Working for an equipment/plant hire company we are looking at going paperless to improve our ESG agenda. Currently we supply a number of documents with all our equipment that includes an operating & safety guide that offers general advice on how to stop/start/operate the equipment and general safety advice which is in hard copy paper format attached to the equipment

We now want to offer this information digitally by way of a PDF attached to the order confirmation email, a PDF hosted on our website that can be downloaded and a QR code sticker on all equipment where the user/operator can scan the code and read the operating & safety guide on their mobile device.

Can anyone offer any advice/barriers/legislation that would prevent up adopting the above solution

Thanks

You are presuming that the location will be an internet hot spot - most construction locations are Not Spots.

There are potential issues with servers at either end, and transmission masts - Vodafone ran a camapign asking "what if your wi-fi went down?" - it frequently does irregardless of the provider!

Despite their proliferation a lot of companies still prohibit the use of mobile devices out on site due to their being a distraction from the other hazards.

Where they do issue a company phone does it have a suitable app to open your document? Are apps and (in your case downloads) permitted or banned for network secutity.

A mobile has a pretty small display area compared to an A4 sheet - many workers don't wear their reading glasses at site being forced to don suitable eye protection.

As we are now in the colder, wetter part of the year mobile displays struggle and are a struggle to operate.

As to pdf attached to order are these actually going to the location or some accounts desk in an office?

At one construction firm I berated a supplier for not sending Safety Data Sheets, transpires their method was to attach them to the order confirmation which got sent to head office! The chief accountant then complained about how much filing space transaction paperwork now takes up not having bothered to enquire who actually wanted the attachments.

Then of course there is the advantage that a piece of paper does not run out of battery power.

Paper is recyclable.

Paper does not require rare earth metals for its construction.

Paper is more sustainable than electronics.

Paper does not rely upon huge data centres consuming vast quantities of power - last time I looked 10% of global electricity production was being consumed in data centres!

That is before employing someone full time verifying the current document is where it needs to be and the QR code leads to that document - you can't just set it up and forget it.

In the company I work for we are not allowed to scan noncompany (our company) QR codes for security reasons. We would not be asking individuals to use their personal phones for work purposes (if they choose to that is up to them, but we would not ask / expect). We would not give a MEWP operator a company mobile phone anyway.

Things like copies of LOLER certs for MEWPS would be ok emailed to the office. I suspect user instructions of equipment, may not get to the user – just being realistic.

Costs such as these would just be in the hire price wouldn’t they, so another pound for paper and ink per hire.

Chris

Transferring a duty of care implicitly (or even explicitly) by an email doesn't mean that in practice the duty will be reliably fulfilled.  Morally you have an obligation to your end users, even if legally and contractually your obligation is only to your direct customers.

You should also consider what will happen in the event of power and comms outages.  If your products are going to stop working at all in these scenarios and pose no risk, that might be fine.

Originally Posted by: hemsy

Research suggests that most users have a mobile device with a personal data plan to download a document without the need for wifi.

Same issues apply regardless of the "G" (2G / 3G / 4G / 5G) as for wifi - Feel I got taken a bit literally.

Then you can add in the days computer says "No" decides the bill has not been paid and disconnects the service.

Or those days when the providers service falls over which happens quite often (see downdetector.co.uk).