Intelligent Safety for Today's Safety Leaders

Safety is always at the height of concern for executive, and often top the agenda for leadership meeting across boardrooms and department gatherings. Still, the challenge in the digital age for many organizations is access to timely and relevant information to make informed decisions. Many organizations are still tethered to trailing information that can be as late as 90 days. While this information has usefulness, relying on this information to make decisions is a tenuous exercise. Without exception, this information only allows you to be reactive. It is replete with human biases and minimal data and a lack of contextual information.

With the emergence of Industry 4.0 which has afforded us tools such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Machine Learning (ML), Machine Vision (MV), Image Recognition (IR), we now have access to information unlike we have ever had before. Information that can often be provided in near real-time, in the worst case, and real-time in other instances. Each of these tools make available a level of sophistication that provides insights that are paving the way to a safer and more efficient workplace.

Intelligent Safety (IS) is a phrase coined by myself during a research effort where I discovered the impact of traditional safety data collection practices on the resulting data being captured. Data that was being used to drive business and operational decision across industry. During this exercise I discovered that human biases, human error, and the lack of comprehensive data were driving decisions that often did not address the underlying root causes of issues and thus, only offered a superficial solution to a far more complex problem.

The term Intelligent Safety (IS) was born out of this revelation. IS is the practice of providing on-demand consumption of actionable safety data from an occupational and operational environment to ALL stakeholders requiring such data. It is earmarked by several critical capabilities. First, it must provide the digital scalability to integrate with an organizations digital infrastructure and comply with ISA95 standards. Next, it must be able to deliver real-time to near real-time information; on-demand. Finally, it must deliver five critical capabilities; 1) Autonomous Monitoring, 2) Near Real-Time Alerts, 3) Autonomous Documentation, 4) On-Demand Reporting, and 5) Data Analytics. Below is a brief description of each of these capabilities;

MONITORING: Monitors your operation 24/7 | ALERTS: Delivers alerts for serious risks (violations) | DOCUMENTATION: Autonomous documentation of all risks in your operation | REPORTS: Generates reports on demand and ready for distribution | ANALYTICS: Provides real time analysis on demand.

From the board room to the shop supervisor, IS makes it possible to migrate safety from its traditional havens of HSSEQ to the point of incident. Meaning, the behaviors that create the risks and are at most risk for injury and accidents, are now given the information to understand those risks and behaviors to effect change and improvements. IS makes it possible to deliver systems, tools, and techniques that are flexible, scalable and sustainable. Organizations are given the ability to understand the state of safety in real-time and can consume this information on-demand.

Like any enterprise system, IS must deliver enough organizational improvements to justify making the change from traditional safety. As such, IS significantly delivers on this expectation. There are three primary areas in which IS excels; efficiency improvements, cost savings, and safety performance improvements. IS has demonstrated operational efficiency improvements that range from 10% to as much as 20%. The reason for these improvements rises out of the lack of absenteeism due to accidents and injuries, a safer work environment, improved employee moral created by the visible investment the company in making in their safety and wellbeing. The company enjoys the benefits of cost savings through lower insurance premiums, reduced workers compensation claims, reduced headcount, and reduced medical claims. It is estimated that IS systems conservatively represent a fulltime equivalent (FTE) of 4-5 safety personnel for each location of implementation. Finally, IS has demonstrated safety performance improvements in the range of 60 to 75%.

IS is here, and is allowing organizations to implement exceptional safety programs that is delivering on the lofty goals of GoalZero, Zero Incidents, and other safety initiatives.

For more information about IS and its application contact Lance Beloney Sr.; [email protected] | (281) 753-7992

The most advanced IS platforms available is Detect Technologies T-Pulse platform. T-Pulse serves as the gold standard of IS platforms. It delivers on every requirement of Intelligent Safety.