Health and safety is all about gaining the participation of the workforce and having team members adopt corporate health and safety objectives as their own. A key step to achieving the participation goal is having a modern Health and Safety management tool for logging and managing incidents, scheduling activities and managing actions. It must be easy-to-access, easy-to-use and provide relevant real time information to the team members and to the OHSE professionals that implement and manage the OSHE process.
InControl is an incident and events management solution that is designed to meet the requirements of the OHSE management team while helping foster the culture of participation in OHSE activities and goals. Its strong customer base spans a range of industries whose members provide continuous feedback, ensuring that it keeps pace with industry best practice and standards.
InControl is an efficient Web application that is easy-to-use and implement.
InControl includes logging and management of any type of incident or event related to OHSE including hazards, audits, injuries and investigation reports. Exposure hours are recorded to produce statistics in accordance with OHSE Standards. It includes automated follow up and close out of actions. Reporting is very strong with InControl, and data can be extracted from the data base to spreadsheet for analysis purposes.
InControl also includes Scheduling of events, compliance and asset management.
Health and safety professionals are also required to ensure that employees and contractors have the required licenses, permits, medicals, inductions and are familiar with relevant procedures for their role. The InTuition module integrates with InControl and manages people compliances, procedures, skills and training management.
InControl is a Web application (C#.net/ASP.net) with a SQL Server database. Users access the application via a Web browser. The database can be accessed from anywhere on your Intranet or the Internet (username and password required).
The application is usually hosted on the customer’s server, but can be hosted on Cube’s server if required.
Detailed features include:
1. Meets the management requirements of:
• Health and Safety
• Environment
• Quality
• Compliance
2. Personal dashboard for easy access to events and actions relevant to the user
3. Incident management
4. In addition to incidents, InControl allows any type of event to be managed. Event types are easily configured according to the data capture
and reporting requirements
5. Lead indicators
6. Exposure hours and vehicle kilometers
7. Injury reporting and management including medical treatment, costs, actions, return to work programs
8. Actions are managed, including initial and overdue email notifications
9. Both employees and contractors are managed
10. Allows for simple and matrix style organisation structures
11. Risk register, review and assessment process (new)
12. Events can be scheduled and responsible persons are notified by email in advance
13. Comprehensive built in reporting including easy analysis of incident and event statistics and trends
14. Adhoc reporting that allows any data from the database to be extracted for processing and graphing in Microsoft Excel
15. The ability to manage any type of asset such as vehicles, firearms or data. Includes implementation and management of controls and scheduling of
reviews & audits
16. Compliance management including the ability to manage:
• Reporting entities
• Obligations
• Approvals
• Stakeholders
• Legislation
Events types can be grouped for ease of navigation. Typical event categories would be Health and Safety, Environmental and Quality. Other categories can also be defined by the user.
1. A link for logging new incidents and events.
2. An InTray providing single click access to the user’s
• Actions
• Moderator Event reports
• Pending Event reports
• Audit Event reports
• Event reports assigned to the user
3. Key contacts
4. Links to key organisations
5. Change request form
6. Group aged action chart
7. User aged action chart
Incidents either cause or have the potential to cause an injury to a person or damage to equipment. Best practice requires that when an incident occurs:
1. The incident is assessed to determine the significance and implement an appropriate process to
manage the incident.
2. The incident is risk rated using a consistent method to trigger appropriate response processes.
3. The incident is investigated to determine causes.
4. Actions are carried out to minimize the impact of the incident and to prevent a recurrence.
5. Some incidents trigger a requirement to notify third parties.
Most organisations require incidents to be managed via an agreed process. The information gathered through the incident management process should be stored in a way that it can be reviewed and the process should be audited regularly to ensure that the appropriate responses took place. Incidents should be reviewed and closed by a person or persons that are independent of the manager that is responsible for the incident investigation and management.
InControl provides a sound framework for managing Incidents and Events according to Industry best practice and consistently with Global standards. InControl has proven itself to be adaptable to the business processes of a wide range of organisations from those with simple needs to complex mining and energy operators.
The risk matrix is configurable in terms of labels, colours, numbers of rows and columns.
InControl allows the customer to configure events of any type. An incident is an example of an event type, but customers may also wish to record and manage other types of events including Audits, Surveys, Non Conformances, Statutory Obligations and many other activities concerned with Health and Safety, Environmental, Quality and other categories.
Configuring a new event type is easy and includes:
1. Entering an Event Type name.
2. Determine Event Subtypes if required. For example, an injury event may have subtypes of MTI
(Medical Treatment Injury), LTI (Lost time injury), MDI (Modified duties injury),
RDI (Reduced duties injury). The order of tabs may be determined by the user.
3. Select the required tabs. A tab is a form that contains various labels, fields and buttons for the
purpose of entering relevant data.
4. Nominate the event type as schedulable if appropriate. For example Meetings, Audits and
Survey’s would be schedulable.
A range of tabs are provided as the default selection. Custom fields can be added and new Tabs can be configured to meet special needs of the customer.
In general, Incident Events will have the most tabs, whereas a meeting tab would have fewer tabs. For example:
Injury Incident Tabs: Report details, Incident, Actions, Participants, Documents, Equipment, Keywords, Root Causes, Notifications, Investigations, Risk Register, Costs, Report Close Out (Includes event summary).
Examples of event types for Health and Safety would typically be:
• Behavioral observations
• Fire/Explosion
• Hazard observation
• HazID
• Incident
• Injury or Illness
• Motor Vehicle
• Near Miss
• Risk Assessment
• Safety meeting
Take 5
Environmental event examples would be:
• Environmental
• Marine accident
• Quarantine
Spill or release
Quality events examples would be:
• Audit
• Survey
• Meeting
• Customer complaint
• Property damage or loss
• Regulatory or permit non-compliance
Lead Indicators are events such as Safety Meetings or Take 5 meetings that are designed to reduce the likelihood of unwanted events. Many companies use Lead Indicators as a Key Performance Indicator, setting targets and reporting monthly statistics to track how well each workgroup meets it Lead Indicator objectives.
Exposure hours are important for interpreting safety and incident statistics and tracking safety performance. Exposure hours are the number of hours that a person is exposed to an environment. A workgroup with higher exposure hours and a number of incidents may be performing better than a workgroup with the same incidents by lower exposure hours.
InControl allows exposure hours to be entered manually or copied from a previous period and updated manually. Alternatively, customers using the InFlight or InTime products (roster and time sheet management), can use the exposure hours captured by those modules.
Detailed information is recorded regarding each injury associated with an incident or event. Later, detailed reports can be produced to aid in analysis of incident and injury trends. In addition to recording injury details related to an incident or event, InControl provides the tools manage each injured person including:
• Days lost, reference and claim numbers
• Treatment records
• Lost time details
• Documents associated with the injury
• Return to work plan
• Injury actions
• Injury files notes
• Injury costs
A special injury management security class ensures only authorised injury managers are able to access injury management data.
The assignment of Actions to individuals (including staff and contractors) may result from the investigation of incidents or form activities such as hazard observations, audits, meetings or other events.
A system for assigning and following Actions is important to ensuring that the organisations safety, environment and quality plan is implemented and maintained. With actions are easy to assign to individuals and close out when complete.
Actions have a due date for completion. Email notifications are automatically sent to nominated persons when actions become overdue. Emails of this type are accumulated each day and a single email forwarded.
Each person can view their actions from the In Tray of their dashboard, including information on the event within which the action was generated.
An important feature of InControl is its ability to manage both employees and contractors. Employee’s and contractors may be entered manually, uploaded from a spreadsheet or downloaded each evening from an HR, Payroll or other database.
Custom fields can be added to the standard fields, which include:
• Name (and alternative name if required)
• A range of person details including key dates – birth day
• Employer
• Workgroup
• Serial numbers
• Emergency contact details (which can be edited by the employee)
• Role history, including statutory roles such as Emergency Response Unit or Fire Warden.
• Record of health events
• List of the person’s compliances, including licenses, permits, medicals, inductions.
Email notifications are sent with customer determined days in advance of the compliance expiry.
• Events/incidents in which the person has been involved
• Open actions associated with the person.
• Custom fields can be added by the customer.
Person details include all aspects of the person’s employment details.
Entering the company structure means that when incidents and events are logged they are assigned to the appropriate company level or workgroup within the company. Reports can then be generated for different levels or workgroups. An intuitive workgroup selector allows the user to easily identify the division of organisation level of interest.
Matrix style organisation structures are also catered for.
The ability to schedule events in an environment that provides notifications in advance of the meeting, together with required documents and a managed process to close the event adds a new dimension to the safety management process. Statistics can then be reported to provide KPI measures for carrying out agreed activities designed to reduce risks and improve safety.
The event owner is automatically notified by emails a given number of days before the meeting and the meeting must be closed a given number of days following the event. It also appears in the in box of the owner’s dashboard.
Events that would typically be scheduled include:
• Audits (Safety, Environmental, Quality)
• Meetings
• Inspections
• Behavioural observations
• Risk reviews
InControl’s Risk Register and Risk Assessment tools help to meet the Duty of Care to identify and maintain a register of risks associated with business operations. In the first instance risks are identified and rated according a range of risk classes (for example; Health and Safety, Environment, Legal, Finance, Social, Community). A suite of risk reduction controls and actions can be associated with each risk. When reviewing risks, historical incidents associated with those events can be viewed..
Risk Review and Assessment
Organisations are becoming increasingly proactive in assessing and reviewing the risks associated with their business and applying strategies to reduce those risks.
InControl uses the Bowtie model for assessing and controlling risks to minimise the likelihood and impact of those events.
Typically the process of assessing risks of an activity involves team meetings with people that are intimately familiar with the activity. The objective of the process is to determine the risks and formulate strategies to manage those risks.
While spreadsheets are often used, they lack the ability to review, sort, prioritise and update issues associated with the identified risks and controls. Linking of Incidents to the Risk Register provides a means of continuous improvement of risk management. InControl provides the same tools within a database environment. The user interface provides an intuitive process so that operations staff are able to participate in the process effectively.
Risk Assessment Process
Step 1:
• Identify the participants, scope, objectives and assumptions of the assessment project.
• Determine the aspects, location and workgroups. Select or define the activities to be assessed.
Step 2:
An interactive form helps the team to brainstorm key issues including:
• What we are doing
• What can go wrong
• Why would it go wrong
• How we could stop it going wrong
• What would be the effect
Multiple items can be identified at each level. The ‘What can go wrong’ issues are risk rated according a standard or custom risk matrix.
The assessment view form lists the activities and shows a summary of the hazard management status for each activity. For example – Identified, Assessed, Analysed, Approved.
A summary of the hazard can be viewed, including:
• The Hazard title and brief description.
• Precursor events, barriers or defenses, actions.
• Consequences, responses, actions
• A risk matrix showing inherent, residual (and target) risk for each risk class of interest.
• A summary of the historical incidents that have been associated with the hazard.
Step 3:
A form can be opened that allows the team to focus on reducing the risk of the hazard by:
• putting controls in place
• assigning actions and responsibilities
in order to shift the risk from the inherent to residual (and target) risk.
The risk ratings are adjusted on the form in response to the controls and actions.
A summary of the activities can be viewed from the perspective of viewing activities that have a high inherent risk and activities that have high priority controls.
There are five levels of reports available from InControl.
1. Event and injury reports and templates
2. Event analysis including Cause, Equipment, Keyword and Checklist analysis
3. Graphs and pie charts for analyzing trends
4. Formatted reports to meet internal and 3rd party reporting entity requirements
5. Export to MS Excel to allow data to be manipulated prior to charting
One of the historical issues with OHS solutions is the difficulty involved in OHS professionals being able to retrieve data that is not available in the standard reporting options, to analyse or investigate special issues of interest to the user.
The InControl AdHoc reporting tools allow any data to be exported to MS Excel including field selection, filtering and sorting.
AdHoc reports can be saved for re-use by the user or published for use by all users.
InControl includes a flexible Registers system that allows any type of business asset to be recorded including details, related documents, associated workgroup, responsible persons and controls. Examples could include Vehicles, ladders, firearms, data assets.
The event scheduling tools allow asset reviews and audits to be scheduled and managed effectively.
Many modern businesses operate within a complex framework of regulations, obligations, constraints and stakeholder conditions on their businesses.
InControl’s compliance management tools allow the framework of these obligations and constraints to managed effectively in a database environment with each item being risk rated, associated workgroups, responsible persons, documents and controls.
The event scheduling tools allow reviews and audits to be scheduled and managed effectively including KPI reporting where required.
Business Value of InControl Incident Reporting Software
• Improved safety
• More efficient use of admin staff 15%-30%
• Staff records are maintained in one place and any events are actively monitored
• Duplicate data entry and handwritten records vastly reduced
• Monthly reporting is fast and professional
