Overview
A spot check is the walk-around record: an ad-hoc compliance observation made on the spot — of a machine, or of a site — outside the scheduled rhythm of pre-starts. It's how a supervisor's "I looked at this today, and here's what I found" becomes part of the audit record rather than a mental note.
Where a pre-start is the operator's structured, checklist-driven gate before using a machine, a spot check is the oversight layer on top: unscheduled, freeform, and made by the people whose job is checking the checkers.
Before you start
- Plan
- Included where your plan or add-ons carry the spot-checks capability
- Role
- Typically Supervisors and site officers — anyone your organisation equips to record oversight
- The mobile app (fleet spot checks) or the Go site app (site officers)
Recording a spot check
- 1
Start a spot check against a machine (open it in the app, or scan its GoTag) or against a site — every spot check is anchored to one or the other.
- 2Choose the outcome — the four-level scale below.
- 3
Add notes and photos — the substance of what you saw. Location is captured with the record.
- 4Submit. Spot checks are append-only: once recorded, they're permanent and unedited.
The four outcomes
| Outcome | Use it when |
|---|---|
| Compliant | Looked, and it's right — a positive record, not a non-event |
| Observation | Worth noting, no action strictly required |
| Warning | A problem needing correction — raised with the people responsible |
| Non-compliant | A clear breach — the strongest finding |
Recording compliant outcomes matters more than it feels like it should: an audit trail of "checked and fine" is evidence of active oversight, where silence proves nothing.
Where spot checks surface
- The machine or site record carries its spot checks alongside the rest of its history.
- Site officers using the Go app see and record spot checks for their site.
- The Spot-check Summary report rolls outcomes up across the fleet — the periodic answer to "is oversight actually happening, and what is it finding?" See Reports.
- Recorded spot checks notify the relevant responsible people.
Spot check, pre-start, or defect?
- Machine about to be operated → pre-start (the operator's job, gated by the interlock).
- You found a specific fault → raise a defect — a spot check notes that you checked; the defect is the actionable record of what's wrong, with its own lifecycle. Recording both is often right: the warning-level spot check plus the defect it uncovered.
- Oversight of anything else — housekeeping, behaviour, site conditions around equipment → spot check.
For site-safety observations unrelated to equipment compliance (a trip hazard, a missing barrier), Builders' site teams use Observations, which carry their own review lifecycle.
Edge cases
- Offline — spot checks queue and sync like the rest of the field record.
- Append-only means append-only — a wrong outcome is corrected by a follow-up spot check saying so, never by editing history.
- Cross-org sites — a site officer's spot check on a contractor's machine records against the machine, visible to the people responsible for it.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| No spot-check option in the app | The capability isn't on your plan, or not your role | Check with your admin — see Plans Overview |
| Can't edit a submitted spot check | Append-only by design | Record a follow-up spot check with the correction |
| A finding needs action tracking | Spot checks don't have a lifecycle | Raise a defect (equipment) or an observation (site) for the actionable record |