Since May 2013, the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh has sought to prevent tragedies like the building collapse that left more than 1,100 fatalities at a garment factory last year. About one third of the country's textile factories are covered by the agreement, which was signed by labor unions, non-profits and the international retailers that outsource their manufacturing to Bangladesh.
One of the stipulations of the accord was the performance of comprehensive safety inspections to detect construction and fire hazards that may need to be addressed immediately. Baltimore-based Hughes Associates has carried out over 1,000 such audits over the past six months, and it has done so with the help of a FileMaker app developed by fellow Maryland company Anvil Dataworks.
Like Kyo Logic, Anvil is a member of the FileMaker Academy, serving the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., areas and with additional offices in Melbourne, Florida, and Seattle. Their experts created the app for use on iOS mobile devices. It allows inspectors to easily note the condition of the buildings, upload photos and generate reports to send them worldwide.
"Inspectors can upload photos and generate reports automatically with the app."
"We didn't have time to report using handwritten notes and disjointed photos," says Hughes' director for codes and standards, Brian Rhodes. "We needed much more efficiency and consistency to handle a task this large in such a short time frame. I don't believe that we could have completed this critical project on time and within budget without our FileMaker solution."
The seven members of the Academy assist businesses with FileMaker development and training, helping them streamline operations and improve data gathering. A customized relational database can save hours of work and simplify previously complex processes.