Let’s Reduce the Amount of Paperwork on Your Build Site

Going paperless not only saves you time and money, but it also improves your environmental creds. All that being said, it’s a pretty big transformation, which means it can take a bit of time to set up and get used to.

With that in mind, let's crack into some digital tools that are here to help and offer three quick wins to get you started:

Which paperless tools are built for the construction industry?

These days there are a variety of software tools that have been designed specifically for the construction industry (and related sectors). Each tool eliminates some aspect of paperwork, in addition to offering other features such as automated data entry or analytics.

Combined, they enable business leaders as well as on-site workers to think less about numbers and forms, and more about doing their job.
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Examples of common construction industry paperless tools include:

• Health and safety management software
• Digital visitor management
• MSDS management
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• Digital accounting software, i.e. Xero
• Resource management and timesheet recording
• Construction management/project management.

A quick Google search for any one of these will give you quite a few different options to investigate.

• Learn more: “How will going paperless impact your business?”
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Three way's to reduce paperwork on-site or in the office:

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1. Do your homework before investing in software

They say you can’t break the rules unless you know them first. This applies to change - it’s vital that before making even a small investment in change (i.e. upgrading to a new piece of software), that you know what you use, how you use it and what it’s used for.
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That means going over your five Ws and H:

• What are the current processes or tools in use by your team?
• When do you use these?
• Why do you use them?
• Where does the paperwork come from, and where does it go?
• Who is involved at each step?
• How are these processes achieved? What’s the workflow?
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Build a transformation roadmap:

In digital transformation - which this is - self-reflecting on the above questions generates what’s called your ‘as-is’ state. It’s what your business does now. 

When you can clearly articulate the five Ws and H of your business, you can look to the next phase - figuring out your ‘desired’ state. It’s where you want to go, what you wish was better.

If you know where you are and where to go, all you need to do is join those dots and plot them out on a calendar. That’s called a transformation roadmap, and while you’ll probably never follow it exactly, it should guide you on what to do, and when to do it.
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More questions to consider: 

• What is your objective? Does it align with the objective/purpose/mission of your business as a whole?
• What do you want new software to do?
• Are you going wholly paperless, or just a little bit?
• Do you want to digitise one process, but not another?
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2. Start small, then build-up

Change takes time. Not only that, it’s complex. Even for a very small business, digital transformation (in this case going paperless) can quickly become an expensive waste of time if you get it wrong.

Sometimes, you won’t know what process you’re about to break until you’ve accidentally broken it. Even the biggest companies in the world with the largest budgets and best expertise get this wrong.
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So what do they do to avoid it?

They start small. Don’t invest in everything all at once. Pick one process and implement some changes. Test them, see if they work well and your team enjoys them, gather feedback, optimise, then move on to the next process.

Don’t try to change everything at once or it’ll be difficult to know what broke, when, why, and how to fix it again.

• Learn more: “How to encourage your team to use a new H&S tool”
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3. Try to eliminate printing as much as possible

This is a small step you can do in the interim to kickstart your paperless transformation.

Instead of printing every single form, stop and ask: does this need to be printed? Could it be written, delivered, signed and stored electronically instead? There are lots of very small ways you can use an electronic tool to replace printed paperwork that will start you off in the right direction.
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Paperless quick wins:

• Email documents instead of printing them to be hand-delivered.
• If you need a signature, look for digital signature solutions like DocuSign.
• For marketing, instead of using mail drops, flyers and community notices, look into digital advertising such as through social media or Google.
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Paperless health and safety, we’re here for you!

Site App Pro is one of New Zealand’s favourite health and safety management tools. It was built by Kiwis for Kiwis, meaning we’ve designed it specifically for the local regulatory environment.

With Site App Pro, we’ve packed together H&S forms, digital visitor management, MSDS management, and contractor and equipment management into one tool, accessible via desktop and mobile.

Want to see it in action? A live demo takes only 12 minutes. Book yours now!