The industrial sector must navigate complex environments and worker management protocols to ensure that safety is embedded into every corner and crevice of every facility. People are, as McKinsey highlights, the core of the successful operation and the true value within any organization, so manufacturers are actively looking for tools that can help workers connect, collaborate and operate effectively.
Enter Permit to Work (PTW), a work system designed specifically for worker safety in multiple environments. A Permit to Work (PTW) strategy document and system is highly agile and adaptable to ensure worker safety and measurable risk reductions in hazardous or non-standard working conditions. It wraps itself around high-risk activities and facilities like an intelligent shield, ensuring that communication and planning are seamless and visible so that employees are protected, and processes safely managed. It provides companies with a systematic approach to authorize controlled work in non-standard and potentially hazardous conditions.
The challenges of hazardous working environments
Worker safety is an ongoing challenge for many companies operating with hazardous materials or within risky environments. Management and workers require consistent guidelines and best practice when it comes to dealing with:
- Hot work such as welding, soldering, or using hot flame devices or techniques
- Working at heights
- Managing excavation, mining, or digging
- Fire safety and alarm management and implementation
- Chemical or acid work
- Live electricity or electricity supply work
Every one of these situations can present a risk to workers and assets. Everyone is part and parcel of the working environment within the facility. This is where GOARC’s PTW solution steps in. An intelligent and well-designed solution ensures that every task comes with the correct documentation, management, operational protocols, and processes. This guarantees that only the right people are authorized to work in specific areas or on particular types of projects – people who have the expertise and are assessed against a clearly defined risk assessment protocol.
Workers need absolute clarity around their roles, and management needs visibility into the work floor, precisely what GOARC’s PTW brings to hazardous and complex working environments.
Understanding the value of a Permit to Work solution
Hazardous environments will always be a fact of life within the industrial sectors, so it makes sense to use a PTW solution that understands exactly what the risks are and how to manage them. GOARC’s optimal risk management with a PTW solution provides:
- A systematic process that authorizes controlled work in specific conditions
- A robust risk management solution with hazard identification, isolation management, and safety protocols
- A single source for all PTW applications with a view of all permits in the field
- An integrated, real-time analysis and cumulative risk assessment with predictive and prescriptive analytics
- Consistent real-time risk visualization across all safety and process-related data
- Systems that can adapt with agility and immediacy to changing conditions between sites
- A combined PTW and risk assessment solution into one system to create an approval workflow that aligns with internal business policies
Using the GOARC Safety 4.0 Permit To Work solution based on dynamic forms and adaptive to changing conditions between sites, companies gain access to a platform that supports the entire PTW process from sites to tasks to worker allocation. The solution puts all the PTW applications in one place so that any overlapping permits and safety hazards are automatically identified, and the relevant teams notified. This allows for dynamic work reallocation to keep the crew safe and productive while ensuring that everyone – from the CFO to the field worker – can see the complete list of activities, applications, and safety hazards on a visualized, real-time command center.
The value of this granular level of detail lies in optimized risk management, real-time communication, 24/7/365 worker safety and optimizing asset management. It’s a comprehensive and cohesive approach to reach operational excellence.
The value of GOARC
The GOARC Safety 4.0 Permit To Work gives the organization all these benefits and quite a bit more. This PTW solution offers single-source access to an integrated system on a dedicated control screen that shows all existing work permits at every stage of their execution – from creation to monitoring to hazards to changes. The platform uses real-time data to form a deep analysis and identify best and most effective workflow lowering possible risk and increasing productivity.
Data is available from the connected workers history, equipment, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and other technologies 24/7 and is constantly refreshed, enabling smart and rapid data-based decisions. Adaptive to changing conditions that may vary between sites and with an on-hold permit status option (hazardous work conflict / future planning, overlap between permits, etc.), the solution prompts workers to systematically assess the site for potential risks prior to starting work.
The GOARC Safety 4.0 platform has been developed to provide organizations within the heavy industry sector with the tools and resources they need to transform operations and benefit from AI. The platform is as unique as the companies it serves, offering you the ability to process data from IT, the Internet of Things (IoT), devices, workers, and systems in real-time, applying AI to identify risk and recommend action. GOARC has helped reduce work accidents and increase safety engagement in workforces around the world, delivering measurable savings in costs alongside impressive reductions in work incidents and permit to work processes. Find out more about how this platform can change your operational future here.
