Business Tools | BizSieve.com

Improving Safety in the Workplace: Drone Inspections

The versatility of drones is immense when it comes to accessing areas that were impossible or difficult to access before. The professional drone pilots that work with top drone companies and the military are nothing short of incredible. There are even drone racing leagues that can be viewed on various channels online and on television.

Drones have grown in personal usage popularity although there are some unfortunate amateurs that break their drones on the first flight. The ability to capture a beautiful view without putting yourself in peril has taken videography and photography to the next level. Commercial usage of drones is growing due to the incredible amount of ground that can be covered. Surveying an area has now become far more accurate and rapid due to drone imaging technology.

Imaging is a huge aspect of drone usage but so is the inspection of assets such as transmission and distribution lines, bridges or other areas of infrastructure. Accidental falls from heights are the main cause of death in construction workers. Doing a final inspection from a height can lead insurance costs for a business owner to skyrocket. Drone inspection helps mitigate risk which makes a worksite far safer. Inspecting a road is a perfect example as an inattentive driver can lead to the deaths of workers.

Pipelines can take hundreds of hours to inspect manually while presenting danger. The last thing anyone wants is chemicals to injure you or impact your health long-term. The fact that thermal imaging can be done on the pipeline makes it easier to find cracks or holes. Not to mention that these need to be scaled and can be quite slippery for an individual to traverse.

Adopting a comprehensive drone program as part of safety inspections has proven very effective for many industries. The number one benefit is that safety is improved when compared to more traditional methods. Additionally a drone inspection can be carried out quicker, and if the inspection is of an industrial plant then production does not have to be stopped for as long. The ability to inspect an industrial plant without stopping production pays for the drone inspection in itself. Today’s world is all about productivity and the bottom line which has led a number of industries to investigate the usage of drones.

Drones can also be used to assess natural disaster damage, which tends to be easier, quicker, and safer than teams on the ground. Drones can provide real-time footage for rescue teams, and help find people in distress. Infrastructure inspection during this time can be lifesaving as a downed electrical line can be deadly. The last thing anyone wants is more lives ruined after a natural disaster as the recovery process is already difficult enough.

Saving Money in the Process

Safety is most important in the workplace only to be followed by profit margins. Drone usage for inspections and a number of other areas can save time and money. Staying on schedule for a project is far easier when drones are being used to inspect an asset, rather than every measure that would need to be in place to physically scale and inspect a structure.

Solar farms are something that need to be inspected to ensure they are working efficiently and no panels are overheating. Doing this through thermal imaging can help make solar power more efficient. The ability to repair a panel that is not working at full capacity will help maximize the ROI on the panel. Improving clean energy is just the beginning as efficiency has always been a concern of critics of natural energy.

Drones are a part of the future that we need to get used to in a variety of areas. With Amazon testing out drone delivery, it could only be a matter of time before we see drones daily if we do not already. Drones improve the safety of a number of inspections and will continue to be adopted internationally. Finding a top company to assist with an inspection with licensed drone pilots, which is required for commercial use is imperative. FlyGuys can assist with your drone inspection needs and can provide a top drone pilot for your project/inspection.

How Time Clock Software Can Help You Eliminate Time Theft

To most hourly shift workers, padding their paychecks with a few extra minutes of company time doesn’t seem too unethical. In fact, a survey conducted by the American Payroll Association reported that nearly 75 percent of businesses suffer from time theft—or employees receiving pay for time not spent actually working.

Whether they’re clocking in early (or clocking out late), scrolling through social media while on the clock, taking frequent breaks without clocking out, or having a coworker clock in for them without actually being there (buddy punching), 43 percent of hourly employees confess to having committed time theft before. Though it might only be a few minutes every shift, this “stolen” time adds up to an estimated $400 billion lost annually.

You might be thinking that time theft is just an inevitable part of running a business—but that isn’t necessarily true. Fortunately, protecting your company from time theft is as easy as making one small change: Upgrading to an online time tracking system.

The Basics of Time Clock Software

So, what is time clock software? To business traditionalists, it might seem complex (and maybe slightly intimidating)—yet, this innovative online tool is really quite straight forward. Time clock software is a web-based system through which employees can clock in and out using any internet-connected device.

Using time clock software — Time clock software is compatible with desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, which means no more paper time cards—and no more timesheet stress!

Setting it up is quick and easy, and it doesn’t require any new equipment or outside installation. When you create an account for your company, you add your employees to the system, and they’re given a username and password. To clock in and out, they just enter their login information, similar to if they were logging in to an email or other online account.

Features of Time Clock Software that Prevent Time Theft

Because it functions using cloud technology, time clock software possesses an array of different features to maximize efficiency, security, and convenience. These features are designed to ensure that you have complete control over how, when, and where your employees are clocking in.

How

While an assigned username-and-password combination is the default method by which employees will clock in and out, there are other options that you can choose. These include an email address, facial recognition, or a QR code. The last two are probably the best ways to prevent buddy punching.

When

Features like punch limiting and automatic breaks turn the process of clocking in and out into a science, helping to standardize time spent on the clock by making shifts as exact as possible.

By creating your own punch rules, you can limit when employees can punch time—for instance how many minutes before or after a shift that they can clock in or out. You can also assign automatic break times to employees, enforcing their rights to breaks while also controlling when those breaks take place and how long they’ll last.

Where

Geofences and IP locks will guarantee that your employees are punching in and out from where they’re supposed to be.

A geofence is a radius within which your employee must be to clock in. You can assign geofences individually and include multiple geofences for a single employee. This is useful not only for obstructing fraudulent clock-ins but also for avoiding confusion at companies with multiple job sites. IP locks determine the IP address that your employee will be able to clock in and out under, so you don’t have to worry about employees punching time from outside company property.

Using geofences for an accurate punch in — If an employee attempts to punch in outside of their geofence, they’ll be sent a notification alerting them that they are not in their assigned location.

Additional Benefits

Again, because time clock software is an internet tool, it’s incredibly flexible and versatile—which means its capabilities go far beyond the standard punch clock. Streamline administrative tasks like scheduling and payroll with automated reports and calculations that take the headache out of time tracking.

Streamlining business operations — Keep your operation running smoothly by downloading, reviewing, and storing different types of reports for comprehensive, clean company files.

Overtime and Time-Off

Customize overtime calculations by making your own rules and choosing different types of overtime. Your online tracking system will calculate overtime automatically and produce reports for you to review. This will save on time spent crunching numbers and help you to avoid expensive mistakes on your payroll.

Likewise, you can design your own system for approving sick days, vacation time, and paid time-off, making scheduling easier for you and your employees.

Job Codes

Ever wonder how much time at your company is spent doing what? With time clock software, you can create separate codes for different jobs and projects so that you can see the division of your company’s overall time, as shown by each employee individually. And because multitasking is a necessity in business, employees are able to punch in and out of multiple jobs throughout a single shift.

Integrating Other Kinds of Software

With so many types of technology available in today’s world, it’s more than a little likely that your business uses more than one kind of software. For this reason, you can integrate other tools and applications into your online time tracking system to combine all of your moving parts.

Cut down on time-consuming paperwork and data transfer by interlinking your software tools to create one, hassle-free process.

Time to Take a Stand Against Time Theft

Most workers aren’t scheming to bankrupt the company when they commit time theft—some might not even realize that they’re even doing it. When you convert your time tracking system to an online software, you limit the risk of time theft (and the temptation to try it).

Get rewarded in more ways than one when you take a stand against time theft with time clock software.

Power Printing: Digital vs Analogue

Printing isn’t limited to paper. Circuit boards are not printed as well and the move to digital is ever faster. In Power generation, Automatic Voltage Regulators (AVR’s) the march to digital is continuing. Mecc Alte, the leading independent supplier of alternators are launching two new digital AVR’s to go with their C-type range. Used in various diesel generators, these devices help to keep the voltage stable.

Digital is a buzzword for better – people sell things on the back of them being digital. Digital cameras have largely eliminated the need for analogue versions as the technology has improve and the costs reduced.

With AVR’s the next leap is here – this one promises to be far superior to previous reincarnations and should deliver tangible benefits to end users, dealers and manufacturers. Diesel generators are used around the world and the AVR’s fitted to them have been around for a long time. The scale of the numbers in use has led to a flood of counterfeit products on the market. Counterfeit AVR’s, like other counterfeit goods fund crime and damage profits for the big multinationals that produce them. They can also damage your goods and cause death or fire.

Digital AVR’s then are to be praised, while this first generation will not be quite as integrated as the next, they will be much harder to copy and its unlikely this will happen in the short term. This will deliver benefits for the manufacturers. For consumers they promise to be more reactive and adjust the voltage faster, therefore giving a more stable stream even under heavy load.

For dealers this development will allow additional monitoring and logging – consumers are often notorious for the abuse of their equipment and this leads to unnecessary costs for dealers. These new AVR’s with their digital circuits will have better logging allowing for analysis of use cases. It will also lead to better system integration and this will bring additional benefits and results. Interfaces have been slow to be taken up in this utility market and new technologies are required to drive efficiency and gains.

Its certain that the march to digital in this field will continue – but it’s clearly for the benefit of all concerned, apart from the counterfeiters who will no doubt fight back in the future.

Here’s How to Get Free SharePoint Hosting

Small business owners – if you are new to SharePoint and want to test its various features and functionalities first, the best way is get a free SharePoint site. Just make sure that the free version is fully functional, like the one at https://www.cloudappsportal.com.

Easy SharePoint site setup

Once you get your SharePoint site up and running, the initial step to take would be the inclusion of a project description that tells the visitors about the purpose of your site. SharePoint sites come with wiki editing and the editing operations are displayed in a ribbon, just the way you see them on the Microsoft Office 2007.

After you have the project description put up, add a link on the home page to your project workbook as the next standard step. Using this link, any of your user/team mate can easily navigate to the workbook and get additional details about the project.

Image storage and management

Uploading, storing and managing of images in SharePoint is quite easy. In fact, you will just need to spend a couple of minutes for adding a logo to your site, which will get positioned above the project description. There are actually six ways to add images to a SharePoint page – here’s the how-to.

You can also choose to replace the standard template image with a more interesting one that is better suited to your site; this is strongly recommended for branding purposes.

Videos

When you feel that a video must go up to add impact, it would be a good idea to create a totally new page for it, and the web part need to show the video – things that you can easily do it using SharePoint.

Adding a video is as easy as 1-2-3. What you need to do is to open Asset Picker and browse for your videos. Choose the one that you want and click ‘Insert’. That would be all.

Document groups

Likewise, you can use SharePoint Document Set feature to manage large collections/groups of documents as an aggregated entity, or quite simply, a single document set. When a document set is checked out, all of the documents within the set also get checked out and can be managed conveniently as a single item.

Learn more…

As you can see, there are plenty of possibilities when you set up a SharePoint site from SharePoint Hosting. It’s certainly not bad for free – plus there are the loads of support articles and guides that should help you and your business further with the out-of-the-box platform.

Building a Surveillance System on a Budget

Building a decent surveillance system for your home or office doesn’t have to cost thousands of dollars. In fact, you may already possess most of what you need to build a small network of cameras around any areas you’re interested in surveying. You don’t even need special training or a technical degree to implement a cost efficient and effective system; byusing wireless IP cameras and your computer, you can watch and record streaming video directly to your system.

1. Cameras – There are many brands of IP cameras thatcan work well for your needs without requiring an expensive investment. Cameras like the Airlink 101 SkyIPCam1500W offer a range of features and can easily connect to virtually any wireless network. Loaded with night-vision technology, these cameras are inexpensive and work well for monitoring doorways, rooms and other areas you may want to cover.

2. Router – Unless you have custom settings entered into your router for DHCP or other connections, virtually any wireless router will work with these IP cameras. As default settings go, the entire setup can be as easy as plug-and-play. However, keep in mind that you’ll have greater wireless coverage for your network with more powerful routers.

3. Computer Software – Many of these cameras utilize software that you install on your computer. This software can control most of the recording aspects of your surveillance system, including support for multiple monitors. Each camera saves its recordings to individual folders on your computer for ease of use. While this software may be a quick and small installation, each camera folder can take up a lot of hard drive space. If you have a desktop computer or a server, it would be wise to install a separate hard drive for nothing more than camera recordings.

4. Monitoring the Cameras – While most camera software will allow you to watch all of the cameras in unison, many of them will also support the ability to connect to them directly. By using the camera’s IP address in a web browser, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, you can directly access the camera and view the live stream. This kind of access will also allow you to change different settings of the camera, such as wireless network access, night-vision, motion sensing and other features the camera might have.

5. Easy to Install – Depending on the model of your camera and where you buyit,it’s possible to start running your own single camera surveillance system today for less than $100. Although setting the camera up may take a little work, the camera can typically be plugged in and set up in its location in less than an hour. Since many of these camera brands are stackable, you are able to add the same model of camera to your surveillance system later and manage the recordings from a single piece of software. The software included in cameras such as the Airlink 101 SkIPCam can support up to 16 simultaneous cameras.

For those on a tight budget, this may be a more ideal solution for an affordable way to build an effective surveillance system. As long as the cameras can connect to your wireless network, you can place them in virtually any locale that power can reach. Day or night, monitor your home or business from the convenience of your own computer or laptop.

About the Author: Ken Myers is a father, husband, and entrepreneur. He has combined his passion for helping families find in-home care with his experience to build a business. Learn more about him by visiting @KenneyMyers on Twitter.