Easily Create Your Construction Safety Manual (pt 6)

This is the last in a six article series. We trust that you have found the principles helpful, and our reviews on products equally so. Today, we use our Construction Safety Manual solution as an example. We reflect on how our design must accommodate the tools you as our clients use, and how we must create a design that empowers you to work quickly and effectively.

Looking Back at this ‘Designing a Quality Safety Management Plan’ Series

The problem we face in any document design challenge is one of knowledge representation. We have what technicians would call a stream of incoming data that needs to be reorganised and represented in a meaningful way. This is the challenge that Occupational Safety Solutions has risen to.

Previously we examined factors of:

1. Purpose and currency , and
2. Critical questions.

We’ve also considered the design principles of:

1. Constrained Focus,
2. Adjustable Rigidity,
3. Assisting Understanding,
4. Considering Events,
5. Framing input and output fields effectively, and
6. Reducing complexity without removing meaning.

The two principles we consider today are very focused upon you.

Knowing The Tools Our Clients Use

When we talk about tools in this situation, we are talking about tools used by your workers, or construction plant on your site. This principle sitters what tools are being used when the template is being resourced.

We have intentionally chosen the word processing software, as it seems to be the most prominent software used in the construction office environment. When you purchase our templates, you should not have to purchase additional software, nor should you have to struggle with unnecessarily complex systems.

We believe our Construction Safety Manual template solution is a prime example of this principle at work.

When you open the Construction Safety template, you will find that information has been presented within MSWord using font formatting, data gathering and tables. If you are comfortable using Microsoft Word, and you will not need to be an expert, you will find the template easy.

Speed and Ease in a Construction Safety Manual

For the same reason that we chose Microsoft word as our delivery platform, we also, as a result of following our other design principles, achieved a product which can be quickly and easily used.

We’ve already mentioned a variety of principles implemented in our designs, and if the journey has interested you and you’d like to look deeper, we remind you that links to some further reading is provided at the base of our first article in the series: “Designing Our WHS Management Plan Templates”.  

As a brief closing comment, we should acknowledge that in on-line document design, the use of pointers, both forwards and backwards, is sometimes helpful. These on-page elements can be selected by a user to move forward or backward according to their desires.

The limitations of Microsoft Word and needing to keep template systems simple meant we did not implement this principle.  From a pure design standpoint however, it is worth noting that if you must design a system and you have the potential, pointers and back pointers can be a very helpful feature.

Dealing With Safety Manual Complexity

Sure, Construction Safety can be a complex topic, and satisfying the legislative OHS/WHS items can be very challenging. Yet, this is why we exist. This is why our templates are so powerful. This is why we consistently receive such positive feedback!

We have reduced the complexity and presented you with a solution that is easy to understand and quick to complete. This is exactly what the Construction Safety Manual template delivers, as do all our OHS / WHS templates.

If our Construction Safety Manual product, or any other for that matter is of interest to you, please do not hesitate to ask any questions you might. You can reach us on 1800 304 336 and we look forward to providing you with the same level of professional assistance that we have come known for.