FOUR students from the University of Canberra have won $35,000 in prize money after developing an app for construction workers to sign on or off site using their smart phone.

The team of four students won the major prize of $25,000 at the Innovation ACT awards as well as the ACT Government prize of $10,000 and the pitch award. a$750), to put towards perfecting their application ‘Sign on site’.

Group member Mitchell Harmer says the app is “basically like a Facebook check-in for construction sites” which would 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 $3,600 fine,” he says.

“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.”

Fellow group member Alexandria Garlan is also a project manager for Banyan Construction and says safety on site needs to be made a priority, with the app “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,” she says.

“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.”