Why do you need to create an Inspection Checklist App?

Inspection checklists are all about accountability. Conducting inspections and audits help prevent incidents, injuries, and illnesses. Through a critical examination of the field sites, inspections help identify and record hazards so that the decision-makers can take appropriate actions. Therefore, regular inspections are an essential part of the overall occupational health & safety program and management system.

Imagine if all the hassle for an inspection can be done with only a few clicks of a button! The digitalization of the inspections will allow us to capture data in real-time without compromising data quality and fasten the approval queues. Also, it will ensure flexibility to update and scalability to expand.

Problems Faced During Inspections

Let’s dig into some major reasons why legacy inspection checklists are crippling your efficiency and costing you money.

1. Disparate systems lead to the loss of information and leading to inefficient operations. Exporting data from one system and importing it into another, or worse, manually re-entering the same data in multiple systems is not only time-consuming but prone to errors.
2. Inspection sites are not somewhere in the center of the city. It will be in a remote location with sparse network connectivity. In this case, filling online forms can cause problems.
3. If anything goes wrong at a site, the person who conducted the inspection is accountable, and the stakeholders should know that. This will not be possible if it’s not stored in a proper centralized database.
4. There are many inspectors, and thus, everyone has a different way of collecting data. This uneven data collection will lead to unstructured data storage, further losing data quality. 
5. Inspection sites are not a quiet place, so it will be difficult to manage documents leading to unnecessary administrative overhead.
6. Due to the above-stated reason, the approval processes will become lengthy and cumbersome, resulting in slow decision-making processes.
7. If the inspection is pen-paper-based, illegible handwriting, incomplete answers, disjoint forms, and different ways of answering questions by different inspectors are some pain points.

Must-Have Features of an Inspection Checklist

All inspection checklists—from the humblest to the most complex—need to have certain basic must-have features to make them efficient.

1. Data collection:Capturing information digitally and storing it in a cloud-based secure database
2. Conditional Visibility: Data validation and business rules to moderate quality of data collected
3. Multi-page Form: A form with different inspection levels
4. Offline Enabled: Collect data even if you’re offline and synchronize it when the network is restored
5. Capture Geolocation (GPS): Auto-capture geographical coordinates, time, and data when the form is filled
6. Automation: Multi-level approval systems, email and text alerts, database updates
7. File upload: Capability to collect multiple photos/videos/documents and store them in a database
8. Integrations: Efficiency to automate the routing of form submissions to integrated apps
9. Digital signature: Ensure accountability and proof of visit to clients
10. Report generation: Ability to generate reports of audit, invoices and share them via email

How can the inspection checklist help?

1. It will allow you to conduct inspections in the field, schedule future inspections, and set reminders.
2. You will be able to perform collaborative actions with your team, like raise issues inside or outside of inspections.
3. The team lead will be able to assign follow-up corrective actions to the team and will be able to track every issue spotted in real-time.
4. The software will instantly generate custom PDF reports after completing inspections that can be further shared with managers/superiors across via email or any other communication channel.
5. It can be integrated with an admin dashboard, where the decision-makers can view important information to spot trends, identify frequently failing items, see where performance is excellent and make quick decisions.
6. It will keep all the team members in a loop by sharing resources to organize what, when, and how you share your inspections. This will result in enhancing team management, communication, and coordination.
7. Further, the approval process will be fast enough. The team members will no longer need to wait around, thinking about what to do next. Once the inspection is shared with the superior, he/she will get notified. Further, the manager can inform the team about their following tasks and receive data/report back as soon as each task/action is completed.

Conclusion

Digitalizing inspections can significantly reduce the chances of hazard, administrative costs and increase inspection data quality. Moreover, digital inspection will enable an easy and quick turnaround whenever there’s an unexpected change. This way the company can establish a preventive maintenance schedule.