By the Re-flow team

It goes without saying; workers are the backbone of any business. When it comes to the various sectors of construction, highways included, that holds truer than ever. Day in, day out, our professionals show up to do one of the most important jobs out there, despite working in the third most dangerous industry in the UK. Whether you’re suffering from the rise of highways workers reporting near misses or on-site accidents, it’s likely you’re already working tirelessly to ensure the safety of your workforce. Here’s how Re-flow can help ease that burden:

1.   Placing all the forms you need in one, easily accessible place.

Our latest construction report shows that almost a quarter of construction operatives would prefer to complete forms digitally. Why? It’s simple, it just makes life easier. When it comes to Health and Safety especially, the less complicated the better. The less time spent worrying about delivery time, lost, or incorrectly completed HSE forms, the quicker you can get on top of protecting your operatives during the most crucial part of the process – prevention.

In fact, 3% of field workers report witnessing accidents they consider preventable, and when it comes to potentially life-altering injuries? Even 0.1% is too high. 

Re-flow gives you the tools to crush that 3% and get the peace of mind you and your workers deserve. With all the HSE forms you need, including site audits, RAMS, vehicle checks and more, all in one place, accessible anytime, anywhere.

2.   Keeping current about the safety of your vehicles and equipment

Prevention doesn’t start and end with forms. For experienced operatives, using the tools of the trade has likely become second nature. You know you can trust them, but you can’t always trust the equipment they’re using. When you’ve only got a few vehicles and tools, tracking them manually may not be an issue, but the goal of any business is to grow, and with growth comes more tools, more vehicles, and more workers. Paper just won’t cut it at that point.

Re-flow keeps track of all your vehicles and assets in one, easily accessible place. Not only that, it gives you the information and control you need to manage their safety, with customisable service intervals, detailed safety check records and location tracking. You even have the ability to upload any relevant documents, dos, and don’ts. When your equipment is operating smoothly and safely, so are your workers. When you’re operating smoothly, everything becomes even easier.

3.   Enforcing strict compliance on all forms

When your part in the process ends, how do you make sure the forms and processes you’ve set up are being followed correctly? With 11% of workers reporting staff or colleagues breaching compliance regulations, it’s a reasonable concern to have. Especially when the implications can be potentially devastating.

Unlike paper forms, Re-flow doesn’t leave any room for cut corners. Our digital forms enforce the right processes and ensure the right information. Time and date stamping, photographic evidence, barcode scanning, and digital signatures provide robust reporting for even the most stringent of audits. You no longer need to worry about the shortcut of one risking the safety of many, ensuring that your hard work keeps operatives safe from start to finish.

4. Using dynamic risk assessment to limit exposure to threats

Our system doesn’t just aim to make the lives of you and your operatives easier by streamlining the crucial processes that’ve been part and parcel of construction businesses for years. We also want to empower workers with the tools to track and feedback their own safety.

We’ve custom built a dynamic risk assessment form which allows operatives to select from a large database of hazards, including lone working, close highway proximity, adverse weather and many more. Operatives can rate their probability and consequences, and receive information on potential consequences, precautions, and overall risk rating. This is then instantly fed back to you, giving you the power to monitor your workers. When there’s no time to think, only act, Re-flow does the thinking for you.

5. Making incident records instant, easy and informative

It’s an unfortunate truth, but no matter how robust your preventative measures, accidents can still happen. An average of 61,000 non-fatal injuries were sustained as a result of on-site accidents just last year. The only way we can hope to decrease these numbers it to report these incidents and use the information from them to prevent future tragedy. Information that needs to be stored securely and communicated instantly.

With Re-flow, incidents such as accidents and near misses can be reportedly instantly through the app, anytime, anywhere. Full records including time, date, location, and parties involved mean that you can gain an instant overview of the situation, take appropriate action, and extrapolate data to build a safer working environment.

Don’t just take our word for it, though. Mark Salmon, Finance Director at Toppesfield, speaks on how Re-flow’s incident reporting has improved safety for highway workers: