By Rob McKinney

Does your company do or oversee excavation work? How does your company document excavation safety items? How does your company preplan excavation operations and safety? Unfortunately many excavation companies do not preplan or document their work very well. What will they do if and when they have an excavation safety issue? What will they show the OSHA compliance officer when asked how they document their daily excavation inspections?

Some companies have made the transition from paper based pre-planning and inspection documentation. They are using tablets and apps to documents their safety efforts. It is easy enough to create a electronic checklist to document a safety inspection.

BUT how can you provide that you have pre-planned an excavation in a safe manner? Do these companies have a sketch or a BIM model of their plans?

If you have not figured out how to pre-plan excavations and document safety inspections then check out the online excavation planning tools from www.trenchsafety.com on your tablet today. This free online safety app allows users to enter the dimensions of a proposed excavation or trench and the app will calculate the slope details and show you a diagram of how the excavation should look she completed. The online app will even let you email a PDF snapshot of the completed diagram to your sell or a client.

To learn more about this online excavation tool take a look at:

The website also has a two great checklist you can download and use for you daily inspections.

http://trenchsafety.com/Usefulinfo/pdf/CP_Checklist_SPANISH_Jan2013.pdf 

Visit Rob's blog, www.conappguru.wordpress.com, for more reviews on construction apps.