Utah Building Safety Inspectors Pack iPAQ

Some history

Five years ago, I took over the Building Safety Division of Orem, Utah, a city of 95,000 about 35 miles south of Salt Lake City.

My staff and I were responsible for inspecting all construction within the city limits and verifying that all current building safety codes were met. We conducted between 8000 to 9000 inspections each year.

At that time, all of the requests for building inspections were taken over the phone and put into a paper scheduling log by the office technicians, who would then make copies of the log and give them to the five building inspectors every morning. The inspectors visited each construction site on their inspection log throughout the day. They had no information other than what was on the piece of paper: builder's name, job site address, and the type of inspection called for.

When the inspector found items on the job site that needed to be corrected, he or she would write it down on a correction list and leave a copy with the builder. The builder would fix the problems and then call for a re-inspection. When the inspector returned, the builder was required to have the old paper correction list on the job site for re-inspection.

Lots of inefficiencies...

This process was inefficient in a number of ways:

1. When builders called in to schedule inspections, the addresses were often recorded incorrectly in the paper inspection scheduling log, causing the inspectors to waste time in finding the right location.
2. The builders had a hard time reading the writing of some of the inspectors on the correction lists.
3. The inspector might not find the old paper correction list at the job site and therefore would not be able to do the inspection, causing a delay in the construction process. The builder then would have to get a copy of the old correction list to the job site and call for another re-inspection.
4. The inspectors had to carry around a large clipboard to write on at each inspection.
5. At the end of the day, the inspector would bring his/her inspection corrections for each job site to the office technician. The technician would then enter the corrections into the computer the next work day.
6. If a builder was not on the job site during an inspection, he would call in and ask if the inspection had passed or failed. If the inspection had failed he would often ask to have all the corrections read to him over the phone, but the office staff wouldn't be able to give him that information because it was with the inspector in the field until the end of the day.