Describe the excavation, crew, and conditions. Makeform creates a digital pre-work checklist for utility markings, protective controls, safe access, changing conditions, and review before work begins.
Send checks to Slack, Google Sheets, and Zapier.
Sample prompts for the builder
Choose a prompt, adapt it to your procedure, or send it to the builder. Review the example structure before publishing.
Audience
Civil crews starting a new shift
Format
Mobile pre-start checklist with review sign-off
Prompt size
374 chars
Example checklist structure
Mobile pre-start checklist with review sign-off
Project, excavation location, and shift
Utility-locate reference and marking photos
Protective system and access verified?
Hazards, water, or changed conditions found?
Competent-person review
Suggested routing tags
Ready to excavate
Control missing
Review required
Ask for the utility-locate reference and clear photos of markings; a checked box alone does not show crews what was verified.
Step 1
Identify
location, work, services, and conditions
Step 2
Verify
access, protection, equipment, and barriers
Step 3
Resolve
stop, document, and assign missing controls
Step 4
Release
reviewed status shared with the crew
Before the first bucket
Tie every answer to a location, shift, reviewer, and photos, with a clear released, restricted, or correction-required status.
Capture the locate reference, markings, affected services, and photos instead of relying on another shift's verbal confirmation.
Record observed soil, water, loads, protection, access, and edge controls for the excavation being checked.
For no, unknown, or changed answers, require an issue, photo, owner, and review status.
Built for field decisions
Show relevant questions for the stage, location, and work type selected by the crew.
Confirm scope, locates, protection, access, equipment separation, and release before digging.
Record the incoming lead, changed area, open corrections, and briefing.
Identify each grid line, trench run, or pit separately and give every area its own status and supporting photos.
Recheck after weather, vibration, damage, or another meaningful change.
Checklist workflow
Build around your procedure, test exception paths, and give crews one mobile link.
Name work types, controls, reviewers, and reinspection triggers. The draft turns the brief into ordered questions.
Add site wording, project dropdowns, photos, and follow-ups for unsafe or unknown answers.
Submit safe and failed checks. Confirm an exception cannot skip its issue description.
Share the link or QR code, notify the reviewer, and route records for follow-up.
Digital vs paper
Compare how each method records decisions and exceptions.
Field guide
Start with these six sections, then align wording and decision rules with your site procedure.
Scope and ownership
Make clear which opening the record covers. Capture its location, task, dimensions, shift, crew lead, and reviewer.
Utilities and surroundings
Record locates and markings, plus overhead lines, adjacent structures, road users, pedestrians, and exposed services.
Ground and protection
Ask for current observations. Cracks, sloughing, vibration, water, nearby loads, or damage can change the entry decision.
Access and work zone
Check access separately so a missing ladder or blocked ramp is visible. Include equipment routes, swing areas, edges, and materials.
People and conditions
Connect controls to the people working around the excavation. Record the briefing, PPE, communications, and any planned atmospheric testing.
Exceptions and release
For a no answer, capture what is missing, attach evidence, assign the correction, and require a new review decision.
Related tools
Build related forms for inspections, observations, equipment, incidents, progress, and maintenance.
Inspect site controls, housekeeping, and assigned corrections.
Open toolRecord observed tasks, conditions, and follow-up items.
Open toolCheck excavators, loaders, and other equipment before use.
Open toolSummarize work, delays, site conditions, and next steps.
Open toolFAQ
Answers for safety leads building a digital crew workflow.
It is a pre-work record for the location, scope, utilities, ground, protection, access, equipment, barriers, crew, and review decision. It supports the site process but does not replace competent assessment or organizational requirements.
Complete it before excavation or entry and repeat it when your procedure requires. Triggers may include a new shift, rain, vibration, water, ground movement, protective-system damage, a utility conflict, or another meaningful change.
Show a stop-work or restricted-status message, then require the issue, immediate action, photo, owner, and review status. Resume only through the responsible organization's decision process.
Yes. Request photos of utility markings, faces, access, protection, spoil, barriers, water, and defects. Label each request so reviewers know what the image demonstrates.
Yes. Use an excavation-type dropdown and conditional sections. Branch further for entry, utilities, mobile equipment, and changed conditions.
Match reviewer fields to your responsibility structure. Capture the crew lead and designated reviewer as appropriate, with role, time, comments, and status. A signature does not replace the inspection.
Yes. Makeform provides unlimited free forms and responses, so you can generate, edit, publish, and collect repeated excavation checks without a response cap. A paid tier is available only to remove the Makeform badge.
Submissions arrive in the Makeform inbox and can route to Google Sheets, Slack, or Zapier. Consistent fields make open corrections easier to find.
Make every pre-start specific to the excavation.
