Submission Highlights

Team Information

Jeff McClellan, Facilities Safety Officer
Nancy Portner, nancy.portner@colorado.edu, Website Manager

What

The University of Colorado Boulder Facilities Management department used PowerApps to build a safety hazard reporting solution and enabled a consistent approach for managing and reporting on campus facilities safety hazards. An affordable, mobile-based solution was built in-house and deployed in less than 3 weeks using the Microsoft O365 PowerApps tool. The application is now available for staff to download on to their mobile phones and tablets and allows them to easily photograph and report safety hazards with minimal effort. Once a hazard is identified and submitted by a staff member, a notification is emailed to the safety officer. Reported hazards are now identified within minutes, prioritized and sent to the appropriate division to corroborate and complete the work. Although the new process introduced a whole new way of working, which could be seen as disruptive, staff members are quickly seeing the benefits and have been actively engaged with the app since its launch.

Why

The application was built and beta-tested in June 2019 and deployed to all staff within the organization in July 2019. To date, 55 hazards have been reported and either resolved or rerouted to the responsible unit on campus.

When

The workflow process went live in July of 2019.

Facilities Safety Hazards Reported