One-sized safety systems don’t fit all

0
1519

By HammerTech head of marketing and strategy Nick Peters

In the past, technology companies wanting to serve the construction industry have made one big mistake — they developed solutions based on other industries such as manufacturing, and have expected construction — a very unique industry — to adapt.

It’s the classic, “we built our solution the way we think construction should work”, rather than building the solution the way construction companies do work.

Inflexible technology solutions are those that can’t configure to your needs out in the field, and ask you to adapt your protocols to their software limitations.

Which doesn’t make sense, right? If the solution was meant to support your operations, why develop a solution that doesn’t have the flexibility to change or grow with you?

Agility requires flexibility

When it comes to safety, your processes will change. That’s the nature of company and system maturity, the result of changing regulations, and unfortunate incidents on job sites.

Learnings require adaptation — your past informs your future. And a system that does not allow for customisable changes will inherently limit your ability to create or edit important processes, and reduce your ability to implement those changes quickly or effectively.

Safety counts on being able to adjust in a timely fashion to keep teams away from danger and remain productive — because it becomes costly having to pause a job if an incident occurs while important changes to the system take place.

Systems should wrap around you, not the other way around

Today’s world is all about personalisation. Think about Netflix, Spotify, Stan. Consumer technology understands that without “you” there is no “them”. So they make sure the technology conforms to your needs and desires.

We think construction technology, especially safety technology, should as well. This is because your safety processes must meet certain regulations for the region, type of build etc. And who is better at defining those processes? Us? Or you?

Out-of- the-box capabilities often put you in a box of limitations

Our system isn’t built to box you in like many other software platforms. There is a significant difference between tailoring out-of-the-box applications to your needs, versus customising a completely configurable system designed to your process specifications.

We built our system with flexible modules and data fields that can be adjusted, modified, created or customised, based on what you need out in the field.

And those changes can happen fast because we teach you the system — which is super easy to learn — and your appointed administrator can go in and change the data fields quickly and easily.

(Read: You don’t have to wait on anyone to do it for you or be forced to wait until your software vendors can schedule in and ship those technology updates.)

For example, we worked with a company that was trying to resolve incidents related to temporary works on an active project.

No system out there had an adequate temporary works inspection process. So we helped them build it inside the inspections module.

The company created a quick, easy and effective solution without writing code. We simply showed them how to modify their data fields to capture what they needed and then add it to their list of inspections for teams to be able to access and use.

Plus, we integrate with other key software, such as Procore and Power BI, so your data can flow as you need it to.

You can pull or push data, visualise thousands of data points, and start making informed decisions across all of your projects and regions.

Because we know that what you don’t know is limiting what you can do, and opening you up to more risk.

We know that system flexibility is important to construction. That’s why our system was designed to be completely configurable.

The first principle of software is that it should be intuitive and easy to use. If your software system is putting you in a box, perhaps it’s time to look elsewhere.

For more information visit www.hammertech.com.au.

Previous articleExotic forestry scores highly
Next articleTackling the complex issues facing commercial and residential construction