Our smartphones should be used to do more than just texting and calling in construction

Education

2 minute(s) read

Smartphones and other mobile devices have become an important part of our daily lives. Statista (2017) has shown that one in every three people owns a smartphone. Smartphones were built so we can improve our lives, be more connected and more productive. However, not everybody (especially in construction) are using their smartphones to be more productive in their daily work. Research has shown that over 60% of construction workers are still using the traditional methods of collection data while on site. Although these traditional methods have been working for a long time, using a mobile app on your smartphone will increase your productively and efficiency.

List of things which you can use an app for on the construction site.

1. Record daily construction events and generate reports.

Every day things happen on construction sites that need to be written down or take notes of for future referencing. Today, most companies will use a construction journal or diary to record these events. The process of using paper diaries is long because the field worker writes an event then takes a long time to reach the appropriate person to be approved and in some situations get lost. By using an app such as Site Diary, when an event is recorded, the data is synced among all team members and can easily be approved by the team leader. Therefore, using an app is the primary source for saving time on construction reports (60 mins per day). Contractors and sub-contractors can resolve claims easily because all event recorded are time stamped.

2. Allocations and Timesheet

Paper time sheets can be a nightmare for site managers and payroll. Payroll departments a bombarded with hundreds of paper timesheet that they have to record and calculate for each worker on the site. Before this get to payroll, site manager has to check the hours recorded for each worker on a daily / weekly basis. With an allocations app, workers can punch in their hours worked with is automatically synced with the site manager to approve. After the allocation is approved by the site manager there is a notification sent to payroll about the worker’s total allocation. All of this process is done in a real time with a few clicks. Also by using an app, workers can dispute the paycheck they received as there is evidence of the time they recorded. See Timecamp for more details.

3. Health & Safety

The safety of all employees is an important thing to all construction companies. Health and safety app often provide workers with all the necessary information that they need to be a site on a particular site. This can range advice on working environments, the most frequent causes of accidents as well as risk assessment. By using an app, all workers would have this information at their fingertips. Also, if a worker identifies a new safety hazard, this can then be recorded in the app for all site workers to see and site managers can take the necessary steps to resolve the hazard.

4. Manage projects

Construction project management apps are often used for the administration of projects, generation of progress reports, punch-list management, control checklist and document management. These kind of apps such are BatiScript are ideal for site managers. Therefore they can have access to information very easily about any site and what work / issue are occurring.