The construction industry has some of the most potentially hazardous working environments. In the last 25 years over 2,800 people have died from injuries received in the workplace in construction. The industry is responding to ensure that it meets Health & Safety at Work legislation and minimises the time lost because of accidents.
Galliford Morgan Joint Venture (GMJV) has taken steps to ensure that its safety systems conform to best practice. They selected CoreRFID to develop their new safety inspection system.
| Client: | Galliford Morgan for Scottish Water
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| Project: | Safety management system
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| Date: | June 2008
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GMJV : Working for Scottish Water
As part of a project to deliver projects for Scottish Water Solutions worth over £270 million, Galliford Try formed a joint venture with Morgan est. The joint venture is dealing with multiple sites with over 1500 projects, stretching from Orkney & Shetlands in the north to Ayrshire in the south.
Both Morgan est and Galliford Try have a strong track record in promoting health and safety at work and as a result of their commitment GMJV have reached and maintained the RoSPA gold standard in Health and Safety in 2007. As part of their approach to health and safety GMJV decided to adopt an innovative approach to monitoring safety inspections using RFID tags as a way of prompting the correct actions and providing clear accountability for the checks made.
GMJV chose CoreRFID to develop and supply the application and the related RFID technology.
As a result of implementing the system, GMJV have rapid feed-back on the results of safety inspections with clear visibility of the safety status of each site. Individual inspectors that have cleared or queried aspects of a site’s safety can be identified. Data is collected that can provide insight to emerging trends on safety issues across the sites and inspectors have the assistance to ensure that safety checks are carried out consistently.
CoreRFID developed the PDA and web based application elements and supplied the network enabled PDA’s, the RFID reader equipment and the RFID tags needed to implement the system.
The GMJV Health & Safety System
At the heart of the system is an easy to use application that runs on a compact, hand held computer and collects data aboutthe conformance of individual sites to a range of different inspection routines.
GMJV uses Symbol MC35 PDA computers. Although eventually intended to be used to provide safety checking regimes for individual assets, the GMJV system has been introduced in a way that has proved both simple in operation and effective in delivering results. All GMJV safety inspectors have their own identifying tag and at each site tags are attached to the site’s safety board for each of the inspection routines (scaffold inspection,
excavation inspection, Audit 25, Audit 100, and so on) to be carried out.
“This system provides easy to use prompting for safety inspections of plant at many different sites, helping us to meet our commitments to improving safety at work.” Keith Gordon, Head of Health & Safety,Galliford Morgan Joint Venture
The inspector signs on to the application on the PDA by scanning their unique personal RFID tag and entering their PIN. After logging on, the user can scan the RFID tag relating to a specific safety check profile at the site in question. This calls up the details of the inspection to be carried out and validates that the inspector has indeed visited the site.
Each step in the inspection selected by the site tag is prompted by the application, the inspector is asked to respond by selecting items from pull down menus or by entering values as needed.
Once the inspection is completed the inspector signs off the results and submits them either immediately or (because some GMJV sites have limited GPRS, wifi or 3G connectivity) later. The PDA application takes care of transmitting the data for consolidation using whatever transmission media are available.
Data sent from the PDA application, including the image of the inspector’s signature, is collected in a MySQL database. Enquiry and reporting facilities, accessible through a web interface provide feedback on the safety status of sites. Users can, depending on their permissions, access details of all inspections for a given site, all of a given type, or all by a particular inspector. Reports include a safety status report that rates aspects of the site’s safety red, yellow or green based on a scoring mechanism and collects data regarding remedial action agreed during the inspection so that it can be followed up.
The Benefits
The benefits are:
- Attributable data on site safety.
- Rugged & easy to use.
- Reduced paperwork.
- Time-stamped data.
- Ensures consistent inspections and avoids ommissions.
- Information collated to provide a business wide picture.
- Immediate visibility of safety critical sites.