What Is a Site Inspection Checklist?
A site inspection is intended to check the quality and effectiveness of occupational safety and health protection measures. The purpose of the inspection is to discover deficiencies and to identify means of eliminating them.
Site inspections are an integral part of occupational health and safety at work and are part of the employer’s obligations. Ideally, they are discussed in advance in an occupational safety committee and prepared in detail. A site inspection can also be arranged after a specific event (e.g. an accident) or on a specific topic such as hygiene or fire protection.
In companies, inspections are also carried out as part of the risk assessment to assess the physical risk to employees at the workplace. During such site inspection with checklist, not only are deficiencies recorded, but all possible risk and stress factors are systematically recorded. Checklists are particularly helpful in this type of inspection because they facilitate the extensive documentation.
This article informs about the following points:
1. The cycle of a site inspection
2. The contents of the site inspection checklist
3. A digital tool for the site inspection
The Cycle of a Site Inspection With Checklist
The Employee Safety Act stipulates that plant inspections must be carried out at regular intervals. The “regularity” results from the hazard potential at the workplace and from the dynamics with which working conditions change. In practice, however, companies must specify the cycle in concrete terms. The frequency can be determined with the help of the risk assessment, which also forms the basis for the inspection. The checklist items can be derived from it, as it documents the hazard factors of the workplaces and processes as well as the protective measures defined.
The Contents of the Site Inspection Checklist
A checklist for the site inspection varies in scope and content depending on the type of company and workplace. However, there are some focal points that can be found in every checklist template for a site inspection.
Work Safety and Ergonomics
The main focus of each site inspection is to check the specified protective measures and whether the legal regulations are being observed. Accordingly, deficiencies in work safety and physical hazards are searched for. This also includes checking whether employees are using protective equipment and implementing instructions for conduct. The indoor climate, lighting and noise levels are also checked.
Observation and Employee Participation
Some hazard factors can only be identified by observing work processes. To do this, you can conduct a site walkthrough with a checklist to look for objects, activities, or obstructions that raise safety concerns. It is important to involve and question the employees in this part of the site inspection. In addition, hints and complaints can be recorded.
Psychic Hazards
Threat factors that affect the physical health of a patient can only be recorded to a limited extent during a site inspection. Hectic and stressful environmental conditions can be included in the checklist. Anything else would have to be determined through an anonymous survey of the employees.
Defect Log
The deficiencies found during a site inspection are recorded in the checklist. The following information should be included:
- Type of Deficiency
- Proposed measure(s)
- Responsible for the implementation
- Deadlines for implementation
A Digital Tool for the Site Inspection Checklist
Plan inspections are an important part of occupational health and safety. They should therefore be carried out carefully and with the best possible equipment. For example, digital technologies make it easier for safety officers to inspect, document and evaluate.
With Lumiform’s mobile app, any type of quality and safety inspection can be easily performed using a tablet or smartphone – online or offline. The desktop software is used to create checklists and evaluate the data collected on site. This significantly reduces the risk of quality losses, industrial accidents, documentation errors and damage to reputation.
Constantly increasing legal requirements for the documentation of processes can easily be met with the digital application. Every user is guided by the system through all documentation processes, which is almost error-free. If the hazard potential at the workplace increases, the checklist for site inspections can be easily adapted using the flexible form module.
Further advantages of a site inspection with digital checklist:
- Faster reporting through automatically generated reports – the saves the complete follow-up work.
- Comprehensive analyses save time and uncover dangers in the company more quickly in order to continuously improve protective measures.
- Depending on the application, operational inspections are carried out about 30%-50% faster than with strong equipment.
