Published 2 Jun 2023
What are Playground Safety Checklists?
A playground safety checklist is a form or template that outlines essential playground safety tasks, reminders, and other work to be done by facility maintenance personnel to ensure that safety hazards are minimized, if not eliminated. Failure to use playground safety checklists may lead to user injury through equipment malfunction and/or misuse.
Playground Safety Self-Inspection
Playground maintenance personnel can use this checklist to complete periodic safety checks of outdoor play areas to reduce the likelihood of accidents and injuries from occurring. Check play equipment for cracks, bending, warps, rusting, or breakage of components. Check for tripping hazards such as exposed footings, roots, rocks, etc. Provide a digital signature at the end of the report to confirm completion of the maintenance inspection.
In this article
- The Advantages of Using a Mobile Playground Safety Checklist
- Mobile Software for Playground Safety
- Featured Playground Safety Checklists
The Advantages of Using a Mobile Playground Safety Checklist
The primary purpose of a playground inspection is to ensure that they present safe play conditions and that appropriate measures are being taken to reduce the risk of injury to children and other occupants. Having an effective checklist is only one of many factors for adequate playground safety. Safety issues often arise and go unnoticed due to a lack of protocol or faulty implementation.
Traditional playground inspections done by pen and paper lack the efficiency, versatility, and automation of good playground inspection software. By using SafetyCulture (formerly iAuditor), playground safety inspectors can improve their inspection process to get more audits done with less effort. A good mobile app can help streamline maintenance and inspection processes so playground safety is never compromised:
- Never miss a scheduled inspection
By setting up a schedule, an effective mobile app can send an automatic email and push notifications to assigned personnel so inspections are done on time, proactively identifying safety hazards and taking timely measures to eliminate them. - Easily share visual data and evidence
Detailed notes are important. But sometimes, a picture is better at conveying context in information. Take pictures of notables such as a rusty metal point on the slide, loose bolts in the seesaw, and other damaged or maldesigned equipment and annotate them. Including visual data helps with accuracy in reporting. - Assign corrective actions on the go
Using the traditional paper checklist for safety inspections require assigned inspectors to contact repairmen through third-party means, e.g., text, call, or email. This may result in communication breakdown due to a lack of timely reception and response. A good mobile app lets inspectors assign actions to responsible personnel so they can be informed of the problem and its priority level in real time. - Instantly generate and share reports after the inspection
Compiling inspection findings in a report and sharing them with the right personnel consists of multiple steps. The longer the process, the higher the likelihood of mistakes and problems due to neglect. Using an effective mobile playground checklist allows inspectors to instantly share digital reports so the responsible person can have access to the information anytime, anywhere. - No more data loss
Keeping records on paper can be costly and time-consuming. Not to mention the effort and space needed to organize and file them for easy access. A good mobile app stores your information via the cloud for easy, portable access.
Mobile Software for Playground Safety
SafetyCulture is all of the above, and then some. As the world’s best mobile inspection app, it is currently being used for more than 50 million inspections in over 80 countries. Use SafetyCulture to ensure playground safety by taking advantage of its powerful features:
- Download ready-to-use playground safety checklists, or easily create and customize your own via Smart Forms.
- Complete inspections on your mobile phone or tablet anytime, anywhere, even if you’re offline. Your data will automatically sync to the cloud once you connect to the internet.
- Integrate SafetyCulture with business intelligence tools to gain additional insights and visualize your data.
Featured Playground Safety Checklists
Daycare Incident Report Checklist
This Daycare Incident Report template can be used to gather necessary facts, photo evidence, and general information about any possible incident that may occur in the daycare. Use SafetyCulture to instantly generate reports and send copies to parents. Feel free to modify this daycare form template to suit your daycare needs.
School Risk Assessment Template Checklist
A school risk assessment template is used to identify hazards in the school environment and their associated risks. It is used by the school management team to assess existing control measures if further actions are needed to eliminate the hazard. Use the following points below to utilize this form:
- Identify any hazards present within school premises.
- List down affected people (e.g., students, teachers, administrators, and other staff ).
- Evaluate how these people might be harmed.
- Determine the existing procedures and evaluate if it follows safe working practices.
- Assess whether the existing controls are enough or recommend further action needs.
- Assign action needs to appropriate personnel.
- Sign off with a digital signature and timestamp to validate the assessment.
SafetyCulture Content Specialist
Jona Tarlengco
