Focusing efficiency efforts on safety in the construction workplace can increase your chances of winning the next bid

With each construction project awarded, there are safety measures that are required to be met in order to work a job site. It is the responsibility of the site superintendent to oversee operations and manage various subcontractors on site. With a pressing schedule and laborers coming and going, it's crucial that every member of the team goes through a job site safety orientation to ensure there is an understanding of specific protocols, proper usage of PPE, information about the company, and any specific details about workplace hazards.

While it’s easy to dismiss the importance of signing a piece of paper, it’s imperative that signatures and data are collected and recorded for not only the protection of construction firms and their employees, but also to adhere to OSHA requirements. Implementing safety programs for all contractors, as well as new and current employees is just a small glimpse into how construction firms meet and adhere to OSHA standards, protecting their team members from potential work-related injuries.

Tired of losing forms, data, and signatures within your safety programs? Here are five benefits to leveraging digital construction job site safety orientation forms within your safety programs:

Prioritize and lower EMR Ratings
An EMR, or experience modification rating, is used by insurance companies to gauge past injuries/claims and future chances of risk in construction. The average EMR rating is 1.0. Achieving an EMR rating below 1.0 lowers your worker’s compensation premium, placing your firm at an advantage to win bids over firms with a higher EMR rating. Therefore, utilizing safety resources, such as a safety orientation form, can act as another way to improve your EMR. By utilizing digital forms, field crews can send legible, accurate data instantaneously and connect critical safety data with platforms like Procore, ensuring all respective parties have access to the same data simultaneously.

Streamline communication between the office and field crew
Oftentimes communication between the field crew and office management teams is reduced to various factors during a construction schedule. There are daily mandated tasks the field crew must perform that the office team must review and monitor in order to ensure operations are moving smoothly on site. By using digital safety orientation forms, the field crew can coherently and efficiently communicate with office teams, providing the home office crew with real-time, highly accurate safety data, like an ongoing list of superintendent-approved job site safety cleared personnel.

Gather accurate field data in real-time
By eliminating paper forms, remote or office professionals can access all digital forms sent in by the field crew in real-time. On many occasions, it can be challenging to get in touch with a superintendent on a job site. Between managing a construction site schedule, various subcontractors coming in and out, and ensuring all collective parties are informed of the ongoing tasks on-site, construction superintendents aren’t always accessible. Using GoFormz’s Template Events, superintendents can send their digital job site safety orientation forms immediately to the home office team.

Improve sustainability
The usage of paper forms adds to the ongoing environmental issues that are seen today. The life cycle of paper alone is damaging enough. By reducing the usage of paper and making the switch to digital forms, not only will it increase efficiency in the workplace, but will benefit the issues of air and water pollution, paper waste, greenhouse gas emissions, and more.

Customizable
From job site to job site, safety orientations can change. From fire to hazard, to regular OSHA requirements to follow, it’s crucial that construction teams capture all the proper safety measures in order to meet certain safety requirement thresholds. In our drag-and-drop form builder, you can rapidly transform your current PDF into a digital form customized for specific job sites.

Take the next step and optimize your business operations within construction workflows. By using paper forms, it’s easy for information to get lost, delayed, or be inaccurate. By digitizing your safety orientation forms in safety programs, site superintendents can use phones, tablets, and/or computers to walk through safety protocols and capture accurate real-time data with integrated platforms such as Autodesk and Procore.

To learn more about how digital forms can benefit the construction industry, check out the top digital forms for construction.