More and more construction firms are investing in technology tools to ensure a safe environment for employees and partners. Skanska, the West Coast’s largest general contractor, is an industry leader in successful integration of technology to improve safety on its jobsites in California.

Most recently, Skanska developed an electronic report using the iAuditor app to enhance jobsite safety and reinforce accountability and safety practices. The app is used by executives to perform site safety inspections on jobsites such as Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s San Carlos Center, Regional Medical Center in San Jose and a project for a large Bay Area biopharma client. Skanska executives perform hundreds of safety-focused site visits each year.

With little training, executives are able to fill out safety reports on their Apple and Android mobile devices and tablets and export them as clean PDFs through email.

Favorite features of Skanska’s new system include the ability to take photos of a deficiency and tag it to the report, photo annotation, time-stamped reports, GPS locator, cloud storage and automatic scoring.

Previously, these reports were cumbersome Excel spreadsheets. Now, the paperless auditing tool has streamlined the safety reporting process to share information quickly, building a better database and safety culture. Skanska is already seeing the benefits of integrating this technology: improved work quality, efficiency and an overall improvement in safety performance that comes from combining safe behaviors with a culture of accountability.