Health and Safety Inspections

SageData is based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Introduction

When employees start their daily duties they expect a safe and healthy environment. In some workplaces this is easier to achieve while in others it would take an extra effort on the employer's part. In recent years Workplace Health and Safety became a point of focus for various levels of government. For example, Canadian Government's Labour Code Part II specifies the following as employer duties:

The Code requires employers to ensure that the design, installation, operation, use or maintenance of the following meet the prescribed standards set out in the Canada Occupational Health and Safety Regulations:
 -  buildings and structures (permanent or temporary), guards, guard rails, barricades and fences;
 -  protective devices, machinery, equipment, tools, vehicles, and mobile equipment;
 -  boilers, pressure vessels, escalators, elevators, electrical generation equipment, electrical distribution systems;
 -  heat generating equipment and heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems.

One of the further responsibilities of an employer is: ensuring that the work place committee or health and safety representative conducts monthly inspections of all or part of the workplace so that the entire workplace is inspected at least once each year;

SageData Solutions is able to help with an efficient way of conducting monthly inspections by providing field-proven reliable tools. We have been doing it for over 20 years successfully - covering office, construction, manufacturing and other environments.

Inspection Challenges

There are a number of challenges related to equipment inspection. Let's look into some of them:

• How to make sure that all the equipment pieces intended to be inspected were inspected?
  It would be great if there was an application that would guide the inspector from one equipment piece to another while counting done / remain to inspect units.
• Assuming not all the equipment pieces can be inspected in one work day...How to know what equipment pieces remain to be inspected?
  Again, it would be great if some application had an inspection tracking capability with a reminder feature that would ensure that yet to be inspected equipment is accounted for.
• How to verify that an inspector was physically there during an inspection? It would be helpful if a system used to manage the inspection process had a feature tying physical location of the equipment to the inspection report.
• How to take and save photos of the inspected equipment in such a way that all members of the work safety committee can access them if there is an investigation? It would be helpful if a system used to manage the inspection process had a feature to do that.
• How to produce a safety inspection report for the entire year? Or, for a few past years? It would be helpful to have a system that stores all the inspection data and makes it available through on-line reports.
• Now, how to make sure that an inspector knows where to find the equipment?
  Imagine a large shopping mall with many fire extinguishers - how to find the next one that is due for an inspection? It would be very helpful if an application used to manage the inspection process could provide step by step directions to the inspector.
• There are many systems that inspect extinguishers to make sure they are in good working order. But it would be better to check the locations, to make sure that all locations have an extinguisher, that it is the correct extinguisher, and that it is in good working order.

That is what we can do. (and we know of a situation where the wrong extinguisher was regularly inspected and passed, and a lawsuit that followed the fire and inhalation injuries...)

The Solution

SageData Solutions has been in the equipment inspection and asset management business for a long time. We are a true leader in this field - supplying, installing and maintaining easy to use reliable systems. Our solution is based on a combination of mobile data collectors, barcode and RFID technologies and, most importantly, our flagship software solution - BassetPro. SageData have invested a lot of thought and efforts in designing our system.

All of the wish list features mentioned above are supported:
 -  link equipment to its physical location
 -  keep track of inspected vs. not yet inspected equipment
 -  remind about required inspection
 -  provide directions to the equipment
 -  capture and store photos taken during inspection
 -  provide detailed history and current status reports
 -  store inspection data indefinitely (when hosted in our data center)
 -  monitor inspection progress in real time remotely using system reports

The system reports provide a reliable foundation for the Occupational Health and Safety activity, including mandatory reporting and any potential investigation if the need arises.

If you found this interesting, please browse the following pages:

 - inspection systems

 - maintenance management

 - security patrol management

 - equipment inspection - a brief video

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