Field inspection app

Background

The client manages 32 commercial buildings, where 18 inspectors carry out 1,200 fire, electrical, elevator, and HVAC inspections a month. Inspections were done on paper checklists, and photos were taken on each inspector’s own phone.

Many inspection sites are underground machine rooms and electrical rooms with no signal. Inspectors wrote on paper, came back above ground, and re-entered everything into the system at the office, which took each of them an hour a day. Phone photos had to be matched to the right building and asset afterwards, and unmatched photos piled up. Whether a reading was out of range was judged by the inspector against a reference table, and on busy days some were missed. Failed items reached managers through the next day’s report, so a fix took three days on average, and finding statutory records such as fire inspections for an audit meant a full day in the filing cabinet.

What we built

The goal was for the record saved on site to be the final record. We built five things.

1. Offline-first mobile app

iOS and Android apps. In the morning, inspectors download the day’s schedule and checklists and record without a connection. When the connection returns, everything syncs automatically. If two people recorded the same asset, both records are kept and a manager is notified.

2. Item-by-item recording

We consolidated the paper checklists into 40 templates by asset type across fire, electrical, elevator, and HVAC equipment. Each item takes a photo, a signature, and a location (GPS plus a QR code fixed to the asset) in place. Readings such as insulation resistance and pressure have allowed ranges built in, so an out-of-range value is flagged the moment it is entered. Inspectors no longer memorize reference tables.

3. Workflow for failed items

The moment an item is marked failed, a manager is notified and assigns someone to fix it. That person uploads a completion photo, and the asset keeps a history from detection to fix. Critical items, such as a fire system failure, notify the manager and the building contact at the same time.

4. Manager dashboard

Progress per building, open items with days elapsed, each inspector’s schedule and route, and history per asset. Gathering paper for the weekly meeting is gone.

5. Statutory records and audits

Records that must be kept by law, such as fire and elevator inspections, can be searched by asset and exported as PDFs in the prescribed format. Records approaching their retention deadline are flagged ahead of time.

How it was rolled out

Weeks	Work
1–3	Accompanied inspectors on site. Consolidated some 60 paper checklists into 40 templates by asset type and fixed the allowed ranges for readings
4–10	App development. Offline storage and sync, item-by-item recording, QR codes fixed to assets. Pilot in 2 buildings
11–15	Added the fix workflow, dashboard, and statutory record export. Extended the pilot to 10 buildings while tuning templates
16–18	Rolled out to all 32 buildings. Inspector and manager training, guide for editing templates

During the four-week pilot in two buildings, paper and app ran side by side to check for gaps and sync conflicts. In the first month after full rollout there were no sync failures. Managers can edit templates themselves, and three new asset types have been added since launch.

How an inspector’s day changed

Before, an inspector left in the morning with a bundle of paper checklists and spent an hour each evening at the office copying records and matching photos. Now they download the day’s schedule in the app, scan the asset’s QR code, and the right checklist opens. Take a photo and enter the value for each item, and once back above ground the records upload on their own. The evening re-entry is gone.

Managers no longer wait for the next day’s report. They are notified the moment an item is marked failed and assign someone to fix it. Audit preparation starts in a search box, not a filing cabinet.

The table below compares each task before and after.