When it comes to periodic safety inspections of general lifting equipment, components or accessories to lifting equipment such as slings, hooks, chains, ropes, shackles, eyebolt and other lifting equipment, it’s important to follow the relevant Australian Standards and manufacturer recommendations including inspections. Inspections for an organisation may range from more high value assets like Cranes, Hoists, Monorails and EWPS to lower value but high-volume general lifting equipment.
Most of the Australian and international standards that deal with inspections of lifting equipment, regardless of the inspection type (e.g. visual, proof load, periodic, major, etc.) follow the same principles:
- The first step is to identify the asset.
- The second step is to inspect for any sign of damage or deformation.
- The next step is to provide the owner of the lifting equipment a report with all the assets, inspections results and recommendations.
- The last step of the process is to schedule the next inspection as per the relevant interval required by the standard or manufacturer (e.g. monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.).
All the steps above need to be documented comprehensively and available easily to all stakeholders.
Traditionally, it can be difficult to manage the process when using a pen and paper. The excessive paperwork and guesswork of inspection standards when distinguishing between products reduces the accuracy and safety.
Pervidi paperless solutions can easily automate the steps above by using mobile devices and smart inspection application. Pervidi allows the inspector to have the correct electronic checklists for all the relevant standards: AS 1353, AS 1418, AS 2317, AA 2550, AS 3775 AS 3776 AS 3850 AS 4991 and many more. Users of Pervidi paperless solution can create their own electronic checklists or upload specific manufacturer instructions.
With any construction site, the lifting equipment can be registered within the inspection solution as assets, meaning that all inspection data for that particular equipment is categorised within the inspection solution. This can be done by manual ID recording, scanning barcodes/RFID or Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) tag technology. When inspecting for defects this could be for example a safety check of the chain or wire for wear and tear. In such an inspection, the operator could use the device camera to record the physical condition of the asset, comparing this with the previous inspection data which is available on the mobile device. Particular areas of new wear could be highlighted on the image itself using annotations, or if not required, be noted in the report itself.
The standardised response checklist design would give the inspector greater speed in completing the check, whilst logic would require all steps to be completed before the check can be considered finalised. This means that the hook would be checked against previous data, with certain types of checks also being required to ensure the correct level of detail.
Once inspection is completed on the mobile device (offline or online) it can be sent automatically to the client with images and recommendations.
The Pervidi solution can analyse the findings and report on trends, based on the interval of the periodic inspection Pervidi can schedule the next inspection and send the reminders to the appropriate stakeholders.
With all the inspection data passing through one system, alongside the possibility to integrate it with business intelligence or ERP solutions, it’s no wonder why so many organisations within the construction industry are starting to realise the power of digital.
Are you still using paper checklists for inspecting your lifting equipment? Given all the benefits above, and given that there are few good reasons not to embrace the digital era, why wait to go paperless with your lifting inspections.
For more information please visit: https://pervidi.com.au/solutions/lifting-inspection/