VIMS for construction — supervising work that changes every day

A permit for high-risk work only matters if it is available at the moment a decision is made. In practice the original sits in the site office while the supervisor in the field works from memory and a phone.

The consequence is the absence of an overall picture. Nobody can say offhand how many hot works are running simultaneously, or whether any of them border a zone where cutting is about to start. Clashes appear only in a review afterwards.

The second problem is subcontractor turnover. A crew appears for three days, completes a scope and leaves. Documents are verified on the first entry and often not on the next, because 'they were here before'.

Attendance looks like a simple question until it has to be answered during an inspection. The crew leader's list, the gate log and the training register are usually three sources that need not agree.

Linking the people register to the company register and document status gives one answer from one data set. It shows not only who is present but whether their qualifications were valid on the day the work was done.

The same data matters after an incident. Establishing who took part and what authorisation covered them becomes a matter of opening a record instead of reconstructing notes.