Welcome to the third edition of Inspector's Digital Portal Newsletter by Smartflow.
This edition zooms into three parts:
- Tips for creating effective inspection checklists
- Upcoming inspection events. Where can you meet us
- News from Smartflow’s Digital ISGOTT Solution. Short overview.
Part 1. Tips for creating effective inspection checklists
At Smartflow, we work with tank storage, oil and gas, TIC, and maritime professionals who are looking for efficient ways to tackle inspection processes and field inspections.
This is how you can build effective inspection checklists that consistently lead to thorough and reliable inspections.
- Divide the inspection process into smaller tasks where each task is atomic and can be executed independently.
- Capture clear responses like a Yes/No or OK/Not OK instead of text responses.
- List the checks in a logical order that the inspector can easily follow. Where possible, plan a day to observe the inspector on the field when performing checks to understand how checks can be grouped and ordered to make them simple to use and save time.
- Capture remarks/ comments/ pictures during the process, if possible, for individual checks to have a comprehensive inspection report.
Here are some insights into how Smartflow's approach to checklist design balances comprehensiveness with ease of use.
Developing a checklist that captures all essential inspection criteria while remaining user-friendly can be a challenge.
- Smartflow provides a comprehensive framework where checks are divided into checkgroups, and the checkgroups can have a further hierarchy. This allows an inspector to navigate through a checklist easily using a drill-down approach and quickly browse/reach the checks to be performed.
- Smartflow's data-driven inspection framework supports defining properties on objects and checks, also on checkgroups. They contain relevant information for the inspector when they are performing checks in the field. Having all relevant information easily accessible while performing a check is a big convenience for the inspectors.
- Responses to checks are color-coded, like OKs in green and NOKs in red, which makes the checklist design intuitive.
Technology and digital tools enhance the effectiveness of inspection checklists. Here’s how Smartflow's platform integrates with these advancements
- Digital checklists provide real-time availability of data. If any urgent follow-up action is noticed during a check, inspectors can be notified to the concerned immediately, and such actions can be executed quickly. Time is of the essence when it comes to safety, and digital inspections using platforms like Smartflow provide that necessary advantage.
- Checks can be configured with different validation rules at design time. These rules validate the inspector's responses and alert them if the response is not valid to ensure the accuracy of the checks.
- Smartflow keeps an audit trail of user tasks, captured responses, and handovers.
Customization enables users to tailor inspection checklists to suit their specific industry and organizational needs.
Using the Smartflow platform, we have built checklists targeted to various industries ranging from standard ATEX inspections to custom tank, pump, and rig inspections specific to an organization.
The platform provides a framework for inspections where checks can be organized and divided into manageable tasks.
It comes with a rich toolset to capture various types of data in the field, ranging from yes/no answers to capturing images and reading bar and QR codes.
Additionally, there is a rich library in the low code segment of the platform to integrate with NFC or IoT devices. All these combined make the platform a powerful option for building tailored inspection checklists to suit specific industries or organizations.
Enabling inspectors and teams to use data and insights gathered from completed checklists to refine their inspection protocols over time.
Smartflow provides design tools to build custom dashboards using grids, charts, and maps.
These advanced tools can be used to present the data from completed as well as ongoing checklists for information and review.
For enterprise users, Smartflow also exposes the inspection data in a data lake that can be easily accessed using tools like Tableau, Power BI, Qlik, etc., to build informational and analytical reports. These reports can then further be used to refine the inspection process.
Next steps
>>> Contact us for a free demo session
>>> Talk to a consultant about your specific needs
>>> Visit the Smartflow Digital ISGOTT page if you are interested in digitizing the ship-shore process at your tank storage terminal
How can we help you today? 
