The Smart Punch List System for your Construction Projects

January 27, 2022
Pradeep K
- Construction Safety

If you are managing a large-scale infrastructure or transportation project – like the Rail, Road, Tunnel and Causeways or even a construction project – you may often use a Punch List to track gaps, areas of improvement and issues that require immediate attention. Also known as Snag List or a Deficiency List, Punch List is one of the many important documents to ensure proper closure and handover of the project. Quite often, your payments are subject to the corrections and fixes done on the Punch List, making it one of the important and priority checklists to submit with your Project Closure report.

But the one invaluable benefit that a punch list brings to your table is that it helps you to keep your project from exceeding the allocated budgets, and if done right, also helps you to save costs by avoiding unexpected deviations and shortfalls.

Safetymint provides 2 configurable modules that you can adapt to implement a smart punch list system:
1) The Observations module – where every stakeholder can proactively report issues or non-conformances at the work site with supporting images and corrective action plans.
2) The Audits module where you can create your own Punch List Inspection Sheet and schedule periodic rounds to ensure compliance to standards and conformance to standards and expected deliverable.

Implementing a good Punch List system – that works for you, on-the-go.

Traditionally, a Punch List is prepared by the contractor when a construction project is considered nearly finished. While the intent is to review and point out gaps and issues that needs fixing, the Punch List also helps in assessing the quality of construction or installation, and compliance to standards and specifications. Safetymint helps you implement a system right from the start and bring in a kaizen-based approach to ensure continuous improvement.

Using Safetymint’s Safety Observation module, one can visit the site and do a walk-through… capturing images of the issues and flagging them as minor, serious or critical. These observations are then notified to the respective project in-charge who can then recommend corrective actions and assign them to key responsible users with a due-date. Automated email notifications and in-app notifications on the mobile help timely reporting of gaps and issues to the key stakeholders and prompt actions to address them.

An Issue Tracker – to ensure verification and closure of Punch List items

All the recommended corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) are collated in the Actions module of Safetymint. These Actions can now be tracked till completion and closure giving the project owners a clear visibility of the status and progress from time-to-time. An automated Leading and Lagging indicator dashboard, as well as a report of Action Ageing analysis gives project owners and managers intelligent insights into the performance of their team. This also helps them track and narrow down on critical issues that require priority attention.

Automating your Punch List inspections with Safetymint’s Audits module

For Contractors who live up to standards and have benchmarked their quality, Safetymint provides the option to pre-configure a Punch List Inspection sheet. This allows you to create a list of statements that define the expected benchmark, and during audits capture key findings and rate them. This also allows you to create Rolling Punch Lists for each stage of the project from start to finish.

Just like safety walks, you can also schedule punch walks to perform a review against this inspection sheet and flag any statements that are non-compliant and needs improvement, and also recommend corrective actions against each. Creating a Punch List inspection sheet also helps align your team members to the desired quality standard and set their expectations to your committed and aspirational goals. And much like having a target of zero-incidents at your work site, it is also important to have a zero-punch list – meaning eliminate all issues irrespective of minor or major.

Safetymint is a very handy tool for Project Owners, Supervisors, Installation, Testing and Commissioning (ITC) Managers, Contractors as well as Construction Site Managers. The five key advantages of using Safetymint for your punch list management are as follows …

Cloud-based: No investment in any IT infrastructure needed
Mobile-enabled: Do it on-the-go, right from capture to closure
Streamlined: Early detection, timely resolution, and faster completion
Actions-Tracker: Track the recommended actions with verification and closure steps
Configurable Workflows: Create reviewers and approvers for periodic inspections

If you are looking for a smart Punch List system, try out Safetymint with a free trial account. What’s more … it doubles up as a digitized safety management platform with its Incidents, Permit-to-Work, Safety Calendar (coming soon) and Safety Library as well.