Permit to Work Manager v2.0 improves safety

Tuesday, 12 July 2005

It's not every day a product comes to the market that could make a significant difference to the way we work. Health and Safety to staff and contractors is always a concerning issue. The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 places an obligation upon employers to provide and maintain safe systems of work to safeguard their staff and contractors.

The HSE's guidelines identified a way of reducing the risk of accidents through the use of a "Permit to Work System" www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg98.pdf. The current method is to use pre-printed permit pads or custom word processing documents. This method works in the short term, but in the long term it causes unnecessary amounts of paper work that needs to be managed, such as retrieving past permits and keeping track of issued permits etc.

If different contractors were working in the same location where one was conducting Hot works and another conducting Gas works, the results could be fatal. There is no automatic conflict checking to see if any other works are being conducted in the same area, no validation on dates or, when a permit expires, who will be aware the permits have not been returned. Equally, the creation of permits is time consuming. How much time is spent writing out the same information time and time again, when a style template could be re-used? This current way of working is very inefficient and prone to human error. It is a known fact that a paper-based system is only as good as the person managing it.

Permit to Work Manager records contractors, work locations, staff safety inductions just once and re-uses the information time and time again. The system automatically checks if there is a conflict, list permits that have expired and the safety manager configures the system for use by others. As one client said: "Why wasn't this system created years ago?"

Permit to Work Manager v2.0 delivers a comprehensive database-driven solution for creating, issuing and managing permits to work. Permits types available are: General, Hot Works, Electrical, Confined Spaces, Buried Services and Excavation. Operational within 15 minutes of installation with a simple six stage process for clarity and ease of input, automatic cross checking of permits issued can now warn of potential danger. Permit rules ensure only validated permits are released and common permits are created as a template for reuse. Documents are available in A4 or A3 format for printing and offer multiple signatories and renewals/check backs.

www.ITConsilium.com

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