How to tell if a backup is running without console access

I am sure this one is probably pretty easy and I have just never had to address it from this perspective, but say you have a DBA who needs to do some maintenance. I run a full backup for them, but they have no way to know that its done without having access to the console. Is there anything they can do from the client side to that would allow them to see if a backup is running? Basically they could then know once it is done and start their maintenance. My first thought was possibly run bpps -a, but I'm not sure if that would be useful.