Health and safety from the van

A second note, with a different audience

When technicians complete a job, they're asked for two separate notes. Work carried out is for the customer, and is emailed to them. Health and safety notes (with the prompt Hazards, isolations, permits) is for your own firm. The customer never sees it.

The software keeps the two apart, so it doesn't depend on who's typing. They're different fields, they go to different places, and the health and safety note never reaches the person who raised the job. Your technicians can be frank about the state of a property without worrying that the building's owner will read it.

The note is always optional. Leaving it empty doesn't hold anything up, and most jobs won't need one.

What to put in it

Write what the next person on site needs to know, and what your firm would want on record if someone asked about it six months later. The prompt on the screen sums it up: hazards, isolations, permits. For example: asbestos in the ceiling space, the main you isolated and where the valve is, a dog on the property, an open penetration you taped and coned off, or an unlabelled switchboard.

Anything about the work itself goes in Work carried out, which is the note the customer reads. See updating a job from the van.

Where the note goes

When a job is completed with a health and safety note, WorkOrders emails the note to your company's health and safety address straight away. Nobody has to wait until the technician is back at the yard, or until someone opens the job.

If you haven't set that address, no email is sent. It's the Health & safety email field under Settings → Your company. If it's blank, the note is still saved on the job, but nobody is emailed. WorkOrders won't guess who else should get it. If health and safety notes matter to your firm, fill that field in first.

How it surfaces in the office

On the job page in the office, the note shows as a highlighted warning box rather than ordinary text, so it's hard to miss. In the app, it's in the Notes card with the completion note. The job's header also shows a small red first-aid mark, so the next technician sent to that address can see there's a note to read before they arrive.

Sign-off: somebody in the office has read it

A completed job sits in the Awaiting sign-off list on the office dashboard until an administrator opens it, reads the note and presses Sign off. That records who read it and when, and takes the job off the list.

Three things to know before you rely on it:

• Only administrators can sign off, and not from the app. The idea is that someone other than the technician who wrote the note has read it, so it can't be cleared from the van.
• It isn't a status. A signed-off job is still completed. It stays on the board, in the export and in any report that counts completed work. The sign-off is recorded alongside the job's status.
• It can be undone. Pressing Revoke next to the sign-off puts the job back on the list. The original sign-off stays in the timeline, with the revoke recorded next to it, so you can always see who signed it off and who undid that.

Reopening or deleting a completed job clears its sign-off, because the work has changed. The timeline entries stay either way.

Jobs with no note

Every completed job goes on the sign-off list, not only the ones with a note. If there's no note, the sign-off screen says so. That makes the list a review of all completed work, with any hazard notes shown in it, rather than a list of hazards. In a busy week, most of what an administrator signs off won't have anything concerning in it, and it's easy to start clicking through without reading. Keep that in mind when you decide how your firm will use it.