When we do demonstrations of our safety Forms and Recordkeeping component, we often get asked about what data gets stored with each record, and what reports (or queries) can be run later.  This post is meant to explain the functionality that is within our software, what we have in the works, and what functionality is NOT available in the system that you will need to look elsewhere to compliment the Safety Management System.



The SafetySync recordkeeping module allows you to store the following information (and thus later query):

1. Record Type (from list of Forms)
2. Date
3. Filled In By (from list of Employees)
4. Job # (a simple text field)
5. Location (from a list of Locations in the system or "Other"-which allows text to be entered)
6. Deficiencies (problem discovered, corrective action required, priority level, assignment, due date)

We are currently working on functionality that will also allow you to track (and later query):

7. Equipment # (from a list of Assets/Equipment)

The sorts of reports you can therefore run in the system would include:

• A list of Emergency Drills that were performed in the Edmonton last month (with links to the source record)
• A list of Hazard IDs that had one or more deficiencies discovered by Joe Blow (with links)
• A list of all Safety Meetings performed on job # 12345
• A list of all Inspections that were done on Tank A
• A list of all records that had deficiencies with the string "trip hazard" in them
• A list of all records that had priority levels that were "Critical"
• Etc...

What our forms and recordkeeping system cannot do, is delve into the data that is contained within each record:

• A list of Inspections that identified a pressure reading of 120psi on Pump B
• A list of Safety Meetings which Bob, Joanne and Dave attended
• A list of Emergency Drills that were completed in 2 minutes or less
• And so on...

In order to accomplish the latter, we highly recommend a field data capturing system, along the lines of what Spira Data Corp. offers with their Spira Mobile product.  I have worked with this product in the past and it is extremely flexible and robust, allowing companies to manage accounting, inventory, payroll (and yes even safety data).  Each form in Spira is no longer a piece of paper or an Excel spreadsheet, but an actual data capture tool that later synchronizes all the fields on the form to a database back end.  You can then query and report on any or all the fields on the form.  The form will take longer to build than a simple spreadsheet, but it will populate back-end systems like those used for invoicing and payroll.

The other advantage of Spira Mobile, is that it allows you to easily take the forms "offline" when there is no Internet connection available.  With our software you may occasionally have to print paper copies of certain forms or save them on the hard drive of a laptop or handheld, to be completed and later emailed, faxed or uploaded back to SafetySync.  Spira Mobile takes care of the synchronization automatically.

Spira comes at a cost, but if an organization spends enough time compiling and reporting on data captured in the field, it can be a huge time saver.  Many implementations can pay for themselves in less than a year.  Field data capture for work orders (or field tickets as they are sometimes called) is their specialization.  The return on investment for the forms that initiate the invoicing process are largest because they can significantly shorten your billing cycle (thereby improving your cash flow), and because lost forms or re-keying mistakes can cost the company revenue.  Unfortunately, capturing data on safety forms does not have these same benefits, so the business case is somewhat harder to justify.

If you like the data-capturing functionality offered by the Spira Mobile product, and would like to integrate it with the rest of your safety management system in SafetySync, contact our customer support, or the folks at Spira.

For quite some time, the SAFETYSYNC safety management system has allowed employees and administrators to print a wallet card or wall certificate that lists all the courses which were covered in each employee's basic safety awareness training.

Our system now allows administrators at our oil and gas industry clients to include the crest which states that they are a member of the Enform IRP 16 Registry.  [Our software helps companies with compliance and preparing the self-declaration - but this is a topic for another blog post.]

After receiving your certificate from Enform, upload it to the "Documentation / Credentials" component choosing type "IRP 16 Registry (Basic Safety Awareness Training)".

This will automatically add the "Proud Member of the IRP 16 Registry" crest to the certificates when they print.  We recommend employees carry these cards when accessing most oil company sites (see list of producers supporting IRP 16).  These certificates are particularly important, now that Enform is no longer issuing hard hat stickers.
 

Energy Services BC, PSAC, CAPP and other oil and gas industry assocations in Canada have recently joined forces to develop various standards on nuisance issues that have been the source of ongoing complaints from local landowners in the communities in which oil companies, their contractors, and their employees operate.  Specific issues relate to communication (or lack thereof), dust, gates, garbage, noise and driving.

Oil companies have tried similar community relations programs individually in the past, including Encana's Courtesy Matters, and Murphy Oil's Good Neighbours.  The BC Government spearheaded an industry-wide effort by funding a consultation with local communities, and by calling for a joint registry of oil companies, called Living Together Working Together.  The most recent collaboration is an Canada-wide evolution or extension of that BC initiative, called Community Partners, which has the industry associations and their members working together to remind workers to treat people and property with respect by following a handful of rules. 

Participants in the Community Partners program will be asked to sign and distribute a policy statement, similar to the Petroleum Industry Guiding Principles.  As with all such initiatives, the challenge lies in communicating the policy and practices to employees.  Our software's Policy module is an obvious first step, but we've also created a brief orientation that covers the various nuisance issues and the recommended practices to avoid them.

After viewing the 13 minute orientation, employees are required to pass a 15-question quiz to verify their understanding.  The Community Partners Living Together - Working Together orientation will then show up on the worker's orientation card, which they can present to oil company work site supervisors to demonstrate their compliance with the program.

The lesson and quiz are both available at no cost.  Intersted parties can sign up here.

Administrators can now choose whether a line for the worker's signature is added to the certificates and wallet cards when they print.  In the administrator portal, go to 'Monitoring', then 'Components' in the menu.  Click on 'Safety Awareness Training'; this will bring up the settings for the component.  The last setting at the bottom of the list is new:


The default setting is 'No', meaning that unless the user is printing a TDG certificate, there will only be a spot for the employer's signature.  This is generally more convenient since the worker or an administrator can reproduce the signed certificate at any time from within the system (assuming the employer's signature has been uploaded).  If you choose to add a spot for the worker's signature, reproducing the certificate would mean having to get the certificate in the hands of the worker, then filing away a signed copy (which can be made easier with our certificate tracking module).

Regardless of the setting, a spot for the worker's signature will always be added to Transportation of Dangerous Goods certificates.  This is simply because this requirement is clearly stated in the TDG regulations.

As some of our clients may have noticed, our Safety Management System portal experienced a number of outages on Thursday and Friday of last week (June 3 and 4).  Our data center provider, Rackforce moved our systems to a new building, which began a series of unexpected reboots due to a power distribution unit overload:


These brief but repeated outages would have caused users to become disconnected from the portal.  Many of you logged in again, only to be disconnected once more.  We apologize for this inconvenience and thank you for your patience and understanding of the difficult situation that was entirely beyond our control.

We continue to subscribe to the idea that an outsourced data center is a better home for your critical safety management system application than one maintained on our premises.  We also believe Rackforce to be one of the foremost providers of this service, and that this was an isolated event.  Rackforce and SafetySync personnel will continue to monitor our systems to hopefully avoid future outages.

Thank you for your business and continued support!

I had this question posed to me by a customer today.  Essentially a safety administrator was wondering if a company is required to have employees acknowledge health and safety policies, as our software is designed to do.  The reference to policy communication is hard to find in most jurisdictions, but it is almost aways there.  In Alberta it is in the Occupational Health and Safety Act in section 32 "Written health and safety policies", subsection (c) "...as far as reasonably practicable, inform that person's workers of the policy."

The term "reasonably practicable" is certainly open to interpretation.  Your organization may believe printing policy binders and making them available on bookshelves in the office or shop will suffice.  Our feeling is that a formal acknowledgement, like the one offered in our software will certainly prove due diligence for your policy communication needs.

The topic of policy communication a bit of a concern for organizations that are RAVS certified by ISNetworld.  Essentially you've written health and safety policies and submitted them to ISN for approval, yet because they are long, detailed and dry, you may not have plans to communicate the policies to your employees.  I believe most auditors and courts would subscribe to the idea that those policies that pertain to each worker's health and safety need to be communicated.  Using a couple of examples, only employees working in and around confined space need to be made aware of the confined space policy, and only employees that may be required to work alone need to be made aware of the company's working alone policy.  Our software makes this differentiation by role easy; assign policies only to the positions that are exposed to the hazards in question.

SafetySync takes the policy communication element one step further.  The system allows workers to decline a policy if they do not accept it or understand it.  Our feeling is that it is "reasonably practicable" to allow a worker to take exception to a policy or suggest improvements.  Declines happen only very rarely, but the manager or administrator is immediately notified and can follow up on any concerns, rather than simply assuming everyone accepts a policy as it is written.  Employee input and regular reviews are important parts of safety program development.

British Columbia recently changed the location of their statutes and regulations.  They used to be found at qp.gov.bc.ca however they've recently been moved to bclaws.ca along with a new look and some additional functionality.

 
We updated all the links to the acts, regulations and codes that pertain to health and safety so that any of our client's employees looking for them will automatically be correctly routed from within the software.

I am always surprised by the number and scope of documents available on from each jurisdiction.  There are literally hundreds available, but most are not applicable to health and safety (such as the Floating Manufactured Home Tax Regulation).  That being said, if there are any laws that you feel should be linked in our software that are not yet in place, send us a support request and we'll have it added ASAP.

We have been working closely with the folks at Energy Services BC on a number of initiatives to help educate oil and gas contractor employees on some of the local issues in Northeastern BC.  Aboriginal Awareness training is a subject that many in the region feel is an area for possible improvement.  We have developed a short course and will make it available to all companies operating in the area.

For many service companies, Aboriginal Awareness training is simply a requirement of doing business in the North.  Aboriginal Awareness training is one of the pre-qualification questions in ISNetworld for Cenovus (and possibly other ISN owner clients):

 
Rather than answer "No" to the question, instead enable this course in SAFETYSYNC for your employees and supervisors.  The course is 29 minutes, divided into three lessons:

1. Aboriginal Peoples and their Origins
2. Civilizations, Cultures and Beliefs
3. Politics and Economics

Each lesson is followed with a quiz which tests each worker's comprehension of the material (9, 15 and 18 questions respectively).  As with all our courses, administrators have the choice to specify the pass rate, choose quiz questions, etc.

Please review the course if you feel it applies to your operations.  You can either leave feedback after the quiz, or make suggestions in the blog for each lesson in the Company Administration portal.

Just a quick update to let our client safety management system administrators know that we've added the link to WorkSafe Alberta's eLearning module on Ice Roads called Working Safety on Ice.

I realize it's May already and that all of 2010's ice roads have probably already melted!  The link and quiz are now in the system in case you plan on working on ice roads in the future.  The lesson can be found in the 'Safe Driving Practices' course.

It is not enabled by default, so if your employees work on ice roads in the winter, don't forget to turn it on by checking the box next to "Ice Roads".

In a world where, on occasion, death, injury, and illness at work are hidden away and taken for granted, Workers' Memorial Day is an opportunity to highlight the preventable nature of most workplace accidents and ill health and to promote campaigns and union organisation in the fight for improvements in workplace safety.  Each year, more than two million women and men die as a result of work-related accidents and diseases.  Workers suffer approximately 270 million occupational accidents each year, and fall victim to some 160 million incidents of work-related illnesses.  Hazardous substances kill 440,000 workers annually – asbestos claims 100,000 lives.  One worker dies every 15 seconds worldwide. 6,000 workers die every day. More people die whilst at work than those fighting wars 

April 28 is the day we remember the workers killed, disabled and injured by their work.
The slogan for the day is Remember the dead - Fight for the living

For all you safety managers or company executives out there using our software, today might be a good day to send out a safety bulletin in SAFETYSYNC to let your employees know that you appreciate them, and that you're continually looking out for their safety.