Your first inspection on SiteGuard sets the pattern for every inspection that follows it. Get it right, and within an hour you have a GPS-stamped visit, a completed Dynamic Checklist, a photo-evidenced violation, and a synced record sitting in Visit History on your manager's device. Get it wrong, and your inspectors revert to paper, your audit trail breaks, and the entire safety programme loses momentum. This guide walks a first-time inspector through the five steps that turn SiteGuard Field from a freshly installed app into a daily habit. It assumes your HSE manager has already created a Daily Plan and assigned it to you — if not, start with the manager-side quick-start guide first.
Why your first inspection matters more than your tenth #
Inspectors form habits in the first three visits. If SiteGuard Field crashes, loses data, or feels awkward in those visits, the inspector will reach for the paper notebook the next time the pressure is on. That is why your first inspection should happen on a low-stakes site, with a simple Checklist Template, in good weather, with full phone battery. Treat it as a rehearsal: the goal is not to find violations, it is to confirm the inspector can complete the entire visit-to-violation flow without external help. Once that flow is muscle memory, the inspector will use SiteGuard Field on the high-hazard site, in the rain, at six in the morning, without thinking about it. Skipping the rehearsal and going straight to a NEOM-tier site is the most common reason field rollouts stall in week three.
Before you open SiteGuard Field #
Three preconditions need to be in place before you tap the SiteGuard Field icon. First, your HSE manager must have created a Daily Plan assigned to you, with a Checklist Template attached, and published it to your account. Second, your phone needs the SiteGuard Field app installed and signed in with the inspector credentials your manager set up under Users & Roles. Third, the plan's site must have valid GPS coordinates in Sites — without them, GPS Check-in has nothing to compare against. If any of the three is missing, contact your HSE manager before you head to site. Heading to site without these in place is the fastest way to lose a morning and frustrate a foreman.
Step 1 — Open SiteGuard Field and view Today’s Plans #
Tap the SiteGuard Field icon, sign in if prompted, and land on the home screen. The first card on the home screen is Today's Plans — a chronological list of every plan assigned to you for the current date. Tap the plan you are about to execute. The plan detail screen shows the site name and code, the planned checklist, any Plan Actions attached (e.g., verify permit, witness toolbox talk), and the distance to the site from your current location. If the plan is missing, pull-to-refresh — published plans sync to your device within seconds, but a stale cache occasionally delays them. Once you can see the plan on your phone, you are ready to drive to site.
Step 2 — Start the visit with GPS check-in #
On the plan detail screen, tap Check-in. SiteGuard Field captures your device's GPS coordinates and compares them against the site's stored GPS. If you are within the configured radius — typically 100 metres for an open construction site, tighter for confined-space or high-security areas — the visit transitions to In Progress and the timestamp is locked. If you are outside the radius, SiteGuard Field warns you and asks you to move closer. This single record is the audit-defence backbone of the entire system: it proves you were physically at the site at the recorded time, with no manual override possible. The GPS Check-in also unlocks the Dynamic Checklist for execution — you cannot fill the checklist until you have proven you are on site.
Step 3 — Complete the Dynamic Checklist #
The Dynamic Checklist is not a static form. It adapts its items to the site type, the hazard profile, and the answers you give as you progress. A site classified as high-rise construction will surface edge-protection, harness, and crane-check items that a civil-works site will not. A positive answer to whether hot work is being performed triggers a sub-list of permit-to-work items, fire-watch verification, and gas-test records. Each Checklist Item accepts a status (pass, fail, not applicable), textual notes, and one or more Photo Evidence attachments. The Dynamic Checklist is what separates SiteGuard from the static PDF checklists most inspectors are used to, and it is exactly what ISO 45001:2018 clause 8.1 auditors look for when they ask whether controls are risk-based or generic.
Step 4 — Log a violation with photo evidence #
If any checklist item fails and the failure is a nonconformity worth flagging, tap Report Violation from inside the item. The Violation Reporting form opens pre-populated with the site, the visit, the checklist item, and your inspector ID. You set the violation type from the configured list (e.g., fall-protection, electrical, housekeeping), the priority (low, medium, high, critical), a textual description, and the Photo Evidence. If your organisation applies financial penalties to subcontractors, you also set the forfeit amount. Submitting the violation pushes it to Recent Violations on your device and to your manager's Violation Closure queue. The violation now enters the closed-loop lifecycle that ends only when a Corrective Action Program closes it with a reviewer and a certificate — the same lifecycle ISO 45001 clause 10.2 requires for incident, nonconformity, and corrective action.
Step 5 — Close the visit and sync #
Once all checklist items are complete and any violations logged, tap Close Visit. SiteGuard Field asks you to confirm there are no outstanding items, then locks the visit, captures the closing GPS stamp, and writes the entire visit record — checklist responses, photos, violations, GPS coordinates, and timestamps — into the device's offline queue. If you have signal, the sync to SiteGuard Manager happens immediately and Visit History on the manager's device updates within seconds. If you are on a remote site with no signal, the offline-first architecture keeps the record on your phone until you return to coverage, at which point sync happens automatically with no data loss. The visit now appears in Visit History as a completed, GPS-stamped, photo-evidenced record — exactly the evidence an ISO 45001 auditor will ask to see under clause 9.1.1, and exactly the format Saudi Civil Defense inspectors increasingly expect.