UC students win $35K for construction site check-in app

Creating an app for construction workers to sign on or off a site using just their smartphone has won University of Canberra students over $35,000 in prize money at the Innovation ACT awards.

Mitchell Harmer and Alexandria Garlan were part of a team of four ACT students who won the competition’s major prize ($25,000), as well as the ACT Government prize ($10,000) and the pitch award ($750), to put towards perfecting their application ‘Sign on site’.

“The app is basically like a Facebook check-in for construction sites,” Harmer, an entrepreneur and innovation student, said. “It’s a simple, user-friendly interface but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes for accurate reporting, which will ensure workers’ safety and could also save company money.

“If an auditor visited a construction site and discovered there were workers who hadn’t signed in or out, it could cost the company a $3600 fine. There is also potential for sites to be shut down or for loss of tenancy. Not to mention the potential for safety issues caused by not knowing which workers are on- or off-site.”

In her third year of construction management, Garlan is also a project manager for Banyan Construction and said safety on site needs to be made a priority, with their app being “a good start to changing the industry”.

“The culture about workplace health and safety needs to change, people don’t see it as a way of increasing productivity for a company and we want to help change that. It’s important to me in my role that my workers are safe on-site and appropriate measures are in place to ensure that,” Garlan said.

“ACT legislation dictates an individual needs to register when they arrive or leave a site, by signing in or signing out. The current systems are paper-based so you have to sign a physical register. We know people aren’t always doing this because of multiple entrances and exits located far apart, and some people have to physically drive to the paper registers, making it near impossible for them to follow the rules. “There are then foremen on the ground trying to cover the site to sign people in and out, and we estimate they can spend on average 1.5 hours a day doing this and it could cost $17,000 a year in wasted time,” Garlan added.

Garlan, 22, and Harmer, 23, are friends from their hometown of Wagga Wagga. The rest of their team were software engineering students Peter Marshall and David Linsell, from the Australian National University, who developed the application.

The Innovation ACT competition, sponsored by the university, ran over nine weeks and included workshops with industry as well as pitch competitions throughout with the major prizes awarded on 30 October.

“It’s surreal how much we won, especially because there was such strong competition. We were told no group has ever swept the floor and taken out all of the top prizes before,” Garlan said. “It was really good to have our idea validated by industry,” Harmer added. “There were different judges for each prize and for them all to think our application was the best was amazing. There’s a lot of entrepreneurial talent in Canberra. My goal is to help bring them out of the woodwork and encourage them to have a go.”

Harmer, a former Apple business specialist, is now focusing on promoting the application, saying they are already working with local construction company Huen to develop it and are pursuing other avenues nationally.

For further information, visit www.strikingly.com/signonsite.