Health Safety Environment Quality – JSA / JHA / Obervations / Incidents / Spills & More

Good processes, bad technology

Safety in the oil field has improved dramatically over the last decades, with a foundational emphasis on process safety evolving into broad cultural adoption of behavior-based safety. Establishing a strong, sustainable safety culture is a long process, and, as ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillersontold a presidential commission, “you’re never going to finish.”

In the drive to zero incidents, Oil & Gas companies successfully overhauled an entire culture to develop industry-leading practices. These processes are improved year on year as managers carefully refine for the latest observations and feedback —but the technology gap persists. Culture-building tools like Safety Observation and Hazard Identification cards are still paper cards, and operations-critical forms like incident reports are still managed through multiple iterations of paper field tickets, email, and voicemail.

Accurate, real time information is never more important for executives than in the hours and days following an incident. In order to ensure it can’t happen again, executives need to know exactly what happened and why. Everything else is secondary, and work stops.

Because the process of converting field-level data to executive-actionable metrics is unwieldy, inefficient, and prone to mistakes —work stops for a long time.

Applying mobile technology to Oil & Gas HSE reporting

Managers don’t have to change their well-honed work processes to leverage the advantages of mobile technology (and they don’t have to go through a costly development and implementation project, either). FAT FINGER enables instant conversion of existing paper and computer-based forms into a single, field-ready mobile application.

Benefits for Managers

Real time dashboards
No more rush to create digital data in the run-up to reporting deadlines. With FAT FINGER, existing dashboards can be updated in real time —every time a form is submitted from the field.

One source of information
With so many data interfaces before closing out an incident report, a manually-updated incident log is rarely the most up-to-date source of information. Today, managers have to use email and phone calls to confirm reports were submitted, logs were updated, and the latest version of events in the incident log actually corresponds to the latest information. With FAT FINGER, a closed out incident report will immediately update all incident logs.

Eliminate administrative overhead
An engineer on a plant, project, or production site can easily spend 30 minutes a day transcribing paper tickets into digital reporting systems (for example, slow-loading sharepointincident logs). With FAT FINGER, central incident logs are updated automatically with every submission from the field, and assigned engineers can focus on high value tasks.

Self-auditing system
Maintaining compliance with safety reporting systems today requires internal policing, which is understandably resented by employees and managers. With FAT FINGER, managers maintain the integrity of existing systems without combing through stacks of paper observations.

Benefits for Staff

Submit from the scene
No more driving to the trailer to fill out a safety observation back at the computer. With FAT FINGER, all forms are in a single mobile-based application.

Track personal safety performance
Easily track quantifiable personal metrics (cards submitted, observations logged, interventions performed) to demonstrate safety commitment in performance reviews.

Hassle-free, hands-free reporting
FAT FINGER incident reports support voice input, and (unlike their paper counterparts) are user-friendly in windy, rainy, and muddy environments.

Simplified compliance
Oil & Gas safety processes are effective, but that doesn’t mean they make for easy reading and application. Don’t flip through the handbook to get it right. With FAT FINGER, it’s programmed.

Managers and staff are all too familiar with the limitless questions that must be accurately answered immediately following a safety incident. A flurry of phone calls, emails, incident logs, and executive briefings all have to be done before normal operations can resume —and accurate, corroborated information is never readily available.

Without enterprise mobility, firms struggle to guarantee accurate and consistent information.

Systems need repeated confirmations and manual updates to incident logs, controls documents, and the multiple non-interfacing databases containing every metric needed to produce weekly reports.

With FAT FINGER, accurate and timely information is automatic. Safety processes and standards are preserved, implementation is skipped, and staff are free to handle the operations -critical challenges they were hired to address.

Free up critical hours for critical staff

The cost of plant, project, or production downtime is measured in millions of dollars, and every minute counts. Managing safety incidents has to be done right, and technology can improve the quality, speed, and accuracy of the process without changing industry-leading forms and dashboards.

Incident report workflows without enterprise mobility take at least 10 minutes from 5 field-interfacing employees, not counting the rework, phone calls, voicemails, and email attachment tennis that accompanies the entire process to completion —or the distraction from other critical tasks that each communication interface demands.

With FAT FINGER, there is one 5-minute initial log time from a single employee (the one on the scene with the most accurate information). When the investigation is complete, there is another 5-minute update.

Work processes are the same, and familiar dashboards don’t change —but high-grade staff hours are now free to manage the plant, project, or production operation.

Increased workforce participation

Employees face hurdles in completing required safety observations. Simply having to drive back to the trailer for a card or a laptop can be enough to spur an inadvertent lapse in compliance.

With FAT FINGER, all observation cards can be accessed from a mobile device at any time. An internet connection is not required —forms will automatically submit when a connection becomes available. Data is captured as it’s generated.

Automatic auditing and transparency

There’s work processes and policies, and there’s operating reality. Some employees participate more than others, but nobody likes to use those high grade plant or project hours to police the safety program. It’s detrimental to safety culture, and it’s a low-value interruption to operations.

With FAT FINGER, no one has to swing around with a clipboard at the end of the month to ensure compliance. Employees can be notified automatically, and managers have quantified data on their best safety performers —always available, and always up to date.