Having the right communication technology in place can help to keep lone maintenance workers safe in the event of an incident or emergency, says Chris Potts, Marketing Director of ANT Telecom.
In many field service scenarios, lone workers’ lives are at risk. So, the UK’s Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has compiled a useful booklet about the issue. Titled ‘Protecting lone workers, INDG73’, it explains how to keep lone workers healthy and safe, saying the onus is on employers to protect staff and keep them safe, by providing training, supervision, monitoring and support for lone workers.
This includes views on how managers should keep in touch with lone workers, focusing on the role of communication which is especially key should an accident or emergency occur.
In critical lone worker situations, technology plays a vital role in enabling effective communication. It can help protect staff and ensure they can get the support they require. For a lot of incidents, lone workers can simply walk to the nearest phone in their workplace to contact their first aid team.
But, if landline phones are not present like in manufacturing or outdoor plants, smartphones or radio handsets can be a simple and effective life saver. The problem, though, is that in many cases incidents can happen so quickly that people do not have the time to call for help.
This is where dual purpose communication handsets come into their own. Smartphones with lone worker apps can work perfectly where mobile reception and Wi-Fi is good and reliable.
emergencies
However, if mobile reception cannot be relied on, companies should consider Digital Radio or IP DECT handsets. On the one hand these comms devices can be used daily for normal operations, but also as a critical safety device when a major incident occurs, for instance when a lone worker is hit by a falling object or falls from height and is rendered unconscious, or tumbles down stairs in an underground or remote location.
Many of these handsets come with integrated panic buttons and man down sensors, which can play an important role in protecting staff. In some instances, these features will not be enough to solve the emergency, but just being able to raise an alert immediately almost instantly increases the awareness of the incident, allowing teams time to deal with the problem.
Similar to when a fire starts in a building, the work of tackling the fire and minimising risk to life is yet to come. In any scenario, it is important that response teams are capable of receiving the alert information quickly, and once establishing the seriousness of the incident, coordinating a response to help their colleague.
Response teams are not always medically trained, so the first thing a first responder might do to help a colleague who is critically ill and unresponsive is to contact the first aid team to get medically trained personnel on the scene as quickly as possible.
This is likely to be followed by a call to emergency services, a gatehouse and a colleague; so when paramedics arrive at a plant, they can easily get through security gates and be escorted quickly through the building to the patient.
A key question here is about how the alarms reach the response team in the first place. This can be done via an automated platform that distributes alerts directly to the response team on their PC and / or comms device.
Of course there are other methods, however, an automated system provides key information – such as the lone worker’s name, number and location – first hand, directly on their screens so they do not need to jot it down. These applications also ensure alerts are accepted by a member of a team, which is then communicated so the rest of the team know who is dealing with it.
Having the right technology and communication process in place to protect lone workers when an incident occurs is crucial, and in some cases can be the difference between severe injury and / or life or death.
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