Date: 22/01/2008
In this month issue of SHPlus Simon Olliff explains the advantages of electronic permit-to-work systems.
All systems go
As
commercial buildings, production facilities, and offshore structures get ever
larger and more complex, the risks involved in their construction and operation
become harder to keep track of without smart information management. Simon
Olliff sheds light on why electronic permit systems are a popular way of doing
so.
A permit-to-work system is a formal written
system used to control certain types of work that are potentially hazardous, and
a permit to work is a document that specifies the work to be done and the
precautions to be taken. Historically, these systems have been paper-based and
tailored to suit the requirements of the environment in which they operate. When
operated well they have provided an excellent level of protection for millions
of workers over the years.
However, a HSE survey showed that a third of
all accidents in the chemical industry were maintenance-related, the largest
single cause being a lack of, or deficiency in, permit-to-work systems.1 The
resulting guidance was aimed at every industry.
The kinds of pressure
that can compromise a permit system are familiar – volume of permits, tight
deadlines, lateness of submissions, or inappropriate documentation – all of
which can compromise the quality of the information and the time available to
consider it. Progress has been achieved by changing attitudes at work and
encouraging everyone to take ownership of health and safety, but new
technologies can also play a part in achieving step changes in safety
performance.
These days, few draughtsmen could control complex drawing
changes on projects without their CAD system, busy M&E maintenance teams
would be lost without their Computer-Aided Facilities Management (CAFM) system,
and I can’t remember the last report I hand-wrote and put in the post. Ink
drawings, T-cards and hand-written documents have inevitably been cast aside and
replaced by smarter systems that bring speed and accuracy to traditional
practices.
The transition from traditional paper permit pads to smarter
electronic versions – or e-permit systems, as they are known – has begun to
happen in earnest, led by the pioneers in each sector and being driven forward
by the good results they are delivering. It is no surprise that the
petrochemical sector was at the forefront of this development, given the events
of 1988 when the Piper Alpha oil platform exploded, and the findings of Lord
Cullen’s inquiry into the disaster, which resulted in shifting responsibility
for offshore safety to the operating companies and away from the regulators.
But while the offshore industry has had the greatest incentive to
innovate and change, the benefits are rapidly spreading into the built
environment onshore – from the construction stage to the safe operation of
commercial buildings and production facilities.
Why is electronic
different?
E-permit systems ultimately generate a piece of paper at the
end and may always be required to do so. But if the end result is the same, what
is the difference? Do electronic systems simply offer a neater way to produce
and store the same information? Not at all, I would argue. It is the intelligent
process that precedes the e-permits that makes such applications so distinctly
different to paper systems. Before the permit is actually produced the
electronic system can affect the timing of people’s actions, the consistency of
the safety checks, and the quality of management information that is
available.
E-systems typically encourage the earlier submission of risk
assessments, method statements and permit requests by contractors, which gives
the Authorised Persons (APs) more time to consider their assessment and
influence events in advance. The systems are also able to perform automatic
checks on the request that is being submitted to ensure the information is not
just complete but also compliant with current guidelines, the safety criteria
set out in a company’s health and safety policy, and its site rules.
They
can also present relevant and timely management information about such things as
clashes of work and residual risks to help APs make a better informed assessment
of the request and decide whether it is safe to approve, or should be
rejected.
Implementing new applications can appear quite daunting and, as
with all new technologies, the early pioneers bore the worst pain to stay ahead
of their contemporaries. But as the market matures implementation practices are
perfected and the demands on the customer become less onerous.
Information about health and safety policy and site rules can be
gathered through short workshops or questionnaires, and the data about the site
can usually be extracted from existing sources. Indeed, some systems can operate
with very little data and are very easy to set up.
The issue of
usability is also important, in that the HSE has always stressed that a permit
system should be simple to operate. There is a natural inclination to circumvent
procedures that are too complex or time-consuming, and the HSE wants to
encourage the correct use of permits in all work situations that are potentially
hazardous. It is therefore important that electronic systems do not deliver
their secondary benefits at the expense of usability. There is no value in an
application with impressive functionality that is never used.
Usability
has been seriously considered by the developers such that the time taken to
interface with an electronic system is not greater than with a paper-based
system. Much of the time-saving comes from the automated communication features,
notifying people who need to be involved and providing a quick route to the
information they need to see.
Principal benefits
The main
benefits of electronic systems fall into three categories:
- Risk
reduction;
- Management control; and
- Productivity gains.
E-permit
systems are designed to reduce the risk of injury to people, damage to property,
and disruption to business by ensuring that the right people, with the right
skills, work to the right method statement, in the right place, at the right
time. These are the fundamentals of any permit system, paper or electronic, but
it is when one of these things goes wrong that someone gets hurt, or money is
wasted.
By running predetermined checks that reflect the specific
company’s safe system of work, electronic systems can recognise ill-conceived or
poorly resourced plans so that APs can prevent them from proceeding. Some
systems can also check that the working party has the appropriate competencies
to undertake the work safely, and that the company has valid insurances.
A great advantage of electronic systems is their power to share
information that can keep people safe. If the facilities and engineering teams
are familiar with the hazards of a property or process, such as the presence of
asbestos or stored chemicals, the information can be shared with the team coming
on site while they are still considering the risks they will face and planning
their precautions to mitigate those risks.
Even when a permit request
has been well prepared and is, in isolation, an appropriate way to work, there
is still the danger that it will interfere with, or be compromised by another
piece of work, creating an unforeseen and dangerous situation. Electronic
systems that check for clashes of concurrent activity can highlight these
potential dangers to the APs when they are assessing the request. For instance,
they could highlight multiple isolations of a fire-alarm system associated with
unrelated jobs, or plans to work on a fire detection system at the same time as
a fire protection system.
Particularly when there are multiple activities
under permit at one time, the simple presentation of this information can be
invaluable to an AP and a life-saver to the parties planning to work. These
systems can point out when two parties are applying to work on the same service,
or a related service, or one in the same location, at the same time. In a small
building with few permits open at any time, it is quite practical to keep track
of what is happening throughout the property. If, however, a permit system spans
a large building, or a disparate campus, and there is a large amount of
permitted activity going on, it can be very difficult for a permit office to
know who exactly is working, where they all are, or what presents the greatest
danger at any given moment.
Management information is the key to
control. To be able to see at a glance what is going on allows the permit system
to perform its prime function of controlling work that is potentially
hazardous.
Integration with CAFM systems
Because CAFM systems
employ similar types of data to those used by permit systems it is possible to
integrate or link the applications to very good effect. There are some obvious
functional flows between the systems that make integration very attractive.
Planned, or reactive work orders can be set to trigger the requirement for a
permit and prepopulate much of the basic data about who, when, where, and what
from the CAFM to the e-permit system. The work order can be put on hold until
the permit is completed and approved, and then released with the permit and its
associated risk assessment and method statement.
Suitable
sectors
The best indication of which sectors are most suited to
electronic systems comes from looking at those in which they have been
implemented so far. They include petrochemicals, local government, banking,
insurance, manufacturing, transportation, health care, telecommunications, and
retail.
The systems are sufficiently flexible to suit almost any industry
and scenario. They simply need to be configured to reflect the regime in which
they are to operate – these can range from very rigorous for a highly regulated,
secure, or dangerous environment, to a more relaxed regime for a lower-risk
situation – in the same way that a paper-based system would be
tailored.
It is also feasible to tighten or relax the regime when the
risk profile in a building changes. For instance, a building under normal
occupation may have a low prevailing risk profile that would change dramatically
if some floors were being re-furbished. Control of specific areas can be passed
to a third party’s APs temporarily under CDM without losing the management
information about clashes of work on a service. Indeed, these systems have
proved most effective in multi-tenanted buildings, where the landlord and
several tenants all impact each other.
The Web
Some electronic
systems are PC-based while others harness the power of the Internet, whose speed
and accessibility make it an ideal medium. Authorised access can be gained via
any browser, making it possible to interact with the systems from any location
at any time. It is even possible to access some systems via mobile devices to
capture risk assessments around the site, audit compliance during the life of
the permit, and record the issue and closure of permits from the workplace in
real time.
With accessibility comes visibility. The transparency of the
systems makes it possible for management to monitor activity across multiple
buildings, focusing on time-frames, activity types, or locations of particular
interest.
Conclusion
Paper permit systems have been a
cornerstone in companies’ safe systems of work for many years, and countless
people still walk among us because of their competent use. Sound progress can be
made in health and safety as elsewhere by building on proven procedures and
adapting them to suit the new challenges of our changing world.
As long
as electronic systems do not overcomplicate the process and remain within the
reach and comprehension of all those they seek to protect, we could witness the
wide adoption of such systems within the next few years. It is possible that
e-permit systems – like CAD, CAFM and Office before them – soon become the
industry standard.
References
1 HSE (2002): Permit-to-work
systems (INDG98), rev3, C100 – available from HSE Books, tel: 01787 881165