Ten Years of Applecado: 2015 – Safety Reporting Management System (6/10)

The safety management system we built for Flying Pictures is a wonderful example of how a custom web application can replace stacks of paperwork, ensure data integrity, streamline processes and save significant amounts of time.

Flying Pictures came to us as a result of some recent changes to flying regulations, needing to record, store and very quickly share safety reports with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Previously reports had been created, printed and filed away – if the CAA requested a report, it would have to be found, faxed or emailed manually.

We designed a web app that allowed Flying Pictures to add all team members, both internal staff and contractors. Users could add a report that logged an accident or a near-miss – we allowed the contributor could choose to log the report as anonymous if needed.

Reports were designed to extract as much detail as possible without being overly complicated to complete, the team were asked to assess how likely they thought the incident was and how dangerous the outcome could be. These particular answers were factored into assigning an urgency to each report and how the system treated them.

One of the things we love about the system is that we built the functionality for Flying Pictures to add CAA staff members with read-only permissions. This was the revolution that really changed the whole process for us, all that time writing, storing and sorting reports, plus eliminating any time spent looking for reports and sharing them with regulators.