Ramping up with Re-flow Data Management

Vehicle safety checks that won’t leave you exhausted

Vehicle safety checks are an essential part of fleet management and can ensure you meet regulatory and compliance obligation, as well as reducing downtime and controlling costs. So far this year, one of our landscaping clients detected an issue on 38% of their safety checks, which meant they could manage any defaults before they became a big, expensive problem.

Any assets that are out of action are costing you money, with each day lost to carry out maintenance and servicing means you can’t use it for productive, revenue generating activities. If a small problem was missed until it made the asset unusable, the downtime can take weeks instead of days, especially if you’re held up waiting for specialist parts or labour.

Stay in front of asset management with Re-flow software.

Crop it like it’s hot

Sometimes, capturing an image on the job might seem inconsequential and a waste of your time, but if you need to refer back to something that happened a while ago, or worse still, has since been covered over with a new layer of asphalt/earth/cladding, then that photo can become suddenly invaluable.

Today, with different working environments and even more remote working, being able to provide visual data to other members of the team who can’t be there in person gives them access and accuracy of information that can’t be matched with written information only.

Plus it’s always helpful to be able to compare and contrast before and after photos to show clients what a quality job you’ve done. Check out Re-flow's capture, sign and tag module for more information on what you can do.

Think of the trees poor person in the office who has to type this up!

2021 has been an incredibly busy year for Re-flow and our clients have already saved at least 50 trees just by bringing their forms online, with almost half a million documents completed online in 6 months alone. That in itself is a reason to feel low-key righteous, but there’s another beneficiary of this digital adaptation… the rest of your team!

When your paper forms eventually make it back to the office, someone usually get the joyous task of transferring the information over to a digital system, but people often don’t see this for the duplication of work that it is. If the on-site teams typed in their form responses at the point of use, it’s available to the office digitally, already. It also stops anything getting lost in translation from typos, jargon or missed sections, that inevitably lead to the form getting bounced back.

Fortunately existing clients of Re-flow are a kind crowd and are not only well on course to get to a million digital forms submitted this year, they’re sparing their colleagues from taking part in the 2021 paperwork ping pong championships. Get your forms in order with Re-flow!

Data, Data everywhere, but not a drop of ink.

The forms in Re-flow are an integral part of our system. They play a significant part in the success of our clients and their efficiency. The way they are formatted follows the traditional paper fields that people are familiar with, but they have conditional logic built in, which means that if more information is required, the form will guide users to complete it, or alternatively, if certain sections are irrelevant to the talk at hand, they disappear and save the operative time and effort.

The benefits of a Re-flow form go further to allow managers to make certain fields mandatory, include multiple approval levels, standardise data capture and terminology and increase information security.

With this in mind, we took at a look into one of our largest surfacing clients to see what their most submitted forms in 2020 were and the results showed a resounding win for submitting defect checks, demonstrating how Re-flow can be used by forward thinking companies to mitigate potential downtime, by regularly checking and approving their kit. See how other clients are handling their data with Re-flow in our customer success stories

Don’t assume their agenda…

One of the most basic components of workflow management is scheduling projects. It’s not just getting something on the calendar to keep the team updated, with a great software package, the events scheduled within a project also contain all the essential elements to make a project successful.

So far this year, we’ve seen our clients adding 40 new events to Re-flow every hour. Within these events, our clients can add every aspect of the job, from detailed task lists that detail the method and sequence of work with all the required forms that need to be completed. On top of this, the events also contain the location pinpoints, vehicles, plant and a bill of quantities for materials to be used. Once they’re added to a team or individuals’ calendar, all the information appears on the app for field operatives to sync and action.

Another key element for scheduling is flexibility to change to accommodate unexpected events. Problems that could have resulted in production bottlenecks can be managed, resources reallocated and live changes to workflows can be communicated directly to on-site teams. Take control with Re-flow Scheduling

Rules of the tools

There are hundreds of different topics for a toolbox talk, from reinforcing safety basics, to highlighting high risk scenarios and changes to the existing jobsite since the last time operatives were present. If an incident or near miss has just occurred, having a pre-prepared toolbox talk that can be delivered and signed off using the Re-flow app is great way to keep everyone safe and aware of the complex changing scenarios on site.

Over 2020, we had a huge range of topics added as toolbox talks and safety briefings. In spite of the pandemic, it was interesting to see that the top talk at one of our major construction clients was still the old favourite of slips, trips and falls. Manage all your SHE data with Re-flow

“I can’t believe you haven’t finished the thing I forgot to tell you to start” Said no Re-flow customers, ever.

Adding your projects to a job management system like Re-flow gives you two significant strategic advantages over competitors who like things done ‘the old way’. Firstly, when you’ve input your project into the Re-flow job management system once, you can save it all as presets, so the next time you have that job again, you can add all the task, equipment and resources with a single click, saving hours of admin and allowing fast and effective resource planning. Then, because everything in Re-flow’s job management system is linked together, it means inputs, updates and outcomes are instantly linked and can be automated through a process set up to support each clients’ ways of working.

Last time we checked on our system, we had almost 2,800 new jobs being created every week, showing a steady and sustained increase every month for the first part of 2021. See how you can manage your jobs and task with Re-flow

Get your head in the clouds- Report on-site weather conditions with our cloud software

With Re-flow, you can create a form and report for any data you want to collect. One of our construction clients needed to keep track of site conditions for their daily returns to give more context and insights into how the operations played out over each month.

Historical data of site conditions can be a really useful tool for planning long-term and large projects.

While using information from previous work cannot forecast something as changeable as the UK weather, it can help create informed decisions about scheduling and safety.

If site conditions are not optimal for a number of days, having this information reported back to the project planners and managers can inform real-time decision making to divert activities until the site conditions have cleared up and can provide a more productive use of time. Report on any of your data with Re-flow

Signed, sealed, delivered

Through Re-flow software, you can send important forms to other members of the team, straight to their smartphones and they can complete the necessary information, draw their signature and send them right back.

Using this smooth process, not only keeps everything safe and secure, but it means there’s no need to print anything and store it in a filing cabinet. With the importance of audit trails, using a Re-flow form means you can preserve the authenticity of your documents, and have a full time, date and location stamped record of when and where that signature was submitted. Looking at our 2021 data, we now have a signature being submitted via the app every 5 seconds! See all of Re-flow's audit and compliance features.

Safety rules are your best tools

With an easy to use incident reporting system, Re-flow users are making a big difference the efficiency of their operations and more importantly, the safety and wellbeing of their overall team. Having an app-based system in place makes reporting issues to the right people immediate and enables them to take preventative or corrective actions.

Looking at the incident reports this year for one of our large Traffic Management clients, we can see a number of near misses and it’s the reporting of these seemingly minor issues that can flag a bigger problem, giving them the opportunity to change things before a serious accident happens.

This also gives operatives the tools to take responsibility for managing their own safety. Without a log system, management has no reports or data to indicate problems, so encouraging proactivity from operatives means companies aren’t simply waiting around for accidents to happen before they take action. Own your health and safety with Re-flow.