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30 March 2022
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Connected safety – Gas Safety Insights for Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS)

In most organisations, roles related to environment, health and safety (EHS) focus heavily on risk reduction. There may be compliance responsibilities interwoven with this − EHS staff are often tasked with implementing hazard controls and may be responsible for enforcing and proving compliance – but above all the focus is on making things safer and healthier, and as productive as possible.

In the not-so-distant past, EHS staff in settings with gas hazards were often responsible for ensuring appropriate gas detection and training, and may have manually collated data from gas detectors, but beyond that they had relatively little data to use. It is hard to proactively drive down incidents or be certain how compliant with safety measures your workforce is, when all you know for sure is whether a detector did or did not sound an alarm.

However, the advent of the internet of things (IoT) has changed all that. Now, EHS staff can connect gas detection systems to the cloud just as they connect a fitness tracker or in-car satellite navigation system, and benefit from the many gas insights this provides. Cloud-based software applications like Crowcon Connect make it easy for EHS staff to identify problems with specific devices (and users!), track and schedule maintenance, automate many aspects of compliance audit and trouble-shoot recurrent problems.

What does connected safety mean for EHS personnel?

In a word: data. Connecting gas monitoring systems to the cloud allows EHS personnel to gather actionable insights (data) from their detector fleet, which they can act upon to improve safety. These include the ‘traditional’ elements such as time in/out of use, exposure levels and alarms sounded, but go far beyond these to include information about individuals’ use of the device (for example, the extent to which an individual/group uses the detector correctly) and where devices are at any given time.

With Crowcon Connect, the ability to use quick user assignment allows EHS staff to optimise their data by linking a specific device with a known user, each and every time, regardless of whether the device is assigned to an individual long term or is part of a pool.

What is quick user assignment?

In this context, quick user assignment is the ability to link or associate a specified user with a specified device, in a swift and straightforward way. For example, Crowcon Connect can use the RFID tags in a user’s ID badge to link them to a given device. This has dual benefits: firstly, the EHS staff know that the information on that device relates to a named individual and secondly, they can trust the data because it is collected and archived automatically, with no risk of human error.

How will connected safety work? Who will it work for?

Connected safety works for the entire organisation; when deployed strategically it can increase safety, improve staff morale and provide a wealth of information about productivity, the working environment and compliance. For EHS staff in particular, a good cloud software package for their gas detector fleet maximises and automates the collection of data while reducing the risk of human error in data capture – this is not only vital to ensure safety, but also makes it far easier to collate the records required at any compliance audit, and reduces the burden of manual (error-prone) documentation. And, when devices are pre-assigned to specific workers, the monitoring of compliance becomes both more accurate and straightforward.

Interested in learning more? Click here to read more about Crowcon’s own cloud software solution.

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