By Kaitlin Frank
Let’s face it: No one in our industry enjoys safety paperwork. Even safety officers. I certainly don’t love chasing down daily safety plans — or as we call them, “pre-task plans.” At least, I didn’t when they were all on paper.
Done right, our pre-task plans are crucial documents to help identify and prepare for the risks our crew may encounter on any given day. But the problem with the old way of doing daily safety plans on paper was that they were time-consuming and often poorly executed by trade foremen who simply viewed them as a barrier to getting their work done. And for general contractors, they were a logistical nightmare.
On any given day, as a superintendent, I would have to review and sign off on several of these daily plans for up to three different projects that I might be managing. I’d have to be in three different places at once as crews prepare for the day’s work. That impossibility, as Dome CEO Rob Lynch explained, was part of the inspiration for creating eMOD.
eMOD’s pre-task plan feature digitizes the daily safety plan process, taking the administration out of the previous paper-based process. At Dome Construction, we create or approve more than 3,000 of these per month. Once we started using eMOD, we estimated we saved hundreds of hours each month by simply using the pre-task plan feature.
But there’s more to it than convenience. eMOD also helps dramatically improve the quality of pre-task plans, offers more transparency to everyone involved in a project, and streamlines the approval process — so that everyone can get on with what they really want to do: building.
Here are three ways eMOD can take the pain out of pre-task plans and construction safety administration — and ultimately improve the quality of your safety processes.
1. Time-saving templates customized for trades and tasks
One of the biggest pain points of creating paper-based pre-task plans is that the starting point is effectively blank. So, a trade foreman, as an example, would need to create a daily safety plan from scratch. They’d need to write up enough detail on the various tasks and hazards that it meets the standards of the general contractor’s superintendent and safety officers, and provide a record of exactly what’s being done for insurance records — should there be an accident.
In the eMOD app, we give users a huge head start by creating a series of lists and templates for various trades and tasks. So, instead of starting from scratch, a foreman builds a pre-task plan in eMOD by mostly making selections from prepopulated lists. Let’s take framing as an example.
To start, the foreman might choose the task, Frame Walls. Then, they would select the specific steps involved from an existing list — or add a step if there’s anything unique to that job not listed in the template. They would also choose the tools involved in the task — again from a list of provided tools. Then, they would identify hazards related to those tasks and tools. From this, the user is prompted to identify a “Safety Plan” for how to mitigate the risk of these hazards will be mitigated.
Here’s a video from when I went through this process recently with the templates already included in eMOD:
While the included templates are great, eMOD also allows companies to create or modify the templates for their team. Any company can set up their own customized tasks, the steps to complete those tasks, the tools they use, and the hazards. By doing this setup work once, it becomes a huge time saver for foremen over the course of a project — or many projects.
2. Notifications that break a bottleneck
Another problem with any paper-based safety process that involves multiple reviews or signatures is that the papers inevitably get stuck on desks. A pre-task plan that is waiting for an approval can become a bottleneck — or worse, crews just move forward without completing the necessary safety paperwork.
With eMOD, when each pre-task plan is created and submitted, the app will notify all crew members to review and approve — wherever they are. As a superintendent, when a plan on one of my projects is submitted, a notification pops up on my phone screen and prompts me to review it. I can immediately check the app, review the plan, and either approve it — or ask for changes. If I ask for changes, the app will then notify the person who created the plan — usually a trade foreman — that they need to update it. And once it’s updated, I am once again prompted to review changes and review with a notification. Here’s a recent example of a notification I received to review a pre-task plan:
These instant notifications dramatically streamline the process of getting these daily plans completed, approved, and ultimately archived. Back when we were doing paper-based daily safety plans, I would have physically chase down these documents on the job sites — and locate the trade foremen if I had any questions. Now, it doesn’t matter where people are — we can create and approve these documents digitally from anywhere, and help everyone get to work.
3. Digital history improves transparency and accountability
Last but not least, once a pre-task plan is created in eMOD and approved, it’s automatically stored in the cloud. Anyone on the project can review that plan at any point during or after a project. This, of course, becomes an important record in the unfortunate event of a safety incident.
However, more importantly, this transparency encourages everyone to do a better job of completing these forms — because our names are on the digital record. And we are, ultimately, accountable for our work — along with the safety of our crew and job sites.
Even though most of us don’t love safety administration, we can all get behind the mission of keeping our people safe. And eMOD’s pre-task plans feature helps keep our people safe by taking the pain out of safety paperwork — while improving the quality and the transparency of daily safety plans. As Dome’s CEO Rob Lynch said, “I can look at the app and say, ‘I know we’re good’ — as opposed to saying, ‘I hope we’re good.’”
About eMOD
Founded in 2017, eMOD is a team of experienced commercial construction superintendents, project managers, and safety officers from San Francisco-based Dome Construction. Safety is more than our passion; we’ve built a company and a product dedicated to making our industry safer. The eMOD Safety App is designed for the next generation of construction owners, insurance companies, general contractors, and trade partners. We not only built the app, we use it every day. Contact us to set up a demo today.