Nothing on a jobsite is more important than safety. Fostering a safer and healthier work environment should be the top goal for any construction company that wants to succeed.
Many construction companies still rely on Excel matrixes and physical paper trails to manage their safety and compliance efforts. Unfortunately, these manual operations cost the average construction employee dozens of valuable hours that can be used to work more efficiently and stay focused on keeping worksites safe.
That’s why it is crucial to implement a digital safety management system with the right tools to handle your jobsite day-to-day operations. The easier compliance tracking and reporting, the safer your employees will be.
We know it takes a lot of time, effort, and diligence to ensure all your field personnel has the training to perform their jobs safely. However, by digitalizing all processes under a single platform accessible from any device, you can reduce hazards and delays and spend less money on incidents, insurance, or safety personnel.
Capabilities to Select the Right Safety Software
When choosing the right construction safety management software, it’s essential to take into account four capabilities:
- User Interface (UI): A user-friendly interface that is comprehensive and easy to use no matter how tech-savvy your team is (or isn’t).
- Customizable: Your software system needs to serve your company’s goals and be flexible enough to integrate all the tools needed for safety and compliance management.
- Usability: It has to be accessible and allow users to automate critical and workflows without requiring more time and effort.
- ROI: You need to choose a software that fits within your company’s budget and provides immediate ROI.
In this article, we want to show you the best features a construction safety software should have for your construction business to save precious time every day and vastly improve the safety of your jobsites.
Features to Select the Right Safety Management Solution
Safety software systems help construction personnel identify and document potential hazards, assess remedial measures, and organize daily jobsites tasks to protect employees, equipment, and productivity.
But not all software products are equal. Here are the main features to consider while choosing construction safety management software:
• Real-time Monitoring
This feature lets the employer monitor their team throughout the day from any device while making documentation accessible in real-time. If a field worker encounters an unforeseen hazard, the software can instantly notify management and send immediate responses to all affected.
• Asset Management
Any software worth its salt has to provide seamless storage and management of all critical assets while maintaining the highest security. Your safety software platform should provide safe, cloud-based storage for all company safety documentation. All of these files should be easily organized and able to be managed from different devices.
• All-Digital Solutions
Going paperless and having all the tools your organization’s needs in one place makes for safe and efficient jobsites. You and your team should instantly access essential documents such as training documents, safety manuals, and more. Your safety solution should also allow users to create safety-related forms and assignments, provide an efficient way to manage workers’ credentials, and the ability to control other relevant project or personnel details. This data can flow into a customized data dashboard, meaning your safety stats are continuously updated.
• Analysis and Reports
To remain risk and hazard-free, safety management software has to allow management to individually track, capture, and investigate recorded incidents to help them understand and evaluate the situation. These reports should include the employees’ injuries or illnesses and log property or asset damages. This allows you to take immediate action and investigate incident causes to quickly identify and mitigate hazard risks on any jobsites in the future.
• Inspections and Observations
Streamline your day-to-day compliance task management to keep all parties informed and accountable by sharing high-level data. Create detailed follow-ups for any Inspection in seconds and immediately notify any necessary field staff to take action.
• Compliance Training
Improving your team’s skills is vital for your organization’s productivity. The construction safety management software must support and streamline construction safety training and promote a safer and more effective work environment. It has to allow tracking and management of employees’ training and certification data to ensure workers are capable of safely completing their assigned fieldwork. Conversely, a best-in-class software should update the workers’ profiles if their certificates are about to expire.
• Customer Support
A successful safety management software should provide personalized help and resources for best practices in planning, controlling, and directing your operations to achieve policy objectives. From field and virtual training sessions to service customization requests, the best safety software actively help you stay synchronized with your business needs.
Top 6 Safety Management Software Platforms
Now that you know all of the capabilities and functionalities that the best construction safety compliance software should have, let’s take a look at the top six platforms that can add value to your organization:
#1 AnchoRock
AnchoRock is a mobile-optimized and easy-to-use application with universal usability and QR technology for easy data sharing and monitoring.
Access and manage every workflow related to your construction safety program and compliance requirements on a personalized dashboard.
From tailgate meetings, job hazard analysis, inspections and observations, incidents, construction certifications, safety docs and training, compliance tracking and reporting, and beyond, AnchoRock includes everything needed to help businesses create a safer and highly productive work environment for everyone involved. It also provides State Cert. Verification, so there is no need to search the CA DIRs database one by one.
This software is only available in English, as well as their construction safety training and customer support.
#2 SafeSite HQ
With SafeSite HQ, you can access features to manage inspections, construction safety training, compliance tracking and reporting, create JSA and JHA customized forms, and utilize data-sharing tools. In addition, users can choose from four languages (English, Spanish, French and Portuguese).
It’s worth noting that a Premium account is required to access other capabilities, such as uploading your existing forms and documents, knowing your safety program score, getting customer support, or having assisted onboarding.
This safety management software has some features only available for a desktop version, and others (like automated OSHA compliance) are only available for US customers — making this platform less flexible and transparent when operating it.
#3 SiteDocs
SiteDocs offers basic features like building custom forms, signing with follow-up actions, access to certifications and GPS locations, creating and sharing documents in real-time, job hazard analysis, offline support, and others.
Many advanced functions (like sending site inspection reports, setting certification expiration notifications and reminders, customizing workflows and processes, automated tasks, and more) are currently not available using this platform.
Even though SiteDocs promises these tools will be able in the future, many capabilities still need to be added, which is critical to a construction company’s safety compliance management.
#4 Job Hazard Analytics
The JHA feature focuses on safety compliance management between the worker, the task, the tools, and the work environment.
This software hazard analysis automatically links between job steps, hazards, and specific controls to easily tailor your JHA job steps to match the way the job is done at your company.
Even if it’s not as flexible as other software and doesn’t have all the required construction compliance solutions, Job Hazard Analytics can still help you resolve hazards efficiently from anywhere by recording and communicating risks in real-time.
#5 iAuditor
A mobile app that allows you to digitalize elements of your operations. As an inspection management software, iAuditor lets your team capture consistent data, identify areas of improvement, share reports, and collaborate across working teams.
You can also create and send video images, set critical alerts for local weather, and choose from many integration options such as Tableau, Power Automate, PowerBI, and more.
They offer basic features that can help digitalize data as well. That said, there are other critical capabilities iAuditor currently lacks, like managing field-drive JHAs, JSAs, and Pre-Task Plans, having access to safety documents, instantly creating and sharing customized reports, job hazard analysis, certificates, and user history tracking, all of which a construction safety management software has to have to operate safely and efficient at all times.
#6 Rock Safety Group
Rock Safety Group doesn’t have the same features that the other safety management software has on this list, but it’s 100% OSHA safety software focused.
It provides a free OSHA compliance software program that includes the full text of the OSHA regulations for General Industry and Construction. Also, it lets users connect with a broad safety community for email updates, the latest news, and best practices from professionals.
This app is only available for iOS and Mac, and it doesn’t require Wi-Fi access to work in remote locations, on the factory floor, or the construction site.
Safety Goes First
Strengthening construction safety and building a healthier work environment are top goals for any company that plans to make their mark long-term.
For that reason, implementing a digital safety management system with the right integrated tools is a must for your organization to operate safely and efficiently.
For more information about AnchoRock, contact us today. We look forward to hearing from you!