01
Construction and erection
- Receipt of blades, hub, nacelle and tower sections
- Electromechanical erection, level by level
- Torque of bolted joints and flanges
- Punch list and turbine commissioning
Inspection and Audits for Wind Farms
At a wind farm, every tower is a workplace tens of metres above the ground: erection has to be checked part by part, technicians only climb anchored and with rescue in place, and maintenance covers gearbox, generator, yaw and pitch on every visit. With dozens of turbines spread across the ridge, each one has to be checked with the same rigour as the first.
From foundation to blade tip, every check in a single app
At a wind farm, every tower is a workplace tens of metres above the ground: erection has to be checked part by part, technicians only climb anchored and with rescue in place, and maintenance covers gearbox, generator, yaw and pitch on every visit. With dozens of turbines spread across the ridge, each one has to be checked with the same rigour as the first.
02
Work at height and rescue
- Anchor points and lifeline
- Harness, lanyards and fall arresters
- Rescue kit at the task and trained team on site
- Service lift, ladders and hatches
03
Operation and maintenance
- Uptower and downtower activities
- Annual preventive: gearbox, generator, yaw and pitch
- Hydraulic system, brake and slip ring
- Met mast: guy wires, sensors and data logger
04
Substation and environment
- Cables, switchgear and MV network
- Lockout of hazardous energy and rotor
- Environmental permit and erosion
- Bird, bat and noise monitoring
In wind, the evidence has to come down the tower
If the manufacturer or the insurer asked right now for the torque record of the last erection, how long would your team take to find it? With Smart apps, every check is recorded at the tower level where it was done, with photos, time and technician, ready to be looked up.
Work happens at height
Nacelle tens of metres up, blades reached by rope, a met mast at the end of the track. No signal at the top: the inspection is recorded before coming down.
Every bolt counts
A bolt with no torque on record, an anchor point nobody inspected, a gearbox leak. What failed shows up later, and only the evidence shows what was done.
Several teams in one tower
Erection crew, manufacturer, O&M team and blade technicians climb the same nacelle in different weeks. Each one has to leave the record where the next will find it.
History is per turbine
The manufacturer asks for the history for the warranty, the insurer after a claim, and the labour inspectorate checks height work and rescue. Each request differs, and all of them have to come from each turbine's record.
What happens after the finding is written down
Recording the issue is the easy part and almost everyone already does it. What fails is what comes next: who handles it, by when, with what evidence, and how anyone knows it will not come back.
The record arrives late
The preventive visit is noted in a grease-stained notebook inside the nacelle and typed into a spreadsheet days later. The photo of the leak stayed on the phone of whoever climbed.
The action has no owner
The erection snag stays on the supplier's punch list or in an e-mail to the manufacturer. With no owner and no deadline, the tower goes into operation with it still open.
Nobody chases the deadline
Chasing depends on someone remembering to go and check. Usually they remember the day the client asks.
The close has no evidence
Saying it was resolved is easy. Showing the state before, the action taken and the state after is another matter.
Nobody knows what repeats
Without a classification or a cause, leading-edge erosion on six blades across three towers counts as six isolated cases.
Management asks and waits
Which towers have open items, for how many days and in which subsystem. The field supervisor knows, and only over the phone.
What the law requires from tower to wind farm
In Brazil, turbine fall protection is inspected at least every 12 months, with records kept 5 years; machine maintenance is recorded; NR-10 requires a file holding inspections; and the licence requires fauna monitoring.
Height and rescue
- Periodic inspection of the fall protection system at least every 12 months (NR-35, 35.6.6.3)
- Initial and periodic inspections recorded; routine ones only when a component is rejected (NR-35, 35.6.6.4)
- Emergency and rescue team sized for rescue at height (NR-35, 35.7.1, a))
- NR-35 documentation kept for at least 5 years (NR-35, 35.3.1, j))
Lifting equipment
- Maintenance «registradas em livro próprio, ficha ou sistema informatizado» (NR-12, 12.11.2)
- Operator's start-of-shift routine check: no record required (NR-12, 12.14.2.1)
- Wind farm erection: daily crane inspections «realizadas e registradas» (NR-18, 18.10.1.32)
- Ropes, chains, sheaves and hooks inspected continuously, with no record required (NR-11, 11.1.3.1)
Electrical and LOTO
- NR-10 wording in force until 31/05/2027 ; the new wording renumbers the items
- Electrical installation file mandatory above 75 kW of installed load (NR-10, 10.2.4)
- The file holds the «relatório técnico das inspeções atualizadas com recomendações» (10.2.4, g))
- De-energise: disconnect, prevent re-energising, confirm absence of voltage, earth (10.5.1)
Permit conditions
- Wind farm licence: Res. CONAMA 462/2014 and the state agency rule, cited by name only
- Santa Catarina example: fauna monitored 12 months before and «durante toda a operação» (IN-53, An. 4)
- SC: bird species richness, abundance and behaviour in the airspace (IN-53, Annex 4, item 3.4)
- Report frequency comes from the operating licence conditions and varies by state
From street to management system, in four moves
It's the same sequence in all four domains, whether a safety inspection, a works audit or the periodic check of a harness.
Capture
In the field, on the phone, with or without a connection. What is not captured on the spot gets rebuilt from memory, hours later, back at the office.
Evidence it
Photo marked up and captioned, signature identified, time and coordinates, tied to the item they evidence instead of bundled in at the end.
Handle
The nonconformity leaves the field already with type, priority, due date, owner and a 5W2H action plan.
Deliver
Dashboard for management, report in your branding, and the process opened inside the management system , yours or your client's.
What the inspection subject can be
A work front, a network asset, equipment or PPE with its holder, a material batch. Each with its own record and accumulated history, instead of a loose document per check.
The rule is in the model
Conditionals, weights, severity, mandatory evidence, calculated items and exit rule. The same inspection gives the same result with any technician.
The finding has a flow
From finding to proven closure, with a trail of who did what and when. Where there is SoftExpert, the process opens inside it by native integration .
The whole inspection fits on the phone
Evidence that holds up in an audit
One work-site inspection produces dozens of photos. Whoever opens them a year from now has to see, unaided, what each one evidences.
Mark and caption
Free pen in six colours over the image itself, captioned at the moment of the inspection.
The mark survives the PDF
What was drawn on the phone enters the document as a numbered table, tied to the evidence number and to the answer that raised it.
No inspection closes half-finished
The system counts what is missing and says who has to sign. Usually two people: the inspector and whoever answered for the work front.
Open items in view
Unanswered questions, mandatory fields left blank, pending result and missing signature, counted by the system before it lets you close.
Signature with context
Name, e-mail, ID document and location captured at the moment of signing.
Calculated result
Score and rating applied by the model's rule, identical across every site and every crew.
Only then, closed
No open items and no missing signatures. Until then the inspection stays in progress, visible to whoever ordered it.
From checklist to certificate, with nothing to write up afterwards
The certificate and the technical sheet come from the same checklist the team filled in on site. What was answered, photographed and signed becomes the final document, in the company template.
Answer
Each item with its answer, numbered evidence and who answered.
Conclude
The conclusion and the issues go into the document, with category and description.
Sign
The inspector's signature, with date, time and location.
Issue
Certificate or technical sheet in the company template, with instance number and revision.
The certificate comes from the checklist
Nobody copies answers into a separate document. What is in the certificate is what was recorded on site.
One checklist, several documents
Report, certificate and technical sheet from the same answers, each in its own template.
No stray versions
Instance number and revision on every page: the client always knows which certificate they received.
Your inspection standard, applied the same by every crew
What today depends on the inspector's experience becomes a rule in the system, the same on every front and with any technician.
Conditional answers
Before the first question, the inspection asks where the work is: uptower, downtower, on the blade or at the substation. Then it shows only what applies there. Questions nobody would answer disappear.
Weights and scoring
Each item is worth what it has to be worth, so the score reflects how critical the failure was rather than item count.
Calculated items
Formulas that combine answers and return the result on the spot, with no side maths.
Score evaluation
Rating bands that you define, applied automatically when the inspection closes.
Answer severity
A single critical item, such as missing PPE, fails the whole inspection.
Validation rules
Minimum and maximum ranges, mandatory evidence and justification, checked on the device.
The nonconformity leaves the field with an owner and a date
Finding the nonconformity is the start. What the operator charges for, and what you sell, is the record that someone closed it on time.
Opens on site
The noncompliant item opens the issue during the inspection, with the photo, the place and who found it.
Classifies
Type, priority and due date set by the process rule, the same on any front.
Handles
Named owner, 5W2H action plan, controlled deadline and automatic chasing.
Evidence
Auditable timeline: who did what, when, and with what evidence attached.
Nothing waits for someone to remember
Deadlines coming due, issues with no owner and overdue actions show on the dashboard and in the alert before the client asks.
Expand your ecosystem
The field record enters SoftExpert as a process
Native SoftExpert integration
Smart apps and SoftExpert have partnered for over twenty years. The integration is native, built by people who work on both sides, not a connector bolted on from outside.
01
Mobile execution
Inspection or audit completed on the phone, with evidence, answers and item context.
02
Server orchestration
SmartApp receives the closure, validates the package and prepares the integration send.
03
Integration queue
Async processing with status, retry and history for every submission.
04
SoftExpert workflow
Opens or updates the native SoftExpert process — no file export/import.
05
Occurrences and actions
Deviations follow the existing nonconformity flow, with evidence and owner.
06
Dashboards, portals and reports
Management follow-up, synced checklist portal and report attached to the process.
The record is already inside SoftExpert
Follow-up portal, answer grids, deviation with evidence and history for every send — in SoftExpert.
Every occurrence type has a workflow of its own
You create the occurrence types yourselves, and each one carries its own workflow. Below are four examples, not a closed list: a support ticket and an audit nonconformity are not handled the same way.
Nonconformity
Record · Root cause · Actions · Effectiveness check
Environmental anomaly
Record · Handling · Approval · Effectiveness check
Improvement opportunity
Record · Analysis · Actions
Support ticket
Record · Handling · Closure
From root cause to a verified close
This is where a digitised inspection parts ways with a good-looking report: the finding gets a method of analysis, a plan with an owner and a deadline, and a check that confirms the result.
Reports, inspection certificates and technical sheets, with your branding
The same checklist produces the document each reader needs: a report for management, a certificate for the end client and the asset technical sheet for the auditor. Nobody puts anything together in a rush the day before.
Report, certificate or technical sheet
Each document type has its own template: fields, order, logo and visual identity. You pick the template; nobody assembles the document by hand.
Numbered, traceable evidence
Each photo has its own number, linked to the item that required it, with who answered, date, time and coordinates.
Log of issues raised
Nonconformities listed at the end, with category and description, ready for the end client and the auditor.
Instance and revision in the footer
Every report carries the instance number and the revision on each page. No doubt about which version the client received.
The whole process in five steps
Dedicated features for every need.
01
Design the checklist
Your own checklists
Sections, items, weights and rules from your standard
Conditional answers
The right question at the right moment
Validation rules
Limits, mandatory fields and blocking
Calculated items
Formulas solved by the system
02
Run it in the field
Web and mobile execution
Offline by default, on iOS and Android
Complete evidence
Photo, audio, video, signature and GPS
03
Score and rate
Weights and scoring
The score reflects real criticality
Score evaluation
Rating bands applied automatically
Answer severity
A critical item fails the whole set
04
Handle the deviation
Configurable handling workflows
A workflow of its own for each occurrence type
Root-cause analysis tools
Ishikawa 6M, with the root cause flagged
Action plan and effectiveness
5W2H and effectiveness check with evidence
05
Govern and integrate
SoftExpert integration
Native, with governance and history
Customisable reports and inspection certificates
With issues, images and your company branding
Spreadsheet import
Initial load with no typing
Users and crews
Scope and permissions by profile
Traceability and audit
A complete trail of who did what
Take digital to the field. Bring the evidence back.
Contact
Book a conversation
SmartApp for Wind
Tell us about the operation. We will follow up with the best evaluation path.