In my 15 years in the renewables industry, I have heard many stories of near-miss accidents, as well as some tragic and fatal incidents. Through many conversations with colleagues and peers, a common concern has emerged ‘are we doing enough to bring everyone home safe at night’.
It is more than just our duty of care as an employer to ensure the safety of our staff, this goes further. It is our moral obligation to ensure that people get home safe to their loved ones.
I was involved in a near miss in the early days of my career. It was a cold January, just after the festive period, when I visited a remote site in one of the Scottish Islands. I woke up very early to catch a flight to the island and was met with a similarly inexperienced client who incidentally was on the same flight and was accompanying me.
Upon arrival, we were presented with a hire car, we proceeded to drive to the site and found that where the entrance was, there was some surface water around due to poor Scottish winter conditions, coupled with large overgrown shrubs and rocky areas, this site was a challenging one.
Within the first 10 minutes on site, things took a frightening turn. Whilst attempting to move out of the way of some large rocks the driver swerved, and in turn the car ended up in a ditch with a river running through it. We were trapped with water entering the car.
Fortunately, we were able to climb out of the car boot and onto dry land. Luckily on this occasion, it was a near miss. But it could have been a lot worse – potentially even fatal. I can’t help thinking, even today, that no one would have noticed that we were missing until we were late delivering the hire car back or even worse when we didn’t get on our flight home.
Could our inexperience have played a part in this? – undoubtedly, but unfortunately this kind of incident is all too common. The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) reports that upwards of 500,000 new technicians will be needed worldwide to fulfil the growth in the industry between 2023 and 2027, many of whom will be equally inexperienced as we were.
The fact remains that many renewables’ sites are in isolated locations, with difficult terrain and harsh climates, where conditions can change rapidly. We believe at KUDO it is our duty to bring the industry a solution that will help keep people safe.
Our Solution? Smarter Tech.
We’ve developed a simple little app, Connect, to empower you to manage site risks more robustly. With Connect, you can:
Communicate incidents immediately: You can quickly log incidents to trigger immediate alerts to site teams, supervisors and emergency contacts - because when a risk emerges, there’s often no time to waste.
Check in with lone workers: We alert you when lone workers stay beyond their planned departure time - so you can proactively check all’s ok. We also provide the option to select automatic check ins every couple of hours or at a frequency that is required with a simple swipe functionality in our app. Some people use this function to ensure that people arrive safely home after nighttime meetings or long-distance driving. Whatever your needs, we can work with you to find a solution.
Ensure all personnel have been inducted: We host site induction material for workers, and track completion and compliance - so you can sleep at night knowing that all personnel are prepared.
Whatever the scale of remote worker safety risks in your organisation are, at KUDO we’re determined to play our part to help. If you’re interested in hearing more, or would like a demo, please get in contact.
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