Construction Safety: How OpenSpace Helps Simplify Inspections and Observations

Safety is a top priority on every construction site, and OpenSpace can help you conduct more efficient safety inspections and streamline communication for status updates on corrections. Rolling OpenSpace into your process adds organization and visuals that deliver safer working environments and peace of mind.

Take OpenSpace on Your Safety Inspections

You are the safety expert—OpenSpace is here to make your job easier. Taking an OpenSpace 360° video capture while you’re conducting a safety inspection means you can focus on the inspection, knowing that the entire walk will be documented.

Add Field Notes as You Walk

As you spot hazards or other issues that need to be addressed during your inspection, the Field Notes feature is ready to assist. You can create a Field Note anytime during your capture—the capture won’t be interrupted. Simply tap the Field Notes button in the OpenSpace app on your mobile device, snap a photo, and add all relevant information—a description, markup on the photo, comments, status, tags like “Tripping Hazard,” and more. Plus you can assign the Field Note to the person responsible so they’re notified right away. OpenSpace automatically timestamps and pins these notes to your floor plan. With Field Notes, it’s easy to filter and find your safety items later.

Easy Reporting and Sharing

Since you documented everything you observed in Field Notes, you don’t have to manually type up a safety report or look back through notes or texts to share your findings with the right people. Instead, you can generate a PDF report from OpenSpace, filtered to gather the Field Notes you want and complete with comments and attachments (including any additional images you added to your Field Notes).

Field Notes reports offer clear, visual communication you can use to:

• Help organize and streamline your safety plans.
• Alert project team members about items they need to deal with, such as debris they’re responsible for removing.
• Easily share examples of good safety habits with the company.
• Flag recurring observations to prevent incidents.

Extra Set of Eyes When You Can’t Be On-Site

In addition to using OpenSpace for safety inspections on-site, remote safety teams can pull up 360° captures from anywhere to see what’s happening on a project. In one of our favorite Waypoint customer summit sessions, we had the opportunity to talk with Suzy Garcia, Safety Manager at Humphrey Rich (HR) Construction Group, about her “aha moment” with OpenSpace after she was added to a project located on the other side of the country.

Suzy’s responsibility is to ensure safe working environments on HR’s jobsites. She told us, “Every time there was a capture, I would look at it and I’m thinking, oh my gosh, hang on a minute. And I became the queen of twirling the capture so I could see what was going on.” She was spotting things that needed fixing—and then she discovered the power of using Field Notes to facilitate resolving those issues.

Equipped with these new tools, Suzy put a process in place to avoid coming across like “big brother.” For example, subcontractors on HR’s projects know to expect Suzy’s Field Notes, complete with visuals. And they understand the goal is to ensure clear and effective communication. And safer jobsites. She plans to implement this process across the board on all projects.

“OpenSpace has truly become my safety partner. I kid you not. It gives me 360 eyeballs that I wish I had around my head when I’m on a jobsite. OpenSpace does that for me.” -Suzy Garcia

With consistent capturing, OpenSpace delivers imagery and information that help you:

• Stay on top of construction safety when you can’t be on-site.
• Reference if an incident occurs.
• Improve follow-up on safety hazards that need to be addressed.
• Keep jobsites cleaner and safer, preventing workplace accidents.
• Train safety and field team members (by reviewing safety issues flagged in OpenSpace).

Dive Deeper into Facilitating Safety with OpenSpace

Check out our Safety use case page for more information on how you can use OpenSpace to supplement your safety processes and mitigate risk on your construction projects.

If you’re not a customer, we’re happy to give you a quick demo to show you the many use cases for OpenSpace—click here to schedule.