OCA, iReportSource Partner to Provide Safety Software Savings
When it comes to a safety emergency – every minute matters. The same is true for safety managers in today’s fast-paced construction industry.
The growing amount of safety regulations along with required certifications and compliance training and documentation – not to mention the current construction opportunities that compound all the aforementioned – have today’s safety personnel looking for ways to do much more in the same number of hours in the day. For safety professionals, every minute truly matters.
iReportSource President/Chief Operating Officer Tom Murray has been concerned about work safety for years – as previously he made his living working around moving equipment in food processing plants. So, his statements regarding the “burden of keeping track of all the compliance requirements,” and “increased demands to stay in compliance and having acceptable recordkeeping,” and “retrieving those records at a moment’s notice for a customer,” ring loudly.
Safety management has joined other office administrative tasks where proactiveness through software programs are replacing the days of simply being reactive and physically recording information only to have to locate and look it up in the future.
“Over the last five to 10 years, the burden of keeping track of all the compliance requirements has become no longer all that manageable or sustainable to do it with paper documents and Excel spreadsheets,” Murray said. Giving examples of company payroll and accounting software being around for a while, Murray said the benefits of safety management software (SMS) are becoming known. “Safety is finally kind of having its day,” he said. “… Safety professionals also need a way to become more efficient at managing all that information.”
Enerfab Vice President of Safety Calvin Clark, who has been in the safety profession for 20 years, has seen his duties increase at the Cincinnati-based industrial contractor and equipment fabricators due to the company’s growth, more safety requirements, his individual duties, as well as what time of year it is. “When I was working in the field as a safety manager, I was only responsible for one jobsite. Now that I am the vice president of Safety for Enerfab, I am responsible for safety for the entire company, all the jobsites and the shops.” Enerfab’s safety staff more than doubles in size to 50-55 personnel during the year’s peak season.
Enerfab has benefited from adding SMS to its safety program, which Clark said it began utilizing more than five years ago. “(SMS) facilitates rapid communication, enabling swift exchange of safety information, updates and crucial details, which enhances overall efficiency and construction within our company,” he said.
SMS: ‘Think of It as Everyday Safety’
“The idea of safety software is that it can help companies more easily and efficiently handle all those things that come up every day in safety …,” said Murray, who discussed the “four buckets” safety professionals find themselves pouring over:
- Incident reporting – near misses, injuries, damage, etc.
- Audit reporting – jobsite safety assessment (JSA), site and facility audits, etc.
- Employee safety – training and the tracking of the training
- Analytics – monitoring and managing lagging and leading indicators
“That’s what safety software is; taking those big four buckets of things and making them easier to do for not only the administrative people, but users out in the field – and doing that more efficiently than it used to happen,” said Murray.
Along with improving timely sharing of safety updates, protocols and emergency information, Clark said SMS “also is beneficial for showing our customers that we are at the forefront of safety on our jobsites.”
As safety programs have proven to be a smart investment for company leaders, SMS has been proven to expound on safety’s return on investment. The National Safety Council has found construction safety software is a worthy investment. Just some of the indirect savings of SMS include:
- Time recouped to be directed to other company-related tasks
- Lower worker compensation costs as a result of fewer injuries due to actively addressing hazards
- Reduced downtime on projects because of a more-effective inspection/corrective procedure on jobsites
- Consistency of all things safety because SMS helps build buying from both management and employees – which improves the bottom line
Made for Modern Industry Woes
With the construction industry facing the double whammy of low workforce numbers and trying to attract younger workers, SMS can help on both fronts according to Murray. “The older workforce has a ton of knowledge, and needs to share it with others, but at the same time a lot of these younger folks coming up don’t want these reams of paper. They want to complete things on their phones; they want to submit audits; or, if they find a hazard, they want to submit that on their phone and keep moving. It’s a commitment to a changing workforce as well,” he said of implementing SMS.
Jeanette Wilson, iReportSource Director of Customer Success & Development, said another capability of SMS is that it can be customized to fit what the company needs to implement and track for its safety program. “With SMS, you can have analytics that you need by telling the system what you want to know, and the system does it for you,” she said. “Technically, you can do it on a spreadsheet, but who would want to? There is so much time spent getting information that you can get with one click of SMS.”
iReportSource, which recently joined OCA and is headquartered in Cincinnati, is a mobile- and web-based safety management software company designed for employee safety programs. “We cross different industries,” Murray said of the company’s clients, “whether its vertical construction, heavy-highway, manufacturing, field services or city and county government; City of Columbus is our biggest customer. iReportSource is built by safety people for safety people,” he said.
Murray said joining OCA was attractive because of not only the construction aspect but also the array of company sizes among its members. “When I first started talking with (OCA Director of Labor Relations & Safety) Dave (Coniglio) about OCA, literally the first thing he brought up is that OCA’s membership crosses a wide range of company sizes.”
Wilson said iReportSource has offerings for any size company – mainly because it provides the same customization services. “We don’t see the number of employees; we treat everybody the same. So, if you have 20 employees and you have 10 audits that we need to build templates for we’ll do that, and if you have 1,000 employees and need to build 10 templates it’s the same turnaround time. You’re going to get the same level of service no matter what number of employees you have, or contract prices …”
Wilson and Murray are proud of the company’s ability to work with customers in providing the customized services their safety programs need, as iReportSource boasts customer retention and positive chat rates of 90.4% and 96.7%, respectively. “You never get a bot, you always get a human when you’re dealing with iReportSource,” Wilson said.
“We assign a customer success champion from my team to each of our accounts,” Wilson added. “… If you email or call in, you’re going to have one person who is assigned to your account. So, they are the ones that are helping you fill out your system when you get started; they are the ones that are answering your questions.” Wilson said this relationship allows for continuing growth between the customer and iReportSource, adding, that the person assigned to work with a company knows “how you use the system; they know the little quirks and things that every customer wants that’s just a little bit different. So, they become like an extension of your team – they’re like a member of your safety team.”
Murray said iReportSource’s customer service is extended through the way a company can customize the SMS. “We work very hard at making the user-experience really easy for both the field folks and safety administrator,” he said. “… You can customize all of our programs. And we do that for you so it’s not a big burden on the customer.”
Clark and Enerfab have worked with iReportSource since it began utilizing SMS. “I have been very pleased with iReportSource,” he said. “We have implemented safety audits, safety walks and management safety observations that have made an overwhelming difference on our jobsites and in our shops. The customer service and support Enerfab receives from iReportSource is outstanding. If we have an issue, they will have it taken care of immediately.”
Along with welcoming it as an association member, OCA has recently partnered with iReportSource to provide a discount and other benefits to members. OCA companies signing up with iReportSource will receive a 10% discount and gain access to OCA safety information – such as Toolbox Talks. “… Any member that signs up with us, all those OCA Toolbox Talks will be embedded into our system,” Murray said. “So, members can pull up those Toolbox Talks and (iReportSource’s SMS) can track the topic; when it was done; who gave the toolbox talk; and what employees were present at the Toolbox Talk. It literally takes a couple of minutes to record that and then it is in there for good. Nobody is sending in paperwork, or printing paperwork, or updating Excel sheets …
“That was an important piece that (OCA) talked about upfront, that it would be great to be able to get their content out to folks to help with their training – and not only to help with their training but their recordkeeping as well,” Murray added.
For more information about SMS and the member benefit’s savings, contact OCA Labor Relations & Safety Director Dave Coniglio at (614) 488-0724 or by email at dconiglio@ohiocontractors.org.