Alpha Tracker - Tips & Tricks - Webinar #19

Dan 

Welcome to Alpha Tracker's Wednesday webinar. Now that is a lot easier to say than our previous webinar series, which I won't try and say again, because I'll get that wrong. For those of you that don't know me, my name's Dan. I'm joined by Kim, who I'm sure all of you do know. And we've also got Jack with us as well. Jack, can you see and hear us okay?

Jack 

Yes, all good, loud and good.

Dan 

Great stuff. So Jack's going to be in charge of questions for us today. So just a few housekeeping rules before we get started. We're going to keep this webinar to strictly 30 minutes. So we're not going to run over that. 

Kim 

We'll try not to. 

Dan 

We'll try not to. They usually last between 20 and 30 minutes, something like that, depending on how many questions. Speaking of questions, if you could just drop a message in the Q&A window, so you should all have that there, just to let us know. You can see and hear us. That would be great.

Hopefully it's all okay. Let's just see if we've got any coming through. I haven't seen any yet. If someone could just drop a message into the Q&A, that would be brilliant, just to make sure you can hear us. Great, thanks Serena. Brilliant. So what we're covering today, Kim, it is risk assessments now. Risk assessments. So over to you. 

Kim 

Well, okay. So we're talking about risk assessments and we've got a number of standard apps that we're going to cover. So we've got a detailed version, a summarised version, and then we've got a customisable one as well. And we're going to talk about producing risk assessments from other info fields and from forms. So those are all the different types we're going to cover.  

Dan 

Lovely. Sounds good, sounds good! 

Kim 

Okay. So the main thing about these risk assessments is the idea of saving, storing the data against projects. That's what you want to do with the data that you've got for your risk assessment. And just to say it's possible to set up templates as well.

So if you want to produce documents from that data, you can do. You would generate, you'd run that from the generate document button, or perhaps from auto generate them from a milestone conviction.

Dan 

Yeah, that's really nice.

Kim 

And then that resulting Word document PDF, they are stored against the project. So whichever method you use, you can still do that. So let's start looking at the standard risk assessment apps we've got. So these are standard, so they're kind of fixed in terms of content. We've got a detailed version, which is free, a summarized version, which is also free. And then we've got a version of the summarized one where you can customize the text. Okay, so those are the different types that we've got.

And let's consider the first one, which is the detailed one. This is what you would see in MDS. So it's an MDS app, this onsite risk assessment app. 

Dan 

So does that sit next to Tracker Mobile then Kim? Is that right?

Kim 

 It would, yeah.

Dan 

 Okay, great. 

Kim 

Exactly. In the same place as your Tracker Mobile. So you'd open it up, you'd see a screen like the one on the left and you'd be selecting your project number, putting in who you are, perhaps recording assistant surveyors and then running through that blue list of the risks.

With these you can just tap on the first one and then just next page through to cover them all. So when you tap on the blue link, it opens the screen like you've got on the right hand side and there you are scoring the risk. So it's already got its severity and you are marking its likelihood and that gives you a score. So here it's five times three, it gives us 15 and because that's over a certain threshold, a control measure is displayed. So these are all fixed. So that severity is fixed, the control measure is fixed. You can then say what action you complete. So what action are you going to do and what have you done to to fit in with that control measure and then the residual risk you can also mark. So the severity and then what's the risk after that you've applied that control measure. 

Dan 

Great.

Kim 

 Okay and if that's below the threshold you can continue. If unfortunately it's still above you're getting red text saying job cannot continue. 

Dan 

Right, OK, so you've got to make sure that you're taking all the appropriate actions before you can move to the next. 

Kim 

Yes, yeah. It's informing you not to continue with the job. So you're just running through each of those. So for each of them, it's the next page through, you score the likelihood, put in your action, and then score the likelihood after that action. Just to say at the bottom, so when you finish them all, there are three additional hazard sections as well.

So if there's something not covered, you've got space to put those in. And on the latest version, we do have mask and ladder check questions as well, and a signature box. So you sign it off.

Dan 

Oh, great. Excellent. Excellent. 

Kim 

So that's how you'd be capturing the data. And that's using an MDS app. 

Dan 

So that would be on your mobile or your tablet, that sort of thing when you're on site.

Kim 

Exactly. And you synchronise and you send it into your project or job. You can then see that data in here.

So we've got screens like this where you would be seeing that data for this type of risk assessment. So your general information up here and then you've got a section for each of those risks and it'll be displaying the information like so. 

Dan 

Great. Excellent. And you mentioned at the beginning, Kim, you can generate documents from these. Is that right? 

Kim 

You can, absolutely. So if you've got a template set up, you'd be accessing it from this Word button, W button over here, and selecting a template, something like Site Risk Assessment, and clicking to generate your document.

Dan 

Easy as that.

Kim 

Yeah, lovely. Okay, so obviously we'd have to be setting up that template for you. You'd be giving us an example of what you want it to look like. We'd code it up, put it in, same as normal, and then you could generate your documents. Okay, that's the detailed version. There is another free standard version, which is the summarized version. It captures the data on screens like this. So it's quite different. You're still in MDS. It's still an MDS app. Okay, yeah. It's much more compact, summarized.

You're selecting your job, so what project am I working on, and then you're simply looking at a list of possible risks and saying whether they apply or not. You've got a tick for yes, a cross for no, and a circle for not applicable. So for each of those you answer, if you can see on the screen on the right, if you tick the box, so the risk applies, the control measure is then displayed, so that's for you to note, take action, or as applicable.

Dan 

Okay, yeah.

Kim 

So nice and easy. It's really, really quick to use this one because it's just tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, you know, tick, tick, tick, cross, whatever, keep going. At the bottom, you've got a section for any other risks, and that just gives you a text box to write in, so you can write in any other details as well, and all the surveyor and the details are at the bottom of the screen on this one. In addition, the latest version does have a visitor log box and signature box. 

Dan 

Sounds good. Am I right in saying, Kim, this is a fixed one as well, similar to the detailed ones? 

Kim 

It is. Exactly, it's fixed. The risks are fixed, the control measures are fixed, everything about it is fixed.

Dan 

Yeah, okay. 

Kim 

This one, when you synchronise, the data goes into the project again, and you can see the data by looking at this screen. So it shows on screens like this, you can see the risk, you can see the answer that was given, and any of the information that was recorded. Nice and simple, actually. And as we said, obviously, you can still produce another document of this risk assessment. Okay, if we move on to the next one, the next one is actually the customisable one. This is essentially exactly the same as the summarised risk assessment, but you can control the text. So if you're out doing your risk assessments, and you want specific questions, but you want a nice easy method of answering those, you can use this version, and you say what the question is, you say what the risk is, and you also say what the control measure is.

Dan 

Oh, nice.

Kim 

So it's, in all other respects, it remains the same as the summarised version, you just control the text. This one, I'm afraid, isn't afraid. There is a small charge for that just to cover the costs of setting up the questions and the answers. 

Dan 

And how do we go about that? Then Kim, would they just email in and say, here's a list of questions. I'm interested in the customizable one and we can figure that. Or do we need any other details?

Kim 

Thats about it actually, yeah. We just need to have the list of risk and the control measures, that's it. 

Dan 

Fair enough. 

Kim 

That's it. And we can do that. That's fine. OK, so moving on, we've got some other types. 

Dan 

We do. We do. Before we jump into those, Jack, have we got any questions at all, just to see if we've got any floating around? 

Jack 

There's one question from Dave and he's wondering if the site risk assessment document that you mentioned earlier, can that be output in the asbestos survey report at the end? 

Kim 

The actual document? Yeah, of course you could. Yeah. Yeah. So you could either be generating it then or you could be, could you be pulling the PDF in? I'm sure there must be a way to do that. Yeah. 

Dan 

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and you can get that document in there. Yeah. 

Jack 

Okay, that's it, thank you.

Kim 

 Excellent, okay.

So that's our apps that we have, our standard apps if you like. But if you are not capturing the data out on site, but your risk assessment is more of a desktop study, so you want to be filling in questions at your desk, answering questions at your desk, you could be using the other info fields that we have. So on the notes other info tab on a project, there's another info button and we can set up a range of fields under there, which you could be using for risk assessments. Typically you might say, fill in all these questions, then produce your document and take it out on site. 

Dan 

Okay, yeah.

Kim 

Yeah, so you could be taking it outside, either completing it or just referring to it. If you were making changes to it out on site, you might then want to send it back into the project. So you've got the latest version. 

Dan 

Yep. 

Kim 

Which of course you could use Tracker Filer for as well to get it in there nice and quickly and easily. 

Dan 

I'm right in saying with this other info method, Kim, that can be set up all by yourselves in Alpha Tracker. You don't need us to set that up. You can just do that with your other info fields. 

Kim 

You can do that yourselves, or we're quite happy to do it too. So again, under this Notes Other Info tab, you've got the Other Info button, and you've probably got lots of fields set up under there already for various things, but you could have a category in here that's for your risks. So you can have a complete set of questions of points for ones that you want to answer, just nice and easily, all put together. There might be yes-no questions like these, there might be text boxes, or we might have your own drop-down values in there, lots of different fields that you could have. Okay, so that could be another way of capturing risk assessment data, and you could of course still produce a document off it.

And we have to say it is possible to have an app to capture that information. 

Dan 

That was going to be my next question, actually.

Kim 

You could have an MDS app if you wanted to capture the information out on site, and then when you send it in, it creates Other Info fields for you.

Dan 

Oh, okay. 

Kim 

Yeah, so it still goes in the same way. 

Dan 

Yeah, so I suppose that would be good if you wanted to ask a bit more detail in a bespoke way rather than the summarised, customisable one where you just change the questions and it's yes, no, this one you can put a bit more detail to it. 

Kim 

Okay, great. A bit more customized, isn't it?

Dan 

Yeah, absolutely.

Kim 

Right, okay.

So if we go on to the last method we've got here, and this is using forms. So forms, it's a feature that you can use to design and create your own risk assessment. It's very flexible, you've got various styles of questions, you're still storing the data against the project, and you've got two different ways to fill in that data. You could be filling it in as a desktop study, or you could be using the Alpha Tracker mobile app to collect the data. 

Dan 

Ah, okay, so that's different to using MDS for data collection. Yeah. Okay. 

Kim 

Yeah, that's the main difference here. So if we do that, you can still see the information on your project, it's stored in your project, but you'd be going to the forms area, so it's this button down here.

Against my project here, I think I've got a basic risk assessment partly filled in, you could see the questionnaire, that'll show you the questions that have already been set up, but you're in complete control of designing this, so you're just deciding what sections there are, what the questions are, how they score, everything about it, and you can still have a template set up against these. It's particularly useful if you want to be controlling it, you want to be designing your own documents, and you want to be using the Alpha Tracker Mobile app.

Dan 

Yeah, absolutely. And with the forms as well you can obviously set those up yourselves but I think you can also capture photos as well can't you next to each question and stuff like that so yeah there's there's quite a lot of detail you can do if you do go down the forms method so yeah they're really cool if you haven't checked those out check them out we did do a webinar on this last year so to check out any previous webinars go to alpha-tracker.co.uk/webinars and we've got a range of webinars covering all sorts of topics but yes the forms one is particularly good I don't know if I featured in that one or not but we will see if you jump onto that you can you can check that out and there's some there's some cool stuff to see about the forms so I think we've got a couple of questions aren't we Jack come through

Jack 

Yeah, we've got a couple. An anonymous person, not sure who that is, has asked if they can do risk assessments at site level or only at project level. 

Kim 

Interesting. They are at the project level.

Dan 

They are.

Kim 

They're all linked to the project. 

Dan 

Yeah. Yeah, so it's typically you do it per project, per job, when you go out and do it. 

Jack 

I could see how site level could be handy, so we could look at doing, whoever the anonymous attendee is, if they want to get in contact with us, just give us a call or drop us an email, we can certainly speak to you about that after the webinar. 

Dan 

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Thanks, Jack. Any other ones through, Jack?

Jack 

Hayden has just asked, would there be a way to use either of these via the site QR code or a site induction questionnaire? 

Dan 

Oh, that's a good question. So the site QR code one, that probably relates to the anonymous question about having a risk assessment at a site level I'd have thought.

Not too sure about the other one. Any thoughts, Kim? 

Kim 

I don't think they're linked to QR codes, yes, aren't they, but I mean, you could use the forms for some sort of induction questionnaire. Absolutely, yeah.

I'd say refer to the forms webinar and there'll be lots more information on forms there. 

Dan 

Yeah, great stuff. Thanks for the question, Hayden? 

Jack 

That's it. Lee, I can see you sent a question in, but it's got quite a bit of info on it, so I'll take that away.

We'll come back to you after the webinar on that one, to answer all the questions you just posted. 

Dan 

Okay. No, that sounds good. Lovely stuff. Great. So I think that probably covers all of the risk assessments we wanted to today.

So just for a quick recap, we've got a number of different risk assessments in Alpha Tracker. We've got the detailed version. We've got the summarized version, which is nice and easy, just a yes, no, not applicable. And we've also got the customizable summarized one. So this is where you customize the text of the questions and your control measures. And you can choose how many questions you've got as well. So that's really flexible. We've got the other info methods. That's a bit hard to say. Other info method, which is something you can set up yourselves using your other info templates. We can also help you set that up as well. And that'll be typically if you filling stuff in on the desktop side of things. So in Alpha Tracker, and then you could produce a document, print that off and take it on site with you. Or you could have it as just an electronic document that you can view on your device when you're out on site as well. And you can also send that back into Tracker Filer as well. I think you mentioned that, didn't you Kim? So you can get that story against that particular project. And then finally, the forms stuff. So this is the one we just talked about. You can set up really detailed forms for your risk assessments, all really simple, completely up to you. Fully flexible, and you can capture a lot of information there, such as photos, notes, I think it also captures your location as well. So you can see where that particular question was answered to make sure that it was answered on site if you did need that functionality. Yeah. 

Kim 

One thing to add is that although we have all these different types of risk assessments, you can have multiple types set up on your Alpha Tracker. So as I was showing you the different screens, you can have those different types set up on your Alpha Tracker.

You needn't be restricted to just one type, so you could be using, for example, the detailed version for your asbestos surveys, but you might have a customized summarized version for, say, your air projects or something like that. 

Dan 

That's nice, isn't it? So you can mix and match.

Dan 

Lovely, great stuff. Just before we wrap up, Jack, we'll just check again, have we got any other questions or are we all okay? 

Jack 

Yeah, there's one more to answer, just another anonymous one that just says can we make references to the risk assessment data within asbestos survey reports? Then the answer to that would be yes, because it's done at the project level, we'd be able to pull the data out and put it in the asbestos survey reports if necessary.

So again, whoever the anonymous person is, get in contact with us and then we can help get that set up for you. 

Dan 

Great stuff. Fantastic. Brilliant. Well, I think that wraps it up for us.

So thank you all very much for joining. This is actually the last webinar of this series, but we will be releasing some dates for our next block of webinars. So keep an eye out for those. If you do have any questions in the meantime, feel free to contact us. Drop us a message. We're more than happy to help. If you've got any ideas for our next set of webinars, send them through. That would be nice. We always look forward to having your input on those. And if you want to watch some previous ones, go to our website, alpha-tracker.co.uk/webinars, and you can check out all of our previous ones. And this one should be available soon as well, if you wanted to share this with any of your colleagues, things like that. So that's it from us. A big thank you for joining and see you on the next one. See you.