The 10 Best PPE Management App for 2023

What is a PPE Management App?

A PPE management app is a mobile platform that enables employers and employees to discuss and perform PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) maintenance. As part of an organization’s safety program, a PPE management app can also function as a digital hazard assessment tool.

Importance

While the importance of PPE in worker protection should not be taken for granted, PPE alone is not enough. According to NIOSH, PPE is merely the last level of defense. There are other effective ways of controlling exposure to hazards that work complementary to PPE, such as elimination (removing hazards), substitution (replacing hazards), engineering control (isolating people from hazards), and administrative control (changing procedures).

The reason why people advocate the use of PPEs is that, at times, removing or replacing a hazard isn’t feasible. This dilemma is especially prevalent in the construction industry, where high-risk construction work (HRCW) is part of the job.

Though some may not even entertain the thought of using an app to check and manage PPEs, the reality is that PPEs are often crucial to the health and safety of workers, especially in the absence of other controls. With PPEs having the capability to prevent accidents and even infection, employers should pay due diligence to their proper care and maintenance.

Here are some ways businesses can use a PPE management app to further protect employees from harm:

Assess the Need for PPEs

Using a PPE management app, you can easily identify the type of PPE required for certain tasks. Since the purpose of PPE is to reduce employee exposure to hazards, it’s necessary to first perform hazard assessments before enforcing PPE use. In this step, it’s advisable to use hazard assessment templates (for general industries, high-risk environments, or hazardous workplaces) to help determine whether or not PEE is the most appropriate control measure for the job.

Hence, a PPE management app becomes essential in ensuring all work-related hazards are well-accounted for during assessments.

Keep PPEs in Good Condition

A PPE management app can help you maintain your PPEs, so they last a long time and remain as effective as they were when newly purchased. This can be achieved by conducting regular inspections where employees can snap a photo of any defects in the PPE and even annotate it to ensure that whoever reads the inspection report immediately knows where the problem is.

For this reason, it’s more convenient for employees to check their PPEs. Not conducting regular PPE maintenance can lead to employees wearing damaged or ineffective PPE, which could lead to serious health risks.

Manage PPE Inventory

You can also track the number of usable PPEs by asking employees in the field to input the PPE count daily, as well as find out why some PPEs are no longer fit for use.

In addition, using a PPE management app ensures that you’re always updated on what exactly your employees need to get the job done and how to track PPE usage. Even employees working in areas with no internet connection can still conduct PPE inspections offline and then synchronize data once the internet connection is available as long as the app enables real-time data syncing.

Reports in web or PDF formats can also be automatically generated each time a PPE inspection is completed, allowing employees to get back to their work as soon as possible with no time wasted typing up reports manually.

Schedule Regular PPE Inspections

Without an app, it can be difficult to constantly remind employees to check their PPEs, especially when you can’t be there in person. With a PPE management app, you can assign scheduled PPE inspections to employees, who will receive a notification once it’s time to conduct the inspection.

Additionally, if an employee misses an inspection, it will show up in the organization’s missed/late inspections tab. This heightens employee accountability for the safety of their PPEs while still providing employers the data visibility they need to manage PPE use.

Create and Assign Corrective Actions

Once a problem has been identified, employers can use a PPE management app to immediately create corrective actions and assign them to the relevant personnel. Without an app, solving a problem occurring in the field while you’re still miles away from the site is tricky and can get stressful very quickly, considering that the safety of employees is primarily the employer’s responsibility.

Even if there’s nothing wrong with the PPEs, you can still raise issues and create action items to collaborate with employees and managers in further strengthening the effectiveness of your organization’s PPE program.

Features

Top PPE management apps must have these features:

• Smart Forms – Create smart templates and convert your existing paper forms into digital checklists.
• Inspections – Conduct PPE inspections from anywhere at any time with a PPE management app.
• Fast Reporting – Automatically generate PPE inspection reports to help solve problems quicker.
• Insights & Analytics – Turn your PPE inspection data into actionable insights for enhanced workplace safety.
• Integrations – Connect your PPE management app to business software systems such as Tableau, Sharepoint, and more.
• Workflow Automation – Automate the boring stuff—from scheduling PPE inspections to report creation and sharing.

How to Pick the Best PPE Management App

To help you choose the best PPE management tool, here’s a quick overview of our best 10:

• Best Overall: SafetyCulture
• Best for PPE Burn Rate Tracking: NIOSH PPE Tracker
• Best for EHS Teams: ASK-EHS
• Best for Simplifying PPE Inventory: Sortly
• Best for SMBs: erplain
• Best for SMEs: Bulbthings
• Best for Small Businesses: Syndustry Equipment
• Best for Medium to Large Businesses: Benchmark ESG PPE Manager
• Best for Flexible Solutions: Aptien
• Best for Companies with a Variety of Assets: itemit

You may also use this table for the comparison of free version availability, pricing of paid plans, and web-based software capability:

PPE Management App	Free Version	Paid Plan	Web-based Software
SafetyCulture	Yes	$19/month/10 users	Yes
NIOSH PPE Tracker	Yes	Not applicable	No
ASK-EHS	None	Details unavailable	Yes
Sortly	Yes	$39/3 user licenses/month*	Yes
erplain	None	$59/2 users/month*	Yes
Bulbthings	None	€1 (~$1)/month**	Yes
Syndustry Equipment	Yes***	€25 (~$25)/month	Yes
Benchmark ESG PPE Manager	None	Details unavailable	Yes
Aptien	None	$87/3 users/month	Yes
itemit	Yes****	£249 (~$298)/3 users/year	Yes

*billed annually
**for the default Essentials pack
***for small businesses with a maximum asset number of 100
****for personal workspaces only (up to 500 items or assets)

Some other related tools and software you can use in PPE management include the following:

• Asset Management Software
• Asset Inventory Software
• Inventory Management Software
• Inventory Management App
• Inventory Control Software

Check out these ready-to-use PPE management checklists that you can download, customize, and use in SafetyCulture for free:

• PPE Checklist
• OSHA PPE Self-Inspection Checklist
• PPE Safety Walk Checklist
• PPE Inspection Checklist
• Face Mask Inspection Checklist

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