Martin Denny, managing director, Safety-Link Consulting
Monaghan-based company Safety-Link Consulting has teamed up with US mobile apps specialist Canvas to provide safety apps, which allow for more efficient and cost-effective health and safety routine tasks to be performed.
The first of their kind in Ireland, the plan is to sell the apps to companies and organisations on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as across the globe. The link-up will create up to five jobs in the next three years.
With the new apps, automated paper-based safety audits, inspections, assessments and reports can now be filled out on any smartphone or tablet, including the iPhone and iPad, and Android, Blackberry and Windows-enabled mobile devices.
Safety professionals therefore no longer need to rely on cumbersome and sometimes illegible paper forms. Instead, safety forms are completed on an app, which develops a PDF that can be branded and emailed to the customer, supervisor or whomever the user designates.
The forms can also be downloaded into Excel, searched online and plugged into applications like QuickBooks and QuickBase. The apps can even capture a user’s GPS location and photos can be added to any report.
Fifteen users across the globe have already signed up for the 30-day free trial in the past few days since the apps became available online.
“Our association with Safety-Link reflects a growing movement towards mobile solutions replacing traditional paper forms,” said Michael Benedict, VP, App Store, Canvas. “We are essentially doing for paper forms what the iPod has done for analog music.
“Working with Safety-Link Consulting is also a terrific example of a transatlantic business relationship built entirely using online communication tools, and one that opens up our businesses to a global audience. It is also a great story of entrepreneurship and innovation in Ireland where an independent businessman has taken his 14 years of expertise in safety and initiated a transatlantic business association for the benefit of his own business, other businesses and the Irish economy.”
A challenging environment
“Health and safety is a challenging environment and complying with legislation is critical,” according to Martin Denny, managing director, Safety-Link Consulting.
“The allocation of revenue towards health and safety compliance can be a difficult choice for management, especially in these challenging times. We are a very small business and have been developing our paper-based forms for many years now. We are really pleased to team up with Canvas to make our traditional paper safety forms available as mobile apps for businesses and organisations.”
