BiltOn Permit-to-Work: Foreman App

A self-initiated concept, not commissioned by BiltOn. A mobile permit-to-work app for the foreman on site, designed and built end to end with Claude Code. 2026.

Why I built it

Permit-to-work tools are usually designed for the person approving a permit at a desk. I wanted to design for the person raising it: a foreman on site, on a phone, often in gloves, with a signal that comes and goes, who wants to finish the form and get back to work.

What it does

Ten permit types, including Hot Work, Confined Space Entry, Work at Height, Electrical Isolation and Excavation. Each has its own safety checklist, and each field can be required, critical, or submission-blocking. An unsafe gas-test result blocks the permit the same way a missing rescue plan does. Photo evidence goes through an in-app camera with tap-to-annotate pins. The app is a single HTML file that saves to local storage, so it keeps working offline.

Decisions I made

Duration presets on top of the date pickers.
Setting a start and end date and time is the slowest part of the form on a phone. I kept the pickers for unusual jobs and added presets for the most common work durations, so most permits take one tap.

Stop the form at the wrong answer, not at the end.
The agent’s version checked values only on submit, so the foreman found every problem after filling in the whole form. I moved the check to each field. When an answer makes the work unsafe, it turns red, a message appears under it (“Work cannot proceed. This answer stops the job. The permit cannot be submitted while it stands.”), and the submit button stays disabled until the answer changes.
A note above the disabled button says why, so a foreman at the bottom of the form isn’t left guessing.

Touch targets are at least 44px for gloved hands, and destructive actions like discarding a draft need explicit confirmation.

How I built it

I ran the build through five agent roles in sequence: researcher, designer, developer, QA, and a team lead whose job was to re-check the others’ work. The review caught two real bugs before release: a Close button that said it saved the draft but discarded it, and six safety-critical checklist items, including ventilation, rescue plans and isolation verification, that could be skipped at submission.

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