Introduction
Clients can configure and use flags in the Highwire application to identify and highlight specific areas of risk. The following is a list of common safety flags adopted by clients:
- Average EMR > 1.0
- Most Recent Year’s EMR > 1.0
- Average TRIR >25% above the industry average
- Average DART rate >25% above the industry average
- Serious, Repeat, or Willful OSHA violations
- Other than serious OSHA violations
- Fatality in the last three years
Your flags are enabled from a standard set of options in Highwire, but the triggers for your flags and the type of flag (i.e., critical or caution) are fully configurable.
Types of Flags
Critical (Red) Flags: These flags are considered to be serious. Typically, critical flags must be addressed before a contractor is engaged and/or before work begins on-site.
Caution (Yellow) Flags: These flags are considered less severe. Typically, a client reviews these flags to determine if they represent a risk based on the scope or scale of a contractor's work. If so, the flag will be addressed before the contractor is engaged and/or begins work on-site.
In addition to the common flags described above, clients can configure any of their custom questions as flags. For example, in the screenshot below, a fictitious contractor named Crutch Brothers Concrete has triggered two flags set up by the client based on custom questions regarding a Quality Control program and a Stop-Work program:
Flags in Contractors View
Flags are visible to clients in several places throughout the platform, most notably in the Contractors tab:
When you hover over the red critical flag or the yellow caution flag for a specific contractor, you will see a complete listing of the flags they have triggered, respectively:
Red Critical Flags
Yellow Caution Flags
Flags and the Contractor Approval Process
Some clients may choose to use their flags to establish an automatic approval process for their contractors. For example:
- If a contractor has a safety score above 80 and no critical (red) flags, a contractor may be automatically approved.
- If a contractor has a safety score above 80 but has one or more critical flags, the contractor's approval status may automatically be set to "Safety Review Required." This indicates that the client requires internal review before awarding work to this contractor or before allowing this contractor to begin work on-site.
Flags in Projects
Since many clients manage their contractors through Highwire's Projects tab, flags are also prominently displayed as a separate column throughout the project workflow for easy reference and comparison among bidders. As described above, hovering over a red or yellow flag will open a popup that shows a complete listing of all associated flags.
In the project bid list step:
In the project safety approval step:
And, in the contract award step:
-END ARTICLE-