The Challenge
Site safety reports were written on paper, reached the safety director days after the incident, and many near-misses were never reported at all. The company could not spot risk patterns or act preventively.
The Solution
Avantit built a Power App designed for site use — with gloves, on rugged tablets. Supervisors log incidents with geotagged photos and a severity rating; Power Automate notifies the safety director instantly and escalates serious incidents automatically, while Power BI dashboards show trends and risk zones.
📋 Overview
A national construction company operating in Portugal and Angola, running 12 active sites simultaneously with more than 800 workers, across residential, commercial and public works projects.
🎯 The Challenge
Business context Site safety management had serious gaps:
- Incident reports on paper, filled in by hand at the end of a shift
- Forms reaching the safety office 2 to 5 days after the event
- Very low near-miss reporting — workers avoided the paperwork
- No way to identify risk patterns across sites
- External audits required manual compilation of scattered records
Technical requirements
- Mobile-first: an app usable with gloves, on water- and dust-resistant tablets.
- Offline: many sites have no consistent network coverage.
- Geotagged photos: photographic evidence with automatic GPS coordinates.
- Automatic escalation: serious incidents must reach the safety director within minutes.
- Analytics: dashboards with trends by site, risk type and subcontractor.
💡 The Solution
Strategic approach A Power Apps canvas application built for site conditions, with simplicity as the absolute priority — three taps to log an incident. It works offline and synchronises automatically once the device is back on a network.
Technical implementation
- Power Apps canvas (mobile): large buttons, a simplified form with quick-select fields for incident type, severity and site zone, and an integrated camera with automatic geotagging.
- Offline mode: data stored locally and synchronised as soon as a connection is available.
- Power Automate: escalation by severity — serious incidents notify the safety director through Teams and SMS in under 2 minutes; medium incidents generate tasks for the local safety officer.
- SharePoint document library: central archive of reports with statutory retention.
- Power BI dashboard: an incident heat map by site, trends over time, comparison between subcontractors and a safety scorecard per project.
Timeline
- Phase 1 (process analysis and UX): 2 weeks
- Phase 2 (app development): 4 weeks
- Phase 3 (single-site pilot): 3 weeks
- Phase 4 (rollout and training): 3 weeks
📈 The Results
Success metrics
- 🦺 Reporting: near-miss reporting doubled — ease of use removed the bureaucratic barrier.
- ⚡ Response time: serious incidents reach the safety director in under 2 minutes.
- 📱 Adoption: 95% of supervisors used the app daily within a month of deployment.
- 📊 Prevention: three recurring risk patterns identified, leading to corrective action before an accident occurred.
Business impact The solution changed the company’s safety culture. Reporting a near-miss stopped being paperwork and became a quick, simple act. Being able to analyse safety data across sites enabled preventive action that reduced reportable accidents.
🛠️ Technology Stack
- Power Apps canvas: mobile app with offline mode.
- Power Automate: automatic escalation and notification.
- SharePoint Online: central document archive.
- Power BI: safety analytics and risk dashboards.
💬 Client Testimonial
“The supervisors loved it — pull out the tablet, take the photo, pick the type, save. Two minutes. It used to be half an hour of paperwork. And I see everything on the dashboard before the shift is even over.”
Safety Director National Construction Company
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