Enhancing Safety Management - Verified

Managing Safety Risk

A significant component of the clients Australian operations involves staff working in extremely hazardous working conditions to undertake the maintenance of fuel dispensing equipment. If the work was not carefully undertaken, the team would put lives at risk. To maintain the safety of their staff and the public, strict processes and protocols were required to be implemented to ensure risks continued to be effectively controlled. These included:

1. Strict Adherence to Industry Standards: Specifically, completion and record keeping of the Workplace Clearance Group (WPCG) form; an industry standard risk assessment and control form that must be completed every time a contractor does work at a fuel dispensing location.
2. Company Wide Risk Review Measures: Processing, reviewing and strategically analysing the above records to minimise site-by-site safety risks on an ongoing basis.

Whilst the risks were managed, contractors and staff found the existing processes resource-intensive, time-consuming and tedious.

Outdated & Inefficient Processes

The clients administration team were required to process up to 8,000 paper-based WPCG forms every month across thousands of sites. Quality assurance of the forms required significant resource and time allocation and involved confirmation of accurate completion, ensuring industry protocols were followed and risks were identified and managed. Previous attempts to automate and optimize this workflow had failed, with existing solutions:

• Lacking integration with other systems utilized by the business.
• Failing to have a user-friendly interface.
• Implementation time was lengthy and far from seamless.

They quickly realized the potential implications on cost and output quality should they continue with their existing workflow processes and the same technology provider.

The Solution

The fuel manufacturers began its search for improving process inefficiencies. Verified worked collaboratively with the client to draw out their requirements for the WPCG form process, outlining critical requirements for an effective solution:

1. The need for WPCG forms to be fully completed, recorded, and distributed without compromising contractor and staff efficiency.
2. A solution that integrated with their existing work management systems.
3. Ensuring the safety of staff members and the public to attain global safety management leadership.
4. Implementing a solution that was commercially and operationally viable.

The Mapping, Creation & deployment of Verified

After undertaking a deep analysis of the current process, Verified posed a unique solution to managing the WPCG workflow – a custom solution streamlined business processes that neatly integrated into existing systems.

Features included a WPCG form being built on a mobile-device agnostic webpage, allowing contractors in the field to capture all job information remotely. All site-specific information was able to be automatically populated and integrated with their service management system, reducing the amount of data entry errors. Additionally, once forms were uploaded to the Verified’s servers, data was accurately checked and validated. The servers then confirmed whether critical data was accurately captured in the form and did not allow a contractor to sign out of their job until 100% accuracy was reached, completion was attained, and an electronic signature was captured. Electronic confirmation of completion was then sent directly to the work management system and the completed WPCG form was converted into a PDF. With Verified, all data captured became accessible online, 24/7.

Improving safety outcomes

The Verified solution transformed the clients WPCG process workflow as follows:

• The online system resulted in over 8,000 accurate forms being submitted each month.
• The time to complete each form in the field dropped significantly, reducing by 10 minutes per form.
• The streamlined back of house processing removed multiple people from the process, which in turn enhanced staff productivity.

The results from the data capture were instantaneous. All parties could access the data immediately once it was uploaded to Verified. It also resulted in enhanced data integrity and security due to pre-populated form fields and a locked format. Intuitive workflow also reduced both the training and implementation times of deploying the Verified solution.