is essential for businesses to have a cost-effective platform to ensure health and safety compliance for everyone who enters potentially dangerous building sites.

SiteConnect gives employees an easy, convenient way to stay engaged. They can access reporting features on the go, logging data as they work, saving time by avoiding double entry or tedious engagement with outmoded or separate sources and systems.

A business’s entire program, from incident reporting to compliance to training to audits and inspections, can exist within a single, seamlessly configured ecosystem.

“Businesses can protect their people using SiteConnect as their one-stopshop” says Edward Baddeley, BDM with SiteSoft.

“It is dynamic and malleable enough to be integrated into, and to enhance, businesses at all levels. We also partner with H&S Consultants who use it with their clients.

“For medium-sized businesses SiteConnect makes health and safety compliance simple by creating greater engagement among everyone at all levels,” says Baddeley.

“Bigger enterprises, with personnel on several sites at once, can be confident knowing they have a unified health and safety platform that can be utilised efficiently.”

Emerging and evolving technology

Health and safety technology is evolving rapidly, and many contractors and sub-contractors who still rely inefficient record keeping are beginning to acknowledge that such methods are obsolete.

“Mobility, too, is a factor. Safety managers can’t be tucked behind their desks all day,” says Baddeley.

“They need to be actively present in work areas, with a mobile app, finding and eliminating potential hazards, conducting audits, assessing risks, and undertaking other tasks to keep employees safe on the job.”

The different functionality offered by the app creates an ecosystem of compliance, connecting all roles and responsibilities, maximising efficiency.

The SiteConnect app enables seamless functionality across an entire health and safety ecosystem. It covers compliance from site sign in, geo-fencing, auto sign-in, QR Code sign-in and site registration to the swift reporting of incidents and hazards -- upline to the board and downstream to all those in close proximity on site.

Ensuring safety legislation compliance

Every work site carries inherent risks to those attending for work and visits.

Thousands of work-related accidents are reported to the Health and Safety Authority each year.

These cases are largely due to failures and deficiencies in the occupational safety and health management in organisations. Injuries and deaths remain all too common occurrences.

To confront this reality, WorkSafe NZ has introduced a rigorous scheme of legislative measures, placing responsibility for managing work sites squarely on PCBU -- executives, and even workers and sub-contractors, with an expectation they be more proactive and vigilant than ever in order to save lives and prevent injuries at worksites.

Companies, their boards and management teams, workers and sub-contractors all face harsh penalties depending on the severity of the offence, with failure to comply leading, in some instances, to prison time and multi-million-dollar fines.

In this environment of stringent compliance standards and responsibility at every level, a mobile health and safety app like SiteConnect is a crucial element in business operations.

SiteConnect offers multiple layers of protection: reducing the likelihood of injuries to those on site, preventing inefficiency, and fortifying a business against severe penalties that might ensue as a result of a muddled, neglected or outmoded health and safety protocols.

Ed Baddeley is Business Development Manager for SiteSoft