Digital defect recording for quality assurance in fire protection
How Swiss Safety Center AG achieves time savings of up to 50% by using PlanRadar
Swiss Safety Center AG is a member of the SVTI group and is part of a centre of excellence for technical safety and risk management. They offer services, products and qualifications in the safety and quality sector. The company has 4 sites in Switzerland, a team of more than 150 employees, 10,000 customers and yearly sales of CHF 30m.
Swiss Safety Center also offers more than 300 practical and specialist training sessions and courses per year. It issues around 2,000 certifications annually. The team manages buildings during planning and construction phases in addition to renovations and retrofitting. The company specialises in complex buildings such as high-rise buildings, care homes, hotels and retail stores.
The challenge: managing a large volume of defects in a short period of time
Florian Zimmermann is deputy manager of the fire safety consultancy at Swiss Safety Center AG. Together with his team, he is responsible for fire safety planning and quality assurance for fire protection on site. The goal is to find all faults on the construction site in order to be able to hand over a safe and fault-free building to the customer, in terms of fire protection and prevention.
Swiss Safety Center employees are often faced with large volumes of defects that need to be dealt with quickly. It is therefore extremely important for teams to work in a structured way to ensure that they can keep track of projects, to prevent errors and guarantee project quality.
The solution: digital recordings of defects with PlanRadar
Swiss Safety Center AG has used PlanRadar for the quality control of fire safety measures since 2018. The company first tested the platform on one project. Project workers were immediately enthusiastic about the excellent structure of the platform, which helped them stay up to date with projects.
Workers record defects immediately on site by adding tags and keywords in the app, adding the final touches in the office. PlanRadar makes it possible to work quickly and efficiently. Swiss Safety Center AG also benefits from seamless documentation so that it is well prepared for any client issues that occur. “With PlanRadar, we no longer need to worry about being overwhelmed by the number of defects to be recorded. We can work through defects together in a structured way and as a team on the building site,” said Florian Zimmermann. Swiss Safety Center AG has completed around 72 projects with PlanRadar so far.
Another important benefit for using the software for fire safety planning and inspections is the opportunity to improve collaboration in teams. The cloud-based solution means different team members can work on a project at the same time. Functions such as the BIM viewer are very popular and PlanRadar can also contribute to making communication in teams more efficient.
Training users was very intuitive. Training sessions were held as part of tests for the initial projects and no other support was required. The web-based software was successfully integrated into the existing IT infrastructure because the company did not need to buy any additional hardware. “PlanRadar differentiated itself from competitors during the procurement process, because most of these offer standalone variants with limited usability on tablets,” Zimmermann explained. New employees receive training on how to use PlanRadar as part of the general onboarding process. Users also regularly discuss the platform internally.
The result: time savings of up to 50%
By using PlanRadar for fire safety quality assurance, Swiss Safety Center employees significantly reduced the time they spent on these tasks: “We have made time savings of 50% with PlanRadar and can therefore also work for the customer for less,” said Florian Zimmerman. “Within teams, we communicate with PlanRadar in real time and without any delay. Errors are reduced and miscommunications prevented,” he added.
Swiss Safety Center can also use the digital documentation to make sure its own work is watertight. Staff no longer need to take large paper plans, cameras or notebooks with them, because the app has all the relevant and information and tools ready on a smartphone or tablet. The company also saves on time and costs with less follow-up work in the office.
