The Definitive Guide to Eliminating Construction Paper Forms
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In the construction industry, there are a lot of factors you can’t control, such as the cost of raw materials or the weather conditions at a site. But if you’re struggling with paper forms getting lost, damaged, or destroyed, then there’s a solution at your fingertips: mobile apps.
In this eBook you’ll learn:
The problem with construction paper forms & the simple solution
How to think strategically about construction mobile apps
The one switch that saved an Australian contractor thousands of Dollars
The Definitive Guide to Eliminating Construction Paper Forms
In the construction industry, there are a lot of factors you can’t control, such as the cost of raw materials or the weather conditions at a site. But if you’re struggling with paper forms getting lost, damaged, or destroyed, then there’s a solution at your fingertips: mobile apps.
Share:
Introduction
The paper system of time cards, safety inspections, and project reports could be slowing down your processes. How? It’s easy to make errors, miss fields, or lose information entirely on paper. Employees also spend extra time with redundant data entry. Tracking labor or equipment costs suddenly becomes difficult. Returning information from the field can take hours or days. You may not know what’s going on at job sites until days later. Worse, paper-based systems could be costing your firm thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours over the long run.
Chapter 1: The Problem with Construction Paper Forms and the Simple Solution
Some may not know it, but you’re always preparing for the future. You’re looking for the latest tools and industry trends. For many construction firms, one thing hasn’t changed: the way they collect information. Time cards, inspections, proposals, and change orders are all still done with pen and paper in the field.
Inefficient
Whether in the field or in the office, paper forms require a lot of work. Handwriting reports on-site takes up valuable time. Back in the office, your administrator has to decipher messy handwriting and re-enter the information into a computer to keep it with other records.
Instead of taking fifteen minutes for one inspection, paper creates a long process of filling out the paper form, returning it to the office, and entering it into the database. It can take hours or up to a week for data to finally reach your database.
This inefficiency makes it difficult to quickly respond to your customers’ needs. One New England construction equipment company found their response time was slow. Why? Paper forms made it difficult for departments to share information. The problem wasn’t reaching the appropriate department, so they didn’t know there was an issue!
Storing paper also silently drains your bottom line. Just a single four-drawer filing cabinet can cost a company $1,500 a year. How many do you own, two? Three? Each cabinet is taking thousands of dollars from your bottom line.
Going mobile removes these inefficiencies. With mobile apps, every inspection, time card, or checklist is sent straight to the cloud. From there, your home office can export the information into a variety of systems from Salesforce to QuickBooks.
With mobile apps, you no longer have to spend time entering information into your system from a sheet of paper. Your employees on-site enter it once, and it’s all done. In many cases, reports that once took days now require only 30 minutes.
Lack of Standardization and Accountability
With paper forms, your employees pretty much have free reign to collect information as they please. Required fields can be skipped, miscalculations can be made, and accuracy can be questionable, especially if an employee fills out the form eight hours later.
For instance, a foreman could be on-site getting a project up and running for the day. He can miss the one employee who arrives late. When payday comes and this employee’s check isn’t right, your office has to go back and try to fix the problem.
One Chicago construction firm found that without standardization, their payroll manager was spending hours looking for forms. It was an expensive price to pay for finding and organizing information.
But this story isn’t unusual: Businesses of all kinds struggle with documentation: 11% of files will either be misfiled or lost entirely. Companies are wasting time and money when they create paper documents and try to retrieve them later. Cracks in your system cost you efficiency in the long run.
Mobile apps create a standardized process for collecting important information. With mobile apps, you can make certain fields required. So if someone forgets a section of their building inspection, they can’t submit the inspection until that section is complete. Whether on Android or iOS, mobile apps create an easy user experience, encouraging your workers to enter the information now, not later.
Can Paper Do That?
Have you ever thought about how paper limits the type of information you can collect? It requires you to fill out aspects of your report, such as descriptions, on one page and print photos separately. You can collect photographs and other media, but you have to go back later and compile all the data. This can lead to issues such as mismatched descriptions and photos, weakening the information you collected.
With mobile apps, employees are able to collect more information than ever before. With the power of smartphones and tablets, they can:
Take photos
Capture a location with GPS
Scan barcodes
Do calculations
If your form or process requires any of these features, they can be automatically included in the final report, which can be emailed out and/or stored in the cloud. Now, you can be certain that:
Inspections happen at the right time and place
Equipment is up to code with visuals
Calculations are accurate for better invoicing or purchasing orders
Not only will you gather more information, but you’ll also be more efficient and have fewer errors taking up time during your day.
Delayed Information Sharing
Construction sites are dependent on communications between field and office workers, particularly in the realm of tracking time, payroll costs, and work reports. But paper reports need to be transported all the way from the field back to the office. This often means they aren’t submitted until the end of the week, which can create a backlog in your office. This backlog delays payroll and project decisions.
With 11% of documents becoming lost or misfiled, these delays can become even longer. Carbon copies can get stuck between the seats of the truck or become ruined by one cup of coffee. Even if you misplace forms, they can be impossible to decipher afterward. Trying to recognize any of this information takes additional time, if you can understand any of it.
Paper also holds back companies from innovation. If you decide to update your processes with paper forms, you have to create new forms, print them, and send them to various sites. Creating a new form may take a few minutes, but actual implementation can take days or weeks. With a mobile app, you can create edits in minutes, and send out the change to all your users in real-time. Whether in Cincinnati or Calcutta, the next time your employees open the mobile app, the updated version will be there. All they have to do is fill it out.
Paper forms may be familiar but delays from paper processes end up hurting you, the decision maker. An information lag can delay your understanding of the costs of a project, as well as if it’s running on schedule. Any delay limits your ability to make decisions to change the course of a project. Paper processes are holding you back from greater success.
Are you struggling with any of these issues? Mobile apps can solve your issues, save money, and help your firm focus on your primary mission: creating strong, great projects for your clients.
“Canvas allowed us to design, test, and then modify all of our air conditioning maintenance forms as we went along.”
– Ron Walker, Cool Frog Cooling
Chapter 2: Thinking Strategically About Construction Mobile Apps
Whether you focus on commercial construction or on private homes, the details matter. But what are the best methods for collecting your information? Since every business has different needs, great construction companies ask themselves certain questions while setting up their processes. To have the best information collection for your construction business, ask yourself these strategic questions.
What Info Do You Need?
To begin, start with one process that you use on a daily basis. Every construction site, for instance, has a daily safety inspection. Make a list of what information you need to have to cover your bases.
A great way to form this list is as an outline. That way, you will have both the substance and rough shape of your future mobile app.
More than safety, it’s important to ask yourself another question. Do you need more information on your employees or subcontractors? Have you had to scramble for information on equipment in the past? Have you been worried about legal liability? Your answers will help you decide what new information you need to ask for.
Mobile apps make gathering this information easier. While you can bold fields on paper, you can’t require people to fill information out. With mobile apps, you can make certain fields required. That way, your users must fill out those fields to submit their form. You’ll get the information you need no matter what.
What Information Do You Want?
More than what you need, it’s important to decide what you want from the data. What data do you not have? Where are your blind spots? Are you thinking of change or growth in certain areas?
Create a list of areas where your current data is lacking or what you will need before making future strategic decisions. Making future strategic decisions.
Some areas where our clients have expanded their information include:
Photos of construction site to validate safety inspections and provide visual confirmation of compliance
Automatic date and time stamps when perishable materials arrive at a work site
Pre-populated forms with helpful information such as labor and material descriptions and prices
Adding GPS location capture for worksite inspections
It will take time, but if you go with mobile apps, you’ll have all that information in real-time. Thus, you’ll be able to make strategic decisions quickly and effectively.
Without information, you lack the evidence to prove you need to change. Gathering much of the necessary information with paper takes longer and requires more work from you and your employees. Mobile apps make it easy to expand and analyze your information, so you can make the best decisions for your business.
“With GoCanvas we can quickly modify or create any app to meet the specific project requirements.”
– Rick Davis, Owner of Rick Davis Consulting
How Do You Want to Receive Your Info?
More than the information you need, how do you want to get it? Some fields could be simple text boxes. Others could be a drop down list of values for the inspector to choose from. Maybe you want photos to validate inspections of equipment or certain set-ups. Knowing how you want to gather the information will save you time when you’re creating your mobile form.
Finally, you also need to think about how you’ll want to access and share the information later on. With mobile apps, all of your information is accessible 24/7 in the cloud. Will you want to download all of your data as a CSV or XML file? Or maybe you need to send the data to a customer, colleague, or subcontractor as a PDF?
Perhaps you prefer a seamless integration with one of your existing systems via an API? An API integration will allow you to get forms such as work orders and time cards in real time in your databases. These are all great options depending on your needs.
With GoCanvas, all forms go immediately to the cloud. Not only will you get more data, but you skip manual data entry necessary with paperwork and other systems. One customer of ours has saved over $40,000 in administrative costs.
You can’t control the weather or the price of concrete. However, you can take steps to eliminate inefficiencies in your business. Mobile apps provide a unique opportunity for construction firms to collect insightful business information. With smartphone technology, you can validate your information easily and quickly. All of this can be collected in half the time it took your employees before.
What could your business do with hundreds of more hours on-site and at the office? Every construction business has unique needs. To capture the best data for your business, you need to understand your needs. Asking yourself these questions will help you quickly and easily collect the information you need to succeed.
Chapter 3: The One Switch That Saved a Contractor Thousands of Dollars
Ace Contractors Group Pty Ltd, is an Australian-owned company offering a wide variety of services including Civil, Landscaping, Infrastructure, Environmental Management, Water Industry, Electrical, Plant, and Equipment. They work not only across Victoria but also in Perth, Western Australia, and NB Projects in Ceduna, South Australia, and Wolumla in NSW. For over 40 years, they have delivered quality projects at the best value to their customers.
While Ace Contractors was growing across the region and beyond, their paper system wasn’t keeping up. Unless employees went and audited each site, it was difficult to ensure that their various locations were in compliance. This system required extensive work hours and was painfully slow.
In addition, each site supervisor was burdened with large amounts of paperwork. Any time a form was updated, someone had to send it to each of the various sites across the region. Paper forms were slowing down their work, and hindered communication between sites. Ace Contractors needed a solution that was faster but also more thorough.
Solution
In November 2013, Ace Contractors switched to GoCanvas to replace cumbersome paper forms with highly-customizable mobile business forms that improved their data collection and productivity.
Ace Contractors started with a trial group of users to test going mobile. With an intuitive user experience, the group took to the mobile app quickly. Soon after, they expanded their use of GoCanvas to their site supervisors and finally onto the project managers.
Today, they have moved their most commonly used forms to mobile. Forms now collected on smartphones include Mobile Plant Entry Permits, Weekly Site Inspections, Handover Certificates, and Excavation Permits.
They aren’t stopping there: They’re looking at ways to transition other forms to GoCanvas too!
Results
From the beginning, Ace Contractors saw productivity gains. Monitoring compliance is now easy and does not require that someone from headquarters visit each site. Employees on-site can fill out compliance quickly at their respective locations. All forms are sent immediately to the cloud, so the central office receives the report the day any form is finished.
Updating forms has become easier too. Once the form is edited with the GoCanvas App Builder, it is immediately available to users no matter where they are. Switching to mobile apps has removed the issue of lost paper forms and strengthened communication between the sites and senior management.
In real terms, Ace Contractors reported saving over $2,200 in just four months. Michael Spiteri of Ace Contractors believes that “we have most likely saved a lot more than that if you take into account form revision upgrades that do not require a person going to a site with a handful of paper, time and effort to re-print, and being able to instantly be informed if there is an issue on site.”
With less time and effort, they receive more accurate information in real-time and can focus on finishing great projects.
“Being able to know what is happening on your site is priceless.”
— Michael Spiteri, Ace Contractors
Chapter 4: How to Create a Building Inspection App in One Hour
Whether you work in commercial or residential construction, inspections are crucial in your line of work. Inspections, however, take time away from the important renovation or construction work you do. For many businesses, you can’t even bill for time spent on this work.
Are you ready to go mobile? Today, you don’t need any coding or technological expertise to create a building inspection app. You can start creating a mobile app today for free. Or, send us your form and we’ll convert your first form free!
Want to build your own inspection? Follow these steps:
Find a Form You Want to Convert
When going from paper to mobile, we suggest starting with only a few forms first and working your way to a paperless office.
Log in or Sign up for GoCanvas
If you have an account, sign in. If not, you can create a free trial account here.
Build Your Building Inspection App
1. In the Apps Tab click on Create App. 2. Now, select a template, in this case I am choosing blank. 3. Click Start to launch the App Builder.
In the App Builder, you’ll be prompted to add the first screen. Select + Add screen then name it, “Building Condition”.
Add the first field. Drag a Short Text field into the center screen from the left-hand palette. Name the field ‘Name of School District’.
Drag a number field into the center screen from the right-hand palette. Name the field, ‘SED District Number’.
Repeat Step 5 for all fields asking for text. Repeat Step 6 for all fields asking for numbers.
Drag a Static Text Box into the center of the screen. Write ‘Building Ownership (check one)’.
Drag a Checkbox into the center screen. Next to the Label write, ‘Owned and Used by District’.
Repeat Step 9 for these checkboxes:
Owned by the district and leased to a non-district entity
Owned by district, part used by district, part leased to non-di strict entity
Owned by a non-district entity and leased to the district
Name your app, I’m going to name it “2018 Building Condition Survey”.
Save and Publish Your App
At the top of the App Builder page, click Save. After saving hit Publish to Device. Hit Next and then Publish.
Start GoCanvas on Your Mobile Device
To use the app, simply open GoCanvas on your phone or tablet and log in.
Fill Out the Building Inspection App On Your Device
Fill out the “2018 Building Condition Survey” on your device and upload your filled-out survey.
View your Data Online
If you logged out of the GoCanvas website, log in again and click on the Submissions tab. You will find the data you just filled out on your mobile device. You can now view it online, download it as a PDF, export it as a CSV/Excel file, or integrate it into a backend system.
At GoCanvas, you can also customize your PDFs to include your logo, unique layouts, as well as page breaks, and many more options as well.
Hopefully, this showed you how easy it is with GoCanvas to go paperless. All of the apps created with GoCanvas work across all of the devices we support, which include Android, Windows Mobile, and iOS.
We understand making the switch to mobile apps isn’t something that happens overnight. That’s why we give a free trial to all our subscribers. Test out how mobile apps work for your business. If you have any issues, our team is here to help. With GoCanvas mobile apps, do business your way.
Conclusion
This guide shows just the beginning of what construction companies are doing with mobile apps today. From Melbourne to Malibu, companies are using mobile apps to streamline their processes, gather new information, and help make the best decisions for their businesses. Be sure to check out our app library to get more inspiration or view a building inspection checklist we’ve created.
Ready to Rethink How You Work?
GoCanvas has helped a variety of businesses across multiple industries transform their safety processes and rethink their efficiency, ultimately saving them money. Why not do the same? Reach out to one of our experts today to kickstart your process revolution.
Simple to Deploy and Use. No integration is required, it works on any smartphone or tablet.
Unlock Frontline Data. Save costs, increase workplace efficiency, and get near real-time analytics.
Streamlined Processes. Collect data on a mobile device, use our open API and Integrations to share instantly with external parties.
Job Dispatch. Dispatch the right person, to the right job at the right time.
Streamline Your Business
Daily Field Reports
Reduce time spent billing customers.
Get paid faster by customers.
Keep data Organized in reports that can be easily pulled.
Work Orders
Know exactly what is happening on-site with required questions such as location, employees on job, weather conditions, and tasks completed.
Once work order is completed, automatically create an invoice that can be sent to the customer.
Include photos, work to be completed, completed work on invoice for customer to review.
Ensure accountability with electronic signatures.
Time Sheets
Track your employee attendance at any job.
Manage employee time clock entries and data for payroll purposes.
Equipment Inspections
Gain near real-time analytics of inspections.
Streamlined inspection processes all from a mobile device or tablet.
Keep your warehouse and equipment organized and well-maintained with accurate inspection information.
Top Features
GPS
Time & Date
Calculations
Photo Capture
About Us
GoCanvas
Since 2008, GoCanvas has been the go-to for job site management and compliance in construction and manufacturing. We are on a mission to eliminate paperwork, streamline workflows, and become an indispensable tool for any business owner. Together with Device Magic, our customizable mobile forms solution delivers seamless simplicity and optimal productivity. See why our 4 million monthly users chose GoCanvas and unlock your potential with our user-friendly platform.
Simplify fire protection management and enjoy streamlined workflows. With Device Magic’s real-time data collection and reporting, ensure compliance and make quicker decisions for faster response to identified issues. Our form builder and GoCanvas partnership enable easy operation management from your mobile device. Enhance fire inspections, safety and compliance, and payments to achieve efficiency and protect your bottom line with Device Magic and GoCanvas.
Digitize and automate your processes. Spend less time on paperwork and more time with your customers.
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Who is GoCanvas?
Our safety compliance and asset management solution focuses on digitizing and automating processes to help businesses save both time and money. Our entire team shares an unwavering determination to help customers streamline their processes and workflows, so they can get back to doing what they do best.
We enable businesses to:
Easily identify and prevent risks on the job site
Make inspections thorough and efficient
Prevent data loss and poor management
The Challenge
Tedious manual processes and redundant requests are taking up too much valuable time. Having little to no visibility into your operations increases the chance of safety risks occurring on a job site which can result in job stoppages, safety incident reporting issues, or damage to assets.
1% productivity growth annually for the past two decades in the construction industry
30% of all of the work performed by construction companies ends up being reworked.
155 million workers were affected by workplace injuries, costing businesses $161.5 billion.
The Solution
By digitizing and automating your operations, you’ll save at least 15 hours weekly so you can spend less time on admin work and more time on growth. Reduce downtime of your valuable assets when a safety hazard is identified or a failed inspection occurs by automating the next steps. Gain critical insights to identify, address, and prevent future safety hazards quickly and improve your customer service.
Explore GoCanvas
Customizable mobile forms
Industry-leading business insights
Real-time data collection
Automate workflows & tasks
Popular Standardized Construction Forms
Your account comes pre-populated with these forms and many more, customize them to meet your specific processes:
Work orders. Keep up with job details in real-time. Make important information required, including photos and signatures
Equipment inspections. Streamline your inspection processes from a mobile device or tablet.
Job safety analysis. Reduce risk by creating consistent steps to best perform tasks without the likelihood of injury.
Ready to Rethink How You Work?
GoCanvas has helped a variety of businesses across multiple industries transform their safety processes and rethink their efficiency, ultimately saving them money. Why not do the same? Reach out to one of our experts today to kickstart your process revolution.
Since 2008, GoCanvas has been the go-to for job site management and compliance in construction and manufacturing. We are on a mission to eliminate paperwork, streamline workflows, and become an indispensable tool for any business owner. Together with Device Magic, our customizable mobile forms solution delivers seamless simplicity and optimal productivity. See why our 4 million monthly users chose GoCanvas and unlock your potential with our user-friendly platform.
Simplify fire protection management and enjoy streamlined workflows. With Device Magic’s real-time data collection and reporting, ensure compliance and make quicker decisions for faster response to identified issues. Our form builder and GoCanvas partnership enable easy operation management from your mobile device. Enhance fire inspections, safety and compliance, and payments to achieve efficiency and protect your bottom line with Device Magic and GoCanvas.
State of Construction 2022: 7 Reasons to Prioritize Digital Investments
What do you need to add to your digital toolkit this year? The trend is working smarter, not harder. The construction industry is facing some unique challenges – like learning to do more with less and maximizing available resources.
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Instead of scattered notes, your projects require a data model and workflows that other software providers don’t understand. You need to easily create and distribute documents, and then share information quickly so that all workers are kept up-to-date and aware of significant changes.
Real-time automation can boost your revenue in a few ways:
Improves efficiency. Better information can make you more competitive within the market. Automate the extra administrative tasks that come with bidding and accounting. Greater efficiency means you can do the job for less, making your bid more attractive.
Makes you proactive, not reactive. A clear picture of your projects can help you see around corners, identifying problems before they arise, so you can adapt quicker and keep your projects running on schedule. Completing tasks on time is a boon to your reputation and a leg up over the less-organized competition.
Streamlines team communication. An organized spot to find answers and updates will keep everyone on track of a project’s status and mitigate risks. Even better? You can build new tools like digital construction checklists and the exact forms your team needs to succeed.
In this new guide, you’ll also learn how digital project management tools can help to:
Increase employee productivity
Standardize how data is collected
Enable staff with insights and analytics
Promote a culture of workplace safety
Ensure data is never lost
Increase employee retention
Ensure client satisfaction
Introduction
Savvy construction firms recognize the need to invest in technology to modernize their business processes. Research from McKinsey suggests that these digital investments “can result in productivity gains of 14 to 15 percent and cost reductions of 4 to 6 percent.”
Despite the compelling business case for innovation, many firms are still hesitant to change.
One possible explanation is that construction firms have a high level of business complexity, making it seemingly difficult to implement operational changes across a distributed workforce. Not every firm has a large budget or dedicated technical resources to take on this type of enterprise-scale initiative.
An alternative approach is emerging though for contractors that want to innovate and prefer to focus on quick wins that align directly with specific business challenges. Easy-to-adopt software as a service (SaaS) products are helping companies to digitize their operations and create a competitive advantage.
In the current market, companies will need to innovate to maximize their profitability. Continue reading for an analysis of the state of construction and an overview of the business impact of moving away from paper-based processes.
McKinsey suggests that these digital investments “can result in productivity gains of 14 to 15 percent and cost reductions of 4 to 6 percent.”
Chapter 1: Top Challenges for Construction Firms
The ongoing pandemic is affecting the economy and creating uncertainty for construction firms. There’s no shortage of new challenges arising — from rising material costs, decreased demand in certain sectors, and increased competition in the market to name a few.
It’s clear that there’s a great deal at stake and organizations will need to limit unnecessary setbacks going forward.
Even without a pandemic, there are several consistent challenges present in the construction industry that affect profitability. Here are four key findings from industry research that summarize these challenges:
1% productivity growth annually for the past two decades in the construction industry (McKinsey)
20% of worker deaths each year occur in construction even though the industry makes up 5%of the workforce (OSHA)
81% of construction firms report difficulty filling positions due to the pandemic (AGC)
30% of all work performed by construction companies ends up being reworked (EC&M)
Companies should look to leverage technologies that address these specific pain points, balancing the need to increase productivity, keep workers safe, and deliver quality projects on time to clients. By aligning technology investments with these business objectives, firms can make incremental improvements that help them stay competitive and profitable.
Construction executives continue to have a positive outlook despite these challenges. According to research from Deloitte, “68% of executives characterized the business outlook for the industry as somewhat or very positive.”
Chapter 2: The Need for Digitization
Contractors have historically relied on paper forms for collecting and storing project data across a distributed workforce. Firms are starting to move away from paper and are instead digitizing as much of their core business processes as possible. Bringing the information online helps organizations in several ways:
Reduction of manual work
Elimination of human error
Decreased risk
Greater business insights
Using mobile apps and software, contractors are now able to streamline their workflows and improve the quality of their data. These applications are simple by design but when implemented they can have a powerful impact on transforming how a business operates.
Research from GoCanvas shows that companies who moved away from paper-based processes to digital mobile apps reported:
Increased their productivity by 20%
Reduced their risk and liability by 18%
Saved 50 + hours per week manually creating critical reports for analytics
*This data was collected in January 2020 as part of a survey of firms using GoCanvas.
Chapter 3: 7 Reasons to Go Digital and Eliminate Paper
1. Increase employee productivity
Paperwork is a leading cause of frustration for employees and this turns into lower productivity levels. Mobile apps for contractors aim to digitize all aspects of paperwork on the job, resulting in streamlined workflows and a reduction in manual tasks.
The most common paper-based processes in construction include inspections, incident reports, work orders, change orders, estimates and logs, reports, and other types of field data collection on job sites.
Anywhere paper is used to collect and share information can be an opportunity to digitize information using an online form instead. Mobile apps simplify the process for staff, bring information online for reporting, and enable automation for completing other tasks and workflows.
Considering the direct costs associated with paper usage and the indirect costs that stem from lost productivity, there is a clear advantage for firms that can digitize.
2. Standardize how data is collected
Data collection is a challenge for construction companies with distributed teams. Without clear processes and standardization, the result is siloed data that is not consistent and hard to analyze.
With paper forms, there is no reliable way to enforce how data is collected. Apps and software for contractors are designed to simplify field data collection, giving employees a better way to submit data.
Advanced features can require standard inputs so the information for reporting is consistent and complete. This creates an environment where data is an asset and can be used to inform business decisions.
3. Enable staff with insights and analytics
Contractors can use data to their advantage if they implement data collection best practices. On an operational level, staff can see trends in real time to understand any potential issues, delays, incidents, or problems that are happening on job sites. At the same time, construction executives are empowered with a complete view of their business and they can make any appropriate adjustments.
Mobile apps and software enable data collection and empower the analytics and insights needed for greater business intelligence. For construction companies, this means finding opportunities to improve quality and avoid rework, spot lags in productivity, manage safety programs, and much more.
4. Promote a culture of workplace safety
Safety programs managed on paper are difficult to track. Digitizing these programs allows organizations to have more visibility into safety programs and ensures compliance. Going digital makes it easier for employees to complete training or toolbox talks, and a record of their completion is clearly documented.
Apps for contractors act as a comprehensive safety management solution. With robust reporting that’s visible in real-time, organizations can address potential hazards and limit OSHA violations and fines.
5. Ensure data is never lost
There is a greater level of risk when information is stored on paper in filing cabinets. Sheets are hard to find and they can be lost, damaged, or stolen. Digitizing this information will ensure that firms are complying with best practices for record-keeping.
Digital information is securely stored in the cloud and can always be accessed. This helps contractors in case of an audit, insurance claims, legal disputes, and similar instances where sensitive information needs to be accessible.
6. Increase employee retention
With a labor shortage and difficulty finding skilled workers, firms need to do everything in their power to retain current employees.
An investment in digital apps and software shows workers that brands are committed to investment in worker productivity and safety, with modern business processes that make their jobs more efficient.
All of this leads to a better employee experience and a positive impact on a firm’s brand and reputation. Firms can’t control the labor market, but investing in tools to improve the job is one opportunity to improve employee satisfaction.
7. Ensure client satisfaction
An investment in digital technology will bring improvements to productivity, minimizing delays and cost overruns. Streamlined operations ensure smooth processes, a high level of quality in work, and on-time delivery.
In an increasingly competitive environment for work, firms need to do everything in their power to create an advantage. Having modern business processes in place is one opportunity to ensure that projects run efficiently.
Chapter 4: Key Considerations When Implementing Technology
With the right technology in place, contractors can expect to see a significant return on their investment. However, navigating the software and apps marketplace can be difficult with hundreds of solutions available to buyers today.
When starting out, firms should consider starting small by piloting a program that is centered around a single area for improvement. They should focus on making incremental changes and solutions with a fast time to value.
Complex software purchases may be overly complicated for some business types. It may be ideal to find solutions that don’t require a large investment upfront or dedicated technical expertise. No-code or low-code solutions are available that enable non-technical business users to digitize their operations, while also offering a high level of customization to fit unique business requirements.
The final consideration when purchasing technology is to focus on adoption. Different stakeholders in the organization should be included during the pilot program to gain their feedback early on. Once a business case is clearly established and the value proposition is clear to staff, companies can begin to roll out these programs on a larger scale. Some employees will be hesitant to adopt, but communicating how this initiative will impact their jobs can put into perspective the tangible benefits.
By starting small, focusing on simplicity, and working to gain buy-in from staff, organizations can quickly move from paper-based operations to digital. This approach is easier than an enterprise-level implementation and will prioritize the quick wins that bring immediate benefits to an organization and create a competitive advantage in the market.
Ready to Rethink How You Work?
GoCanvas has helped a variety of businesses across multiple industries transform their safety processes and rethink their efficiency, ultimately saving them money. Why not do the same? Reach out to one of our experts today to kickstart your process revolution.
The construction industry tops the list when it comes to workplace injuries and fatalities, even with tightened safety regulations over the years.
In 2020, one in five worker deaths in the US happened in construction, according to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA)
Knowing and adhering to every risk presents a serious challenge, but the high safety stakes and legal ramifications make compliance mandatory.
Stay on top of the regulations with these tips:
Utilize the Federal Register
It takes time and patience, but you can keep up with OSHA regulations by checking the Federal Register, which publishes standards as they are adopted, along with any corrections, insertions, deletions, and amendments. Sign up for an annual subscription through the U.S. Government Publishing Office.
Set up a Safety Steering Committee
Having an internal committee of employees (limiting the participation of supervisors or managers) is a great way to build upon your safety practices. These committees give employees a space to voice concerns and ask for clarification on safety matters. Have them meet regularly to discuss practices and contribute ideas for improving your overall safety program.
Get Organized
Keep track of your safety program using the OSHA Small Business Handbook. It’s full of practical, budget-friendly strategies that can help you comply without breaking the bank. It also includes handy templates and forms to help you take a systematic, organized approach. While the OSHA Small Business Handbook is useful in many ways, it lacks advice on what technologies and tools can streamline your approach to compliance, and its forms are only in paper format.
More than half of the deaths resulted from what OSHA calls the “Fatal Four.” Broken down, the numbers from 2018 are chilling:
Falls (33.5%) – Workers who fell from heights accounted for 338 deaths in 2018
Struck by an object (11.1%) – Objects that struck workers accounted for 112 deaths
Electrocutions (8.5%) – From exposed live wires to ungrounded electrical tools, electrocutions accounted for 86 deaths
Caught-in/between (5.5%) – Getting pinned or crushed accounted for 55 deaths
Don’t Let Compliance Slip
The reason for OSHA’s many compliance guidelines boils down to this: keeping your workers safe. No company wants to invite the injury or death of an employee, incur fines and penalties, or be taken to court. Don’t be intimidated by the need to keep up with regulations or the demands of creating an effective safety program.
Today, tech-savvy employers and workers use specialized mobile forms on their tablets and smartphones to address and meet safety protocols. With all the capabilities of previously used paper forms, these online forms have even more opportunities for efficiency.
About Us
GoCanvas
Since 2008, GoCanvas has been the go-to for job site management and compliance in construction and manufacturing. We are on a mission to eliminate paperwork, streamline workflows, and become an indispensable tool for any business owner. Together with Device Magic, our customizable mobile forms solution delivers seamless simplicity and optimal productivity. See why our 4 million monthly users chose GoCanvas and unlock your potential with our user-friendly platform.
Simplify fire protection management and enjoy streamlined workflows. With Device Magic’s real-time data collection and reporting, ensure compliance and make quicker decisions for faster response to identified issues. Our form builder and GoCanvas partnership enable easy operation management from your mobile device. Enhance fire inspections, safety and compliance, and payments to achieve efficiency and protect your bottom line with Device Magic and GoCanvas.
State of Construction 2022: 7 Reasons to Prioritize Digital Investments
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What do you need to add to your digital toolkit this year? The trend is working smarter, not harder. The construction industry is facing some unique challenges – like learning to do more with less and maximizing available resources.
Instead of scattered notes, your projects require a data model and workflows that other software providers don’t understand. You need to easily create and distribute documents, and then share information quickly so that all workers are kept up-to-date and aware of significant changes.
In this new guide, you’ll learn how digital project management tools can help to:
The digital transformation of the commercial construction industry shows no signs of letting up.
The pandemic has seen to that in ways no outside force ever could. According to McKinsey, “companies’ adoption—and the strategic importance—of digital technologies accelerated dramatically” since the pandemic, with 9 in 10 C-level and senior leaders reporting that their organizations had pursued “at least one large-scale digital transformation” between 2020 and 2022.
This may not be news to you. It’s likely your company has made its share of large and small digital bets. But the expanding flow of data raises some interesting questions:
How are you harnessing your database?
How could data analytics better support decision-making?
What steps can you take — right now — to advance your analytics?
This playbook examines the quickening pace of digital automation in the construction industry and the insights that transformation represents through real-time analytics.
Chapter 1: A Better Way toMeasure and Manage
The Problem.
If one thing clearly signals the demarcation between analog and digital, it’s paper. The goal of any construction firm should be the elimination of most if not all, paper-based processes.
Why?
Difficult to capture and analyze data.
Uncertain accountability and challenges with version control.
Data sharing and collaboration are
fractured and/or limited in scope.
No single source of truth.
The Solution.
Fortunately, these concerns are fading fast thanks to mobile form data gathering. Perhaps you’ve already integrated the technology into your workflow. Mobile forms make it easy to convert a paper process into a smartphone or tablet-based equivalent, vastly simplifying timely data collection.
Other benefits include:
Improved Productivity: Information gathering, reporting, and storage happen automatically.
Better Team Collaboration: Information can be distributed across the team in real-time.
Fast Data Collection: No transit issues with paper. Electronic dispatch eliminates bottlenecks.
Sustainability: No paper, no trees.
Easy Creation: No coding skills are required. Adapt downloadable templates or create from scratch with drag-and-drop simplicity.
Higher-Quality Data: Use conditional logic and workflow rules to lift information quality and enforce procedures.
Other Media: Allow visual data such as images, sketches, and maps to enhance reporting.
Online or Offline: Data can be entered in off-the-grid locations for later submission.
A Mobile Form Design Primer.
Mobile form simplicity ensures design requirements are few and basic. Readily available templates may also solve your mobile technology needs.
Use drop-down lists: Minimize typing, simplify choice, and make it easy to respond with a quick tap from a drop-down list.
Large Submit Button: The submit button should be unmistakable. Make it as large and inviting as possible.
Only Essential Fields: The fewer the fields, the better.
Test. Test. Test.: Make sure your form works across all devices
Advantages of Mobile Forms: Simplification, Convenience, and Enhanced Security.
Few in construction today will debate the merits of mobile forms. Anyone who has had their life simplified with a few taps will swear by mobile form technology. Initial grumbling quickly fades as superior convenience smooths the compliance path. Project coordinator Dave Cramer of Penn Line, an employee-owned infrastructure company based in Scottsdale, Pennsylvania, said, “Mobile form acceptance is remarkable. People immediately see the value.” Data gathered from mobile forms also mitigate another business concern: security. Cloud-based servers offer data security without the dangers of paper-based mishaps (lost, stolen, destroyed, etc.) and also support confidentiality.
For example, mobile forms are now available that offer security at a HIPAA certified level, which includes:
Auto-logoffs and session timeout to prevent information leaks due to lost or unsecured devices
Disabling auto-email features to prevent accidental disclosure of sensitive information
Increased usage of logging and checksums to validate data has not been manipulated
“Mobile form acceptance is remarkable. People immediately see the value.”
Dave Cramer, Project Coordinator at Penn Line
What happens to the data gathered through a mobile form? Data can be immediately available to customers, colleagues, and/or partners.
It’s up to you.
Website: All data is stored and searchable on the mobile form service provider website by registered users.
PDF: Fill-in-the-blank convenience and easily emailed as a PDF.
CSV: All data can be exported in a CSV file for analysis.
Web services: Connect your system to the mobile form service provider for automatic data display.
Integrations: With cloud-based services such as Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Evernote.
Chapter 2: Analytics: On-the-fly Visibility and Insight
Analytics is a seamless way to visualize submitted data in a near real-time environment.
A credit score, to cite a common example, is a data analytics report. The credit score integrates data points to reveal a composite picture (the score) of an individual’s credit risk.
Similarly, construction industry analytics is a way to identify data patterns that can adversely or positively affect your business.
Take job site safety. You may have teams spread across many locations and want to stay current on safety conditions at each job site. An analytics dashboard can be displayed showing the location, the topics addressed in a toolbox talk, when the talk occurred, the frequency of the talks, and which workers signed off on attendance. You can also track job site incidents by time, place, what happened if it resulted in a talk, and if it could have been prevented.
Enhancing safety and efficiency through analytics and real-time visibility.
You may also want to track a worker’s safety record by incident type, frequency, location, and such. Analytics allows you to visualize diverse datasets and easily discern patterns. Considering that nearly 1 in 5 workplace deaths occurred in the construction industry in 2021, real-time visibility into safety data has the potential to save lives.
GoCanvas reports that its users reduce risk and liability by 18%
Of course, analytics can be applied to any area where data is collected.
“We give our field people real-time visibility into the data they’ve harvested with a production summary,” Cramer said.
“Each row represents a mobile form submission. If the field supervisor wants to look at it or the foreman who submitted it, it’s available to whoever we share the sheet with. It’s very organized. We actually share this with our customer, too, which is a PennDOT inspector.”
In short, there is a single version of the truth.
“We give our field peoplereal-time visibility into the data they’ve harvested with a production summary.”
Dave Cramer, Project Coordinator at Penn Line
Analytics can range from bar/column charts to more complex visualizations. Reports are customizable to best reflect organizational needs.
Other analytics and reporting functionality include:
Email alerts are sent to select staff when metrics rise or fall beyond a preset threshold
Scheduled email reports that share metrics and trends throughout the organization
Filtered, high-level views of the business that the user can drill down with point-and-click ease
Chapter 3: Use Case Study Organizational Transformation
Not so long ago, the billing unit of an $80 million business group within Penn Line relied on the U.S. Postal Service for timely billing.
“Our folks in the field submitted all billable work on paper. It was very slow. The reports were typically mailed on Saturday, reflecting a week’s work. Days, even a couple of weeks, might pass. It wasn’t a good situation,” Cramer said.
All that changed in 2017, when Cramer visited a customer in California. “Our account manager there showed me a mobile form built by our customer. It was a eureka moment. I knew on the spot this was exactly what we needed,” Cramer recalled.
65 Mobile Forms Later
That night in his hotel room, Cramer jumped on the GoCanvas website and signed up for a free trial account. “I started playing with it. When I returned to headquarters, I announced this was the reporting tool we’ve been looking for.” Cramer could already visualize a safety audit and pre-trip checklist forms. Simple stuff, but plenty to demonstrate proof of concept to others.
Now jump ahead four years and 65 active mobile forms later…
No Code. No IT. No Worries.
“The funny thing is, I’m the primary GoCanvas mobile form developer, and I have no application-development background whatsoever. I just happen to be a process freak. I like workflow automation. The other thing is, IT has never been involved. They’ve been encouraging and helped administer a couple of security matters for me. Other than that, it’s all self-service,” Cramer said.
“By moving to electronic submission, it’s cut at least a week off the calendar. Some contracts required us to submit photos of finished work. Our foreman used to have to take pictures and get hard copies developed at Walmart and mail them off with a report. It’s easy to see why foremen and supervisors have adapted so quickly to our system.”
Dave Cramer, Project Coordinator at Penn Line
Remarkable Visibility.
He described how another mobile form replaced an entire notebook and pencil that was handed to the foreman to complete daily. The team is grateful for a streamlined workflow. So much, in fact, “I now get frequent requests to come up with new ways to fill in the blanks,” Cramer said.
Perhaps the biggest inflection point on Cramer’s GoCanvas journey was Analytics:
“We’ve never had a way to offer an analytic view of our field operations. We’re now engaged in an $18 million job, the largest contract in the division’s history. It involves 1,151 work sites. The mobile forms help populate a daily or weekly analytic report that anybody from the president on down can view in real time. It’s remarkable visibility we never had before.”
Digital First.
In fact, Cramer’s collaboration with GoCanvas was so successful that he was asked to present his mobile form strategy to senior leadership with an eye on expanding his paper-free ideas across the entire organization.
Chapter 4: Measure to Manage
Unleash Data Insights for Confident Decision-Making with GoCanvas.
No executive can claim too much insight, especially in construction. Imagine having the kind of decision support at your fingertips to confidently answer questions such as:
Should we bid on this project, and if so, how much?
Are the subcontractor bids reasonable?
Is the project about to run into trouble?
The answers to those questions and more may be waiting in your database.
As you continue your digital transformation, keep data analytics resources such as GoCanvas in mind. Look for a partner with the data analytics performance, innovation, and service record to help add a new dimension of business clarity to your planning.
In addition to improving your analytics, GoCanvas can help you streamline your processes, save money, and spend more time with your customers.
Ready to Rethink How You Work?
GoCanvas has helped a variety of businesses across multiple industries transform their safety processes and rethink their efficiency, ultimately saving them money. Why not do the same? Reach out to one of our experts today to kickstart your process revolution.
Smarter, Faster, Safer: Improving Safety Compliance with Mobile Technology
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For the most successful manufacturers, technology is not an add-on or afterthought. It’s an integral part of running a company. Technology automates tedious, manual processes, saving you money and empowering your workforce to spend more time making an impact on what matters most to growing your business.
For example, a major global automated systems manufacturer increased quality and efficiency by switching to mobile forms for automated data collection during compliance audits.
In fact, many of your manufacturing peers leverage the GoCanvas platform to increase the business impact of data. By using customized GoCanvas forms that automate mobile data to conduct a range of inspections and audits (even in offline mode!), these organizations are saving time and working smarter to leverage insights in making more-informed business decisions like mitigation of compliance risks.
You, too, can transform your business by using GoCanvas.
This eBook will show you how our technology can help your business grow in three key areas:
Safety and Compliance: By harnessing the power of big data through GoCanvas mobile forms, safety checklists, and audits, manufacturers can ensure compliance with state and federal regulations across their entire operation, including OSHA’s myriad regulations for manufacturers (machine guarding, lockout/ tagout, electrical hazards, personal protective equipment) to avoid worker injury and big fines.
Standardization: By switching to GoCanvas mobile forms and tapping the analytic power of big data, companies can achieve standardization in daily operations through automation that simplifies data collection, sharing, and insights generation across dispersed organizations. In this way, manufacturing data is captured, shared, and analyzed… from New York to Sydney. This is useful for incident reporting, maintenance reporting and tracking, audits, and open issue tracking — keeping quality assurance managers on the floor up to date.
Interoperability: It’s not a new concept to manufacturing. Having systems that work with one another — so that data from one machine can be analyzed in the same software as from another machine in a plant halfway around the world — is still something many manufacturers are struggling with. Collecting data in GoCanvas mobile forms and then storing it securely in the cloud to access from anywhere allows scenarios for your company that were previously reserved for mega-corporations. The power of digital is that businesses of any size can gain access to insights previously reserved for “the big guys.”
The maximum penalty for a willful or repeated violation: $132,598.
Chapter 1: Automation
Automate how work is done
There’s not a single step at your manufacturing plant that is unnecessary. Parts need to be welded, machined, and assembled with precision. You don’t waste time with steps that add inefficiency or unneeded features.
But while the way you make your products might be efficient, the way you manage your business – especially reliance on manual, paperwork-driven processes – might not be as efficient as it can be. Tracking maintenance schedules, safety inspections, and quality control checks with paperwork includes too many unnecessary steps. Employees have to lug binders full of blank forms around. Completed forms are filed away in a dusty cabinet and often never found again. Or they’re keyed into a computer system, which takes time and often introduces errors.
Even when paper forms are scanned or retyped, there’s the lack of a “big picture.” The information in those forms could be used strategically: to learn which machines always break down (and should be replaced instead of repaired), to train employees on ongoing safety and compliance issues, or to make process improvements.
If only the information wasn’t locked into paper or typed into an inefficient system…
Data captured in the field and entered directly into a mobile form is more accurate (no more worrying about illegible handwriting or typing/ entry errors), and it’s richer. Fields can be required — so inspectors and quality control agents can’t skip a section (either by accident or on purpose) — and you can also include photos. Not only is data collection standardized, there’s no longer any need to worry about or spend lots of time looking at manual checklists.
Some fields can be prepopulated: think timestamps, geographic coordinates, and more. This saves time and keeps data in a standard format.
As soon as the form is submitted, you have access to it back in the office or at any other plant around the world. That data can be sliced, diced, and arranged on dashboards so that the global team can spot issues such as safety hazards on the manufacturing line or equipment repair bottlenecks and make informed decisions to resolve them as quickly as possible.
Moving to Mobile for Data Access
A major flooring manufacturer frequently audits manufactured products and raw materials for defects, warping, breakage, and other flaws. The company’s reporting did not offer the transparency and visibility they desired, and quality and ease of distribution were issues. This company needed better and quicker access to its data than it could get from paper forms.
It recently implemented GoCanvas in one of its facilities. It used the GoCanvas Mobile Forms Builder to digitize its processes and “automate” the creation of easy-to-use digital forms. Now, using barcode scanning on each pallet as well as on each individual item, inventory and defect data now flow into a database.
Summary reports in Microsoft Excel with charts, bar graphs, and more are pulled out, turned into PDFs, and forwarded to compliance managers three times a day. More detailed reports are available if issues are identified, and GoCanvas-designed custom dashboards are available for higher-level analysis.
The model is being launched in one plant but is designed to scale so that it can be implemented in the company’s other plants around the country.
Manufacturers are subject to a range of OSHA regulations, whichseem to be constantly changing.
Chapter 2: Compliance
Here are three key areas in which GoCanvas is already transforming manufacturing.
Compliance
Manufacturers are subject to a range of OSHA regulations covering equipment safety, protective work attire, warning signs, and other worksite and reporting requirements. Federal safety regulations are constantly evolving; for example, OHSA issued new guidance and an enforcement initiative in 2021 regarding worker exposure to indoor and outdoor heat hazards.
OSHA continues to maintain rigorous enforcement of safety regulations; major manufacturers continue to be routinely cited with fines for OSHA violations and worker injuries, indicating that the agency is taking preventable errors very seriously,
On October 27, 2022, OSHA issued a $1,232,705 penalty to an Ohio vinyl tile manufacturer in response to a worker suffering severe injuries as a result of being caught in a machine. The plant where this incident occurred has been in a “Severe Violator Enforcement Program” since 2017.
On December 15, 2022, OSHA issued an approximately $300,000 fine to a Texas-based auto parts manufacturer due to ignoring repeated safety concerns raised by workers and exposing them to unsafe conditions, such as a lack of compliance with machine safety procedures.
$1,232,705 – Biggest Single Fine So Far In 2022.
Keeping track of all these regulations — not to mention rules and regulations from other agencies — can be overwhelming. But it’s vital to do so to protect your workers and keep your company liability free. One way to do this effectively is with checklists.
Checklists are a key tool in inspections and compliance. As safety supplier New Pig puts it, “Checklists break down complex plans into manageable action steps. Well-written checklist questions guide whoever is using them, and allow them to complete the audit quickly and effectively. Checklists can also help whoever is using them to come to a concrete answer for each question by removing the chance for judgment calls: it’s either yes, no, or a measurement.”
Checklists are a key tool in inspections and compliance.
You can use checklists for any safety audit or compliance issue. This eliminates the need to store paper records or re-key forms into a computer due to missing, illegible, or disorganized paperwork. By using mobile forms, there is no need to worry about or waste time with paper checklists. Since they are stored in the cloud, they can be accessed immediately if an OSHA inspector shows up, eliminating the need to go hunting for inspections in filing cabinets.
GoCanvas customizable standard mobile forms help you spend less time on paperwork and automate your safety procedures related to some of the most common OSHA regulations:
A good platform will help catch compliance errors and violations as they happen and let employees document the fixes they made at the time.
It will also integrate compliance with process management, according to consulting firm AT Kearney. This means that you won’t keep seeing the same issues come up over and over again, because you have data to ensure that your processes can change and adapt.
Chapter 3: Standardization
Imagine life without standardization. Suppose every car had a different-sized opening for the gas pump, or if every lumberyard sold pieces in whatever shape they liked. Getting gas or building a house would be much more complicated than it is today.
Standardization is often derided as stifling innovation, but the truth is more complicated. If a process is written down and standardized, it becomes routine — which frees up employees to innovate in other areas. This is because standardization helps improve efficiency by focusing work time on the most important tasks as redundant and distracting administrative tasks can be eliminated.
And standardizing side processes that are only indirectly related to making products can result in huge savings in time. Why wouldn’t you want to collect data from machines in the same format, or conduct safety or quality inspections in the same way across all of your many plants?
But according to research firm LNS, more than half of executives (55 percent) say their quality metrics aren’t effectively measured, and almost as many (47 percent) say they have too many systems to measure quality. Clearly, there’s room for improvement.
According to research firm LNS, 55% of Executives say their quality metrics aren’t effectively measured.
Standardization of manufacturing work processes is part of the movement to lean methodology and, according to a post by SafetyCulture, enables “cuts down on waste, ensures constant uptime, and boosts efficiency within the organization.” One of the central benefits of standardization is improved safety as documenting and communicating the specific, appropriate ways for workers to complete work tasks minimizes distractions and promotes adherence to safety protocols.
With a standardized system to measure quality and process improvements across plants, data can be captured and analyzed across all facilities.
Data collected via the GoCanvas analytics solution is automatically uploaded into a SQL database or Excel spreadsheet to create a custom dashboard where data can be analyzed almost instantly to identify efficiencies and mitigate safety hazards at all your plants/worksites.
By establishing a standardized process, “Organizations are better able to identify standards that are not being adhered to or adopted, as well as when and where to take corrective action. Such a system simplifies and consolidates these critical processes to provide real-time insight across plants, geographic regions, and suppliers,” according to a Sparta Systems white paper.
Kevin Prouty, research director for Enterprise Applications at Aberdeen Group says that mobile inspections allow companies to add discipline to standard processes.
“Before, you might have suspected not every item was being inspected. Now, when inspections are performed using a mobile device with a bar code scanner, you know when steps are skipped. It enforces discipline in the process.” – Kevin Prouty, Research Director for Enterprise Applications at Aberdeen Group
Manufacturers must comply with strict safety and quality compliance regulations. Using a mobile app increases the accuracy of data that is necessary for quality checks and OSHA compliance checks. The inspection process is much simpler and smoother.
Chapter 4: Interoperability
Interoperability is not a new concept to manufacturing. Modern manufacturing relies on the idea of using interchangeable parts that work with one another — and that idea dates all the way back to Eli Whitney and his muskets in the early 19th century, or maybe even earlier.
But having systems that work with one another — so that data from one machine can be analyzed in the same software as from another machine in a plant halfway around the world — is still something many manufacturers are struggling with.
“Major problems remain with respect to the interface between the enterprise corporate level and the manufacturing shop floor level,” wrote researchers Hervé Panetto and Arturo Molina.
For those who embrace technology, there are huge gains to be made.
– James Kember, Industry Analyst
Some industries, particularly that of small businesses, are limited by size and funding capabilities, but with higher efficiency due to the interoperability, standards can allow for those limitations, even work with them better. This allows smaller businesses to maximize the use of property to achieve higher levels of production with fewer personnel. Many factories are using a third less space to accomplish the same thing that they previously needed far more space to do.
Kember adds that the factory of the future “may look a good deal different than what many of us are accustomed to seeing. Personnel moving here and there, machine noise, and shouts for assistance on a given machine may all be factors that are missing in the near future. The shop floor of yesterday, replete with dozens of personnel necessary to operate the machinery may be gone, replaced by just one or two people who are carrying a tablet computer or a small hand-held device that can offer them all that they need to know about what’s happening on the factory floor.”
Interoperability allows smaller businesses to maximize the use of property to achieve higher levels of production with fewer personnel.
Leading manufacturers, says IBM Global Business leader Dave Lubowe, are increasingly transforming operations with big-data analytic approaches that simulate “what if” scenarios. “For example, what if we closed this warehouse? Or assigned this customer to a different distribution center? What would be the impact on service levels, inventory levels, CO2 output, and profit and loss? Before you take a step, you can do the simulation and basically get an automatic business case.”
With data available from every machine in every plant, stored securely in the cloud, and accessible from anywhere, these scenarios aren’t — the power of digital is that businesses of any size can gain access to insights previously reserved for “the big guys.”
Real-time data collection and insights that enable you to spot trends and make informed decisions are available to manufacturing organizations of all sizes. For example, you could customize an inspection checklist with all the data you need (and none you don’t). The results of the inspection — who conducted it, what they found, and what, if any, anomalies were corrected — are automatically and instantly uploaded to the cloud, where they’re stored securely. You can use this data, presented in easy-to-use dashboards, to determine which machines are most likely to fail. Quality data and customer returns can help you trace faults back to the machine that caused them.
Purchase orders can be sorted and tagged — imagine being able to tell at a glance that 70 percent of your orders came from one geographic location.
What’s the Future?
See how GoCanvas can transform your manufacturing business by automating tedious, manual processes so you can spend less time on paperwork and more time growing your business. Our user-friendly digital solution lowers costs, minimizes compliance risks, and empowers your people to work smarter.
For manufacturers big and small, mired in manual, time-consuming processes and paperwork the future clearly lies in digital transformation. Those who are slow to adopt, or worse, ignore the trend and remain mired in the paper, risk falling behind the competition — quickly. Don’t wait to optimize your business through an automated digital solution.
Ready to Rethink How You Work?
GoCanvas has helped a variety of businesses across multiple industries transform their safety processes and rethink their efficiency, ultimately saving them money. Why not do the same? Reach out to one of our experts today to kickstart your process revolution.
Construction’s Digital Transformation: Essential Tips for Collecting Better Data & Unlocking Major Productivity
Your competition is finding faster ways to capture data and get critical insights from the field into their existing systems. In short, they’re not going bigger, they’re getting smarter. In this ebook on the construction industry’s digital transformation, find out why the trend is to modernize workflows – and how you can stay ahead of the curve.
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Chapter 1: What is Digital Transformation?
No doubt about it, digital transformation has become the hottest trend in construction.
What is digital transformation? It simply means rethinking how your organization uses technology, people, and processes to go after new business and increase revenue. The pandemic dramatically increased the speed of “digital everything” and forced leadership teams across all industries to reinvent their companies with digital solutions.
The construction industry’s IT budgets certainly tipped in this direction. Research from IDC Market Perspective confirms that construction firms are now dedicating more than half of their IT budgets to digital innovation.
Quality leadership plays a big role here. To drive useful transformation that leads to business results, construction leaders must embed the right technologies into the right parts of their workflows and business models. Today’s modern construction industry leaders need to innovate and execute on the options that technology enables.
In a McKinsey survey of 1,140 business executives, many respondents recognize that their companies’ business models are becoming obsolete:
Only 11% believe their current business models will be economically viable through 2023.
Another 64% of those execs say their companies must build new digital businesses to stay economically viable.
By adopting new practices, leveraging new technologies, and investing in new projects, builders and developers can win more contracts and enjoy profitability.
In the following chapters, we’ll explore why the construction industry is modernizing, the pillars to a successful digital transformation, and how to use technology to maximize growth and unlock productivity.
Chapter 2: How the Construction Industry Is Modernizing
Construction still has a long way on its road to recovery from the last two tumultuous years.
Technology is the way forward for construction. Connected construction is taking hold in the industry and it will be increasingly harder for holdouts to compete.
Specifically, construction companies are using technology to better connect their office and site teams for end-to-end knowledge bases and analyses of operations.
The construction industry is now automating project progress, equipment maintenance, and job site conditions on a frequent basis. This allows contractors to identify and correct issues quickly before they become a more costly problem down the line. In order to do this, contractors need solutions to gather loads of data from the field.
However, there are several construction-related challenges rapidly changing the global market.
Rising supply prices will likely continue for years, while regulatory changes will cause intense scrutiny on workplace safety and climate change adaptation.
Plus, skilled labor shortages will remain a constant struggle for the construction industry. Getting data from the jobsite will be more critical than ever, as contractors begin expanding their crews and equipment fleets to complete these large infrastructure projects.
While the construction industry has been adopting techniques to manage a frontline mobile workforce for a while now, the pandemic has removed a “centralized administrative office” from the equation. Construction companies are now tasked with adapting processes to accommodate both the frontline and information mobile workforce.
According to the International Data Collection (IDC) forecast, the U.S. mobile worker population will increase from 78.5 million in 2020 to 93.5 million mobile workers in 2024. That’s nearly 60% of the nation’s total workforce. This is not only changing how companies must collect data from the field, but also how they configure data retrieval workflows. Delivering paperwork to the back office is no longer an option. Companies will need to digitize their data to streamline operations and maintain a productive mobile workforce.
Chapter 3: Core Reasons to Go Digital
Modernizing operations is the first step to maximizing growth and unlocking productivity.
Speed, efficiency, and growth are critical for your bottom line.
Embracing a digital-first mindset will help to connect the people that matter to your business – and grow your business with key data insights. It also will eliminate tedious manual tasks and redundant requests.
In some ways, construction is still finding its legs in technology. That means it’s important to get everyone on board (even non-technical users) without significant support from IT. Streamlined tech will get everyone on the same page and includes countless benefits:
Increase employee productivity
Promote a culture of workplace safety
Standardize how data is collected
Enable staff with insights and analytics
Ensure data is never lost
Increase employee retention
Ensure client satisfaction
Plus, custom software allows you to create safety and training reports customized to your unique needs.
Sure, the technology captures the data you need for better efficiency. But in the construction industry, you can’t deny that automation and digital tools improve worksite safety and compliance record keeping.
For example, what would happen if your company were to experience an injury, illness, or accident? Not only would you have to deal with a potentially catastrophic event, you also have to report it ASAP. With OSHA rules, every minute counts! OSHA has incredibly strict deadlines about when to report (i.e., within 8 hours). A better data collection tool can automate and streamline record-keeping.
In addition to reporting accidents themselves, the importance of tracking near misses can’t be overstated. Documented properly, near-misses can help to identify hazards or weaknesses in risk management programs, reduce workplace accidents overall, and increase company safety culture. Near misses are “symptoms” of undiscovered safety concerns – and a valuable source of information. Put another way, given a slight shift in time or position, there was potential for more serious consequences. For example, events where a safety barrier was challenged, such as a worker bypassing a machine guard and/or events where potential environmental damage could have resulted.
Construction Site Safety: Get Proactive, Not Reactive
As part of your digital transformation, have a plan for improving compliance with laws and regulations; reducing costs (including potential reductions in workers’ compensation premiums); engaging workers; and enhancing overall business operations.
GoCanvas’s custom form software allows you to create safety and training reports customized to your unique needs. It even lets teams access and work without an internet connection – ensuring that everyone is able to log in anywhere, anytime, to document important near-miss data as well as site injuries or accidents.
Not sure where to start on your tech journey?
In the next chapter, we’ll outline how the road to efficiency starts with good record-keeping, simple-to-use software, and real-time business insights that will power your company’s growth.
Chapter 4: How to Get Started on the Digital Transformation Journey
To maximize available resources, many are turning to automation and “no-code” digital tools
According to MIT Sloan Management Review, companies supporting their business teams with “no-code” software development platforms have been installing simpler apps faster, enabling them to keep up with changes occurring at a previously unthinkable pace.
The MIT Sloan article notes that:
“Empowering teams to be their own developers by designing and implementing applications themselves allows companies to make technological progress without hiring more technology staffers. No-code platforms provide visual, user-friendly capabilities that allow non-developers to design, develop, and deploy enterprise-class applications. Simultaneously, they free up professional software developers to tackle more difficult problems, like modernizing core platforms.”
Cloud-based software like GoCanvas offers these exact no-code/low-code solutions to streamline how your teams:
Create custom digital forms
Collect data from construction sites (via any mobile device)
Disseminate information quickly among teams
4 Pillars to a Successful Digital Transformation
A key decision maker
Follow the leader. Who owns your digital transformation project? As we discussed in Chapter One, quality leadership plays a big role, so every digital transformation project needs an owner.
An organized, accessible backend
Look for flexibility. How are you setting up your databases and tools? Check that the software features a high level of customization to fit your unique business requirements so you can truly unlock critical operational & customer insights.
An easy-to-use front end for inputs
Look for easy-to-use software. As mentioned above, you want something “no code” or “low code” so that even non-technical users can create and distribute things you might use, like work orders, inspections, time sheets, daily field reports, and safety reports.
Company-wide buy-in
Show the tangible benefits. Some employees will be hesitant! Communicate with them frequently about how this operational change will positively impact their jobs. Provide onboarding and training. Some SaaS providers, like GoCanvas, have dedicated customer support teams to help your team to onboard, configure, and sync the platform with existing systems.
Chapter 5: Looking Ahead: Putting Technology at the Center of Your Outlook
Here’s the million-dollar question: What’s your competition doing right now to maximize growth and unlock productivity?
Amid these unprecedented times, those who flourish will find new ways to modernize operations, despite the construction industry’s ongoing shortages and delays. Sometimes digital change comes down to capturing the right business insights and making them actionable. Understanding these construction trends – modernizing operations, improving efficiency, and saving time – is important for any construction firm.
But focusing only on digital – and not transformation – could set you up for failure. That’s why today’s construction industry leaders must innovate and execute the options that technology enables.
Software Integration Examples to Kickstart Your Digital Transformation
Did you know that you can combine data from GoCanvas with tools you already use? In fact, today’s leading construction companies choose GoCanvas because better data goes hand-in-hand with a successful digital transformation.
You can use GoCanvas to automate invoices in QuickBooks(and save your accountant the hassle of manually entering invoices). Or use real price data from QuickBooks for parts and materials inside your GoCanvas forms to create the proper totals on your customer charge documents.
You can extract images from your GoCanvas form submissions and store them in Google Drive. For example, every time a customer-facing form is sent from GoCanvas, you can also automatically generate and store an internal-only version of the same form to Google Drive for compliance documentation.
You can manage your customer communication, support system, and follow through efficiently by connecting your GoCanvas forms to Zendesk. For example, you can create Zendesk Support tickets with necessary information every time a GoCanvas form submission is completed. Even better, you can even send Zendesk tickets to mobile users in the field using GoCanvas Dispatch.
You can also combine two completely customizable solutions — GoCanvas and Salesforce. The possibilities are endless here, as this integration can save you thousands of hours of lost time across your organization:
Dispatch necessary details automatically once an opportunity is closed, so other teams can do their part to help your customers.
Allow your mobile users to have the latest Salesforce contacts appear in their GoCanvas forms on their devices.
Automatically attach GoCanvas form submission documents to your customer accounts in Salesforce to eliminate data entry errors or forgotten documents
Last, but certainly not least, you can send dispatches automatically from Netsuiteinto your GoCanvas account and assign them to a person’s mobile device. Prepopulate a list of customers, addresses, or jobs inside your GoCanvas form with list data from Netsuite – no manual data transfer required.
Checklist to Maximize Growth
The future belongs to construction companies that put technology at the center of their outlook, capabilities, and leadership mandate. Ready to transition your outdated processes?
Try this quick list to see how easy it is to get going:
Start with a pilot program. It might sound counterintuitive, but to create a competitive advantage in the market, start small. Focus on one single area for improvement with a pilot program.
Focus on adoption. Include different stakeholders during the pilot program to gain their feedback early on.
Create a seamless flow of data. Implementing easy-to-use software means you can accelerate your digital transformation
Look to scale. Once a business case is clearly established and the value proposition is clear to staff, you can begin to roll out these programs on a larger scale.
Ready to Rethink How You Work?
GoCanvas has helped a variety of businesses across multiple industries transform their safety processes and rethink their efficiency, ultimately saving them money. Why not do the same? Reach out to one of our experts today to kickstart your process revolution.
