Ensure the Highest Level of Safety with a Digitised HSE Round

An HSE round is a mapping of the physical working environment. Digitising this important part of your HSE (health, safety and environment) system allows you and your company to effectively map the physical, chemical, and particular ergonomic conditions in all aspects of all your construction sites.
A digitised HSE round checklist allows you to easily capture and monitor current working areas and working environmental factors as well as the organisation of work. When a digitised HSE checklist is tailored to your workplace and covers all your requirements, no doubt it will ensure the highest level of safety and compliance.
Further reading: Maintain quality and mitigate risks to sustain your construction company’s growth.

What is an HSE Round?

According to University of Bergen’s The HSE-Gateway, an HSE round is the “physical review of the premises, equipment and working methods in order to chart the risks of illness, injury and damage to personnel, the environment and materials, and to assess the need for measures to be taken. Conditions of importance for fire safety and the external environment (e.g. hazardous waste and discharges) must also be assessed.” Basically, an HSE round maps the physical, chemical and ergonomic conditions in a workplace. Examples of things being mapped in a working environment includes faults and defects in equipment or furnitures, noise levels, lighting deficiencies, quality of air, heat, cleanliness or the lack thereof, and blocked emergency exits.

Doing an HSE Round

To be effective and a useful aid to mapping and developing work, an HSE round must pass a few requirement in terms of preparation, structuring of the actual inspection and follow-up work. When planning a new HSE round, it’s always good to reference previous HSE rounds and surveys.
For maintenance, all building units must be subjected to a minimum of one HSE round per year. However, the minimum requirement doesn’t suffice in the event of:

• Building work (new buildings, renovation work, restorations)
• Procurement of large machines and equipment
• Notification of non-conformances, accidents, and near-misses

Some situations require a stricter and even more formalised risk assessment.

Set Up, Assess and Prioritise Measures

You have to set up measures in your HSE action plan. In this action plan, include a description, a timetable, costs and people assigned for following up the measure. Once you have set up your measures, you assess and prioritise.
Prioritising is important as it allows you to distinguish between emergency situations where you have to execute immediate measures, situations that need further investigation but measures are still within the existing frameworks, and routine situations that require long-term measures (applications for the next financial year, etc.).

Checklists

Checklists are important during an HSE round, especially when the inspection needed covers different working areas and environment factors. A checklist is useful because:

• It serves as an aid or guide in checking HSE conditions in a systematic way
• It assesses the state of HSE and opportunities for improvement within an area or a task
• It documents non-conformities in a desired condition and the need for improvement measures
• It serves as proof of documentation that an HSE inspection has been performed

Digitised Checklist

Remember, a good checklist should be custom-made to your workplace and covers all requirements needed for compliance. However, if your process is still done traditionally, for example with a pen and paper to be transcribed to an Excel sheet, you leave a lot of room for errors. No matter how good your checklist is, if your process is prone to human error, it becomes useless.
However, a digitised checklist would be the gateway to the digitalisation of your HSE round. A digitalised process would mean, your compliance database and HSE measures are all in a retrievable database from which you can easily create your HSE round checklist. You can fill in your checklist and add notes on the fly while you do your rounds. By digitising your HSE round processes, you become more efficient while saving lots of time on unnecessary admin work. Additionally, you can immediately communicate the non-conformities and defects that you find while performing your HSE round inspection. You end up coordinating HSE measures and actions and follow-ups in an easy transparent workflow.
With a simplified yet accurate HSE management, you gain efficiency and improve the overall performance of your HSE. You end up with the highest level of safety while saving time and increasing productivity in your HSE rounds.
On a related topic, learn how applying construction technology solutions make for a safer worksite.
If you’re interested in learning more about how intelligent deployment of digital technologies is greatly improving workplace efficiency and safety, we have a book that features a chapter that discusses all of that. Download our ebook, 6 Keys to Staying Competitive, for free today!