Keeping worker safety on track
Welcome to Tended's quarterly newsletter, where we’ll be sharing our latest insights and company news, as well as helpful articles on how to improve worksite safety using technology and behavioural science combined.
This quarter, we’ve been busy launching our geofencing technology on the UK's rail network, transforming the safety of trackside teams whilst helping businesses to comply with Network Rail safety standards. ?
Onsite trial of Tended's revolutionary geofencing technology commences this week
Tended has today started a trial of its geofencing technology with?AmcoGiffen?and its trackside teams.?
The trial comes?after two years of successful geofencing technology development alongside Network Rail’s Safety Task Force.?
The technology has received official product acceptance from Network Rail and Tended is deploying the solution within AmcoGiffen to demonstrate its capabilities in improving site safety and efficiency.
By incorporating Tended’s revolutionary geofencing technology into its daily operations, AmcoGiffen is pioneering the future of safety technology on the railway and leading the way for safer UK rail infrastructure.?
How geofencing is helping organisations comply with standards on the railway
On 3rd September 2022, Network Rail released their latest safety standard (NR/L2/OHS/501 Module W4) which is a module that, for the first time, specifies the requirements for the use of geofencing on the railway.
Geofencing uses positioning technology to create virtual boundaries, allowing businesses to create safe zones to protect workers from hazards. When workers leave their agreed areas of safety, a wearable device alerts them, helping workers immediately regain situational awareness. This provides a signal that they should move back to a position of safety, helping to stop workers from continuing into the path of oncoming trains or other hazards.
By improving trackside safety and reducing accident risk, geofencing is helping businesses to comply with?Network Rail’s Standard 019 as well as Standard 0130.
How to use geofencing to improve site safety
Geofencing can be used as a powerful health and safety tool. In an?earlier post, we explained what geofencing is and how it works, and touched on a few examples of what it can be used for. Here at Tended, we believe that the most important and powerful use of geofencing is to improve worksite safety, ensuring everyone returns home safe from work every day.
Every worksite has safe and unsafe zones, whether pre-defined or not. An unsafe zone is an area on the worksite where a known hazard is present and there is a risk of harm being caused to people working in that space. For example, this might be a section of a construction site where plant is moving around or an open line on a railway.
Using geofencing technology, safe and unsafe zones can be virtually mapped out on an online dashboard over your worksite and wearable devices can then be assigned to these zones.
How technology is bridging the gap between human vulnerability and safe behaviours
Nudge Theory,?introduced by Richard Thaler in 2008, can play a crucial role in health and safety within high-risk industries. The principle is that the ‘right’ behaviours can be influenced by presenting an obvious, but subconscious, choice. The individual is free to make the choice, albeit engineered to be the only ‘real’ option. In this way, the person is ‘nudged’ into a decision, which is generally met with less resistance than direct instruction.
There have been great advances in the use of Nudge Theory in technology to bridge the gap between human vulnerability and safety. This is evident in innovations including?in-vehicle technology?that can detect when a driver is distracted based on their brainwaves and an alert is activated to draw their attention back. These types of nudges are in real-time and provide awareness to the user that they wouldn’t usually be conscious of.
Similarly, Tended’s geofence solution uses wearable technology that nudges the wearer into safe behaviours by alerting them when they have lost spacial awareness and are about to enter a dangerous zone.?
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Who are we?
Tended is transforming safety across high-risk industries by combining revolutionary wearable technology with behavioural science. Developed with Network Rail and approved for use on UK rail infrastructure.
Visit our website to learn more about Tended's revolutionary safety technology.