For complete monitoring, alerting and communications control, think PIE.
There are never enough hours in the day for the senior person in charge of their company’s health and safety. They’re faced with a barrage of complexity, critical systems, lone workers to keep safe, and compliance. What they really want is confidence, peace of mind and some of their time back – and if that all comes at an affordable price then so much the better.
Every company is different, but the busy health & safety manager can still organise their requirements and solutions in the same structured way. At Isle Systems we call this the PIE approach. It stands for People, Infrastructure and Equipment, the three main areas that you need to cover. When you think about it this way, you might find you need to fix one area, or two of them. Alternatively, you might need to address all three areas and decide that a unified system is the way to go.
People
Your risk assessment starts with your people. If you have lone workers above a certain threshold then you're obliged to supply them with something that keeps them safe. The question is, what something? To answer this, you need to ask more questions around the type of monitoring, alerting and communications you need to have in place for your industry, your regulations and your company.
What information do my lone workers need to receive and relay back? Where are they? If there’s an emergency, what’s the best way of them reaching someone? What specific device do they need, and does it comply with industry regulations? Do they need push to talk or ‘walkie talkie’ capability on their device? What if they’ve fallen down, what automatic systems can we trigger to alert the responders? How will we pinpoint exactly where they are? How should we process the alerts? What communication protocols will we use with responders? How will responders acknowledge? How will we manage all of this?
Answers to these questions will help you diagnose exactly what you need to secure the lone working function in your business and protect your lone workers.
Infrastructure
While your staff and your lone workers are your human assets, you also have a range of physical assets to protect. Your buildings and your transportation or distribution systems house these assets.
Again, as with people, it pays to ask questions about your infrastructure to help identify your requirements. What and where are the buildings and transportation systems? What types of assets are we protecting? Where are the fire alarms located? How many are there? Where and how do the alarms get processed? What is the response? How do we monitor the alarms? What types of intruder alarms do we have? Where are they located? Where and how do the intruder alarms get processed? What is the response?
If the fire and intruder alarm systems are separate, then it’s also worth examining the costs and benefits of integrating them into one system for the whole of your infrastructure, but also to accommodate the systems for your people and your equipment. Using a unified system will be quicker, more coordinated and more cost-effective.
Equipment
That leaves the physical assets themselves: the machines, equipment and other tools which are key to your operational wellbeing. Just as you need to safeguard your lone workers, so too do you need to safeguard your lone machines. Advances in automation increase the amount of critical systems, and also the number of lone workers to manage them, so your requirements for monitoring, alerting and communication increase with these advances.
What does the audit of your equipment look like? Which machinery is critical to your operations? Which machines are connected to your monitoring systems? Which machines are standalone? How can you connect to the sensors on your equipment so that you get instant alerts and can quickly respond to equipment failure? Where are your responders at any point? Which responder is best placed to respond to which equipment failure? How will you know when the equipment is fully functional again? How will you manage and report on equipment up-time and reliability?
The quicker you can respond to faulty equipment, the more you can maintain your operational up-time and productivity.
For more help with securing the monitoring, alerting and communications for your PIE – people, infrastructure and equipment – or to discuss your challenges and requirements, contact us.
