Being able to track construction tools effectively is key to ensuring that everyone can do their jobs on time. Having a reliable construction tool tracking software that workers can access even on the job site is often the solution to saving time — unless you want your team manually searching their vehicles, toolboxes, or your tool cribs for what they need.
With a system that allows you to track tools in real-time, you can always find the right tools you need, keep track of critical maintenance dates, and ensure high-value items don’t get misplaced.
Tips for tracking construction tools
Here are some best practices for ensuring that you have a better tool inventory management system:
Have an accurate list of your inventory
If you haven’t done it already, ensuring tools are tagged and logged into your construction tool tracking software can save you precious time searching for tools and equipment during crunch time. It may be labor intensive at the beginning, but there are ways to ensure that you don’t have to stop working to keep track of the tools you use:
- Ask your job site managers to take an inventory of the tools they have
- Grant your site managers access to your database so that they can effectively tag and encode tools from their end
- Have someone from the headquarters consolidate everything and check to ensure that the central inventory is accurate
Add barcodes or QR codes
Related to the previous point, an efficient tool tagging system like barcoding or using QR codes can be a godsend in times of rush jobs or tight deadlines. After you’ve compiled a comprehensive inventory, you can generate codes for each tool so that the respective site managers can tag each tool accordingly.
This will make tools easier to scan and track as they are checked in and out of your tool cribs. This can be very helpful in preventing inventory shrinkage as well.
Make the inventory accessible
Ideally, you should use a construction tool tracking software that everyone can check in real-time through their mobile devices. This is paramount in ensuring that the inventory remains updated and that people are encouraged to refer to it and update it religiously.
Assign responsibility
More than just having a simple checkout sheet, a tool tracking system allows you to transfer tool responsibility from person to person so that nothing falls through the cracks. You can do this by having a system that allows people to transfer responsibility to each other through the inventory system or have their site manager do so. An additional safeguard of having tools be accepted and declined by the tagged point person may also help so that there isn’t any confusion when transferring tools.
Keeping track of construction tools is a collective effort, but having construction tool tracking software that everyone can use and refer to regularly is central to your success.
If you are interested in learning how Fishbowl’s flexible inventory management solution can help your business now, you can book a demo.