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A Guide to Construction Safety Management Software 

Published Date
Author Grace Ellis

Construction safety is essential for a project to go smoothly and, more importantly, get crews home safe. Good construction safety software can make a significant difference in the level of safety at your construction site.

We’ve put together this guide to construction safety management software, so you can see how it will benefit your business and improve safety on every project. 

What we cover:

What is Construction Safety Management Software? 

Construction safety management software helps support your safety programs to prevent hazards and other risks from turning into dangerous situations at your construction site. It works by helping foremen or others record safety meetings, keep track of attendance, and identify the root causes of safety risks. 

Good construction safety management software makes it possible to distribute safety checklists and incident reports to your team, identify and prevent risks that could impact your work, and analyze and monitor safety performance both on- and off-site.  

How the Right Software Helps Improve Construction Safety 

There are many strategies you can employ to improve construction safety, and choosing the correct software is one of them. With the right software, you can improve communication and transparency, and also simplify reporting and make it easier for your team to report problems as they come.  

You can also standardize forms and create safety checklists to help maintain a good safety environment on any jobsite. 

What else can construction safety management software do for you? 

Easily Create and Distribute Safety Checklists and Incident Reports 

Good construction safety software, like Autodesk Construction Cloud, helps you create safety checklists from scratch or import PDF forms so that you can enforce standards with templates. 

Construction safety checklists help you maintain consistency. Instead of reports coming in different formats that could lead to missing inspections or safety issues, you can have your team use the same checklists for all projects. This improves document transparency and makes it simpler to review the data in front of you.

Since your checklists and incident reports are on the cloud, you can also pull them up in real-time, and check to see if important issues or inspections have been completed, and review them as they come in. This will improve safety and accuracy, which leads to better outcomes. 

Another bonus of creating and distributing checklists in this way is that you can assign checklists to the right team members. There is no opportunity for paperwork to get lost in the shuffle; it’s all on the cloud and ready for review. 

Cloud Connected Software Made for the Field 

Another reason to use safety software is that you can keep data and information centralized while connecting everyone through the cloud. With a centralized platform, you connect people and enable everyone to be a safety champion on the job.

It’s beneficial to be able to find all the information you need in one centralized location. Instead of leafing through paperwork or documents offline, you just have to log into the cloud and find everything you need for proactive safety management, all in one place. If you need to distribute data, checklists, or other information, you can share with the whole team on any device. As long as there is internet access, anyone with permission can get online and review all the documents open to them. 

Identify and Prevent Risks 

Instead of just reacting to risks on the job, what if you could predict them and take action before they have a chance to become a problem? With good safety software, you can leverage dashboards to stay on top of safety issues and prevent incidents.

Being proactive is the best way to prevent incidents and to keep your projects on track. By analyzing and monitoring jobsite data, research estimates that you can predict the risk of injuries at rates of up to 100%.  

Gathering and assessing your data could help you prevent real problems on the job, and that is one important reason to have the software—even if you don’t see any other reason to. Gathering consistent reports from the field, near-miss reports, incident reports, and reports about site inspections help you learn about your team, the safety of the jobsite, and what you can do to minimize the risk of injuries.

Better yet, with predictive insights, you can start to set standards for safety, create new benchmarks, and move toward a safer environment for all your teams.  

Analyze and Monitor Safety Performance 

Analyzing and monitoring your teams’ safety performance is essential if you want to keep a construction site as safe as it can be. Construction projects are going to continue becoming more complex, so putting steps into place to maintain safety standards is vital.  

Today, more data is being captured on-site than ever before. Unfortunately, around 95% of the data goes unused, according to FMI.

With good data analytic capabilities, Autodesk Construction Cloud makes it simpler to improve quality and reduce risk during any project. Teams can stay up to date on the latest information and data, allowing them to point out issues and make better decisions to improve the safety of the work environment.

For example, Autodesk’s Construction IQ is a machine learning-based function within Autodesk Construction Cloud. It uses assistive, action-based intelligence to identify high-risk issues that could impact safety as well as quality, scheduling, and costs.

Knowing the risks helps you take action to mitigate them. Leveraging your data to identify those risks puts you ahead and makes it more likely that you’ll predict issues before they become real problems.

How to Choose the Best Safety Management Software 

When you’re looking at different kinds of software to meet your safety management needs, you must consider the needs of your business, the kinds of customizations you want to make, how easy it is to implement, and how much training and support you’ll need. 

There are many different types of safety software available, and you will need to consider these factors, at the very least, to find the right product for your company: 

Identify your business needs 

To begin with, you need to identify the top needs you want the safety management software to fill. Do you want to have checklists that automatically update? Are you looking for consistency and want safety checklists to auto populate for each new project? 

Do you need better transparency? What would help your team be safer and keep safety at the forefront during a project?

Good safety software will consider your business’s needs and address them. It could help identify risks, provide support as you design mitigation plans, and keep you up-to-date on the latest information coming from worksites you’re monitoring.  

Flexibility and customization 

Next, when you’re looking at software, you should select software that provides your business and projects with the most flexibility and customization options. 

Why does this matter?

Your business is going to grow. You want to have software that can scale with you no matter how many people are working on a project or how large the project gets. At the same time, you want to have the flexibility to change things, such as the specific templates you’re using or the number of people who are accessing your data, without having to change your software.

You also want your software to be flexible enough that you can choose what you will or will not use. While some kinds of software may have templates, for example, you want to know that you can adjust them or add in your own information rather than being stuck using standardized forms that may not work for your jobs.

Good software makes it easy for people to gather data from a centralized location. It can handle heavy workloads and scale with your business, letting you grow knowing that you have the right tools to continue to maintain a high level of safety on site. 

Ease of use  

Next, remember that safety software needs to be easy to use to ensure adoption throughout your organization. You have to think about the least tech-savvy person who works with you and determine if they would be able to learn to use this software. You also need to look at how easy or difficult it is to integrate the technology into your workplace.

Some software is easy to use, letting you auto populate forms or use AI to come up with risk assessments. Others require more manual input.

To find the right software for your team, ask yourself questions like: 

  • Is the software easy enough to use that anyone can fill out forms and paperwork, or will some workers need support? 
  • Is the technology an improvement on your current methods, or does it fail to make improvements?  

Once you start looking at how you can integrate the software, it could be helpful to run a few tests with others who are familiar with the software you plan to use. Get your own training first before deciding if you want to integrate the software into your work processes.  

Level of support and training 

Finally, it’s helpful for you to look for solutions that prioritize training and support. You don’t want to try to implement software that you’re not familiar with or that you don’t understand how to use. You don’t want to try to train others when you’re new to these processes, and you need to know that you have support if you need the company providing that software to step in and help.

A good construction safety management software company will be ready to provide support starting with demonstrations to show you how the software works. Then, it should help you plan for training, whether that training is done through a digital classroom or someone from the company is able to provide direct support.  

Top Technology and Software for Construction Safety

Autodesk Construction Cloud 

Autodesk Construction Cloud’s centralized software platform connects people and enables everyone to be a safety champion. Find everything you need for proactive construction safety management in one place and share with the whole team on any device. Easily create safety checklists and templates and develop a standardized, easy-to-adopt construction site safety program and get all team members involved in owning safety onsite. 

WakeCap 

WakeCap offers an IoT-based solution for construction teams that enables real-time workforce reporting. By integrating sensors into existing hard hats and connecting jobsites via wireless mesh network technology, WakeCap improves worker safety, monitoring whether the hard hats are being worn, helping with evacuations, and ensuring safety teams are covering the site. 

Awair 

Awair Omni’s sensors monitor seven key factors that influence the well-being of your occupants: VOCs (chemicals), PM2.5 (inhalable dust), carbon dioxide (CO2), humidity, temperature, light, and noise. Awair Omni combined with the Awair Dashboard software provides real-time and historical insights into air quality metrics that can keep building and jobsite occupants safe and healthy. 

Safesite 

Safesite’s safety management system removes the paper from inspections, audits and checklists, toolbox talks, and incident reports. Users can select from available templates or upload their own. Safesite also provides analytics around safety data in real time.   

eMOD 

eMOD allows organizations to efficiently manage, track, and comply with environmental, health, and safety regulations. eMOD includes features such as safety onboarding, job hazard analysis, pre-task planning, toolbox talks, audits, checklists, worker certifications and real-time metrics. 

Safe Site Check In 

Safe Site Check In provides digital screening for hundreds of construction jobsites every day, providing construction managers with rich jobsite data such as who, why, where, and for how long with no apps or software and can be deployed in minutes. 

SignOnSite 

SignOnSite’s mobile-powered workflows also drive key safety outcomes for the construction industry. The app is used by construction teams to manage on-site communication, attendance, and compliance processes. Incorporating automatic sign-on, inductions, evacuations, SWMS and worker permits, SignOnSite aims to deliver a simple infield solution for the construction industry. 

Improve Construction Safety Management Today 

No construction site is completely free of risk, but with the right safety software, you can take steps to minimize the risk to your employees, subcontractors, and other team members. The right software for your company will easily integrate into your safety programs and start providing you with recognizable benefits, like access to centralized safety data and more consistent reporting, shortly after it is employed.  

Everyone on your team should be engaged with construction site safety. Learn more about Autodesk Construction Cloud and how it can help with safety management on our website.   

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