Connected Safety: what are gas safety insights?

In a previous blog post, we talked about connected safety and the many benefits it brings to gas detection and the organisations that use it. We also looked at Crowcon’s own connected safety offering, Crowcon Connect, and saw how it can provide vital gas safety insights, which businesses and managers can use to improve productivity, gas detector fleet management and workplace safety.

In this post we will explore in more detail what we mean by ‘gas safety insights’, and how you can use them to achieve better outcomes across your organisation.

What are Gas Safety Insights and why do I need them?

When an organisation uses Crowcon Connect, every time a Crowcon portable gas detector is returned to its docking station (or to its charger, if the worker is off site), a comprehensive collection of gas data is immediately and automatically uploaded to the Crowcon Connect portal. This data can include:

• Information about that specific device, such as type and gases being detected
• Who was using it for the work session in question
• Where that work session took place, and
• Details of gas exposures, alarm events and detector use.

Once uploaded, this information can be combined with related information, such as:

• When that specific device is due for calibration or other maintenance, and
• Fleet-side faults detected per instrument

Together, these data points generate an individual profile for each device, which is useful in its own right when it comes to proving compliance, locating devices and personnel, making sure all calibrations/maintenance events are up to date and scheduling any that are due. However, the benefits of connected safety data go way beyond this.

Record, Analyse and Act on Gas Safety Insights

Not only does connected safety create a profile for each device, but in doing so it also generates a large volume of data that spans time, users at personal and team levels, locations, gas hazard event types and device fleets.

This data is organisational gold! Large volumes of timely, accurate, constantly updated and cross-organisational data allow managers to:

• Spot patterns (e.g. of device loss, gas exposure, alarm incidents) from multiple perspectives such as the people, sites/locations, times of day, gas hazards and devices involved, to make informed data driven decisions quickly.
• These patterns can be contextualised in time – it is easy to see if a particular issue is long-established or recent.
• Events can be differentiated and compared by site/shift/date – almost any parameter you can think of is easily applied.
• Data points can be combined and compared to optimise outcomes: for example, you can work out the least productive hours on a given site and schedule device downtime (e.g. calibration) for those times to minimise any loss of productivity.

All of this is possible because the accuracy and real-time nature of connected safety means that the data generated is ideal for use with predictive analytics.

Predictive analytics uses historical data to forecast future events and contexts, which allows an organisation to make truly informed decisions at all levels (for example, in terms of focus and staff recruitment/deployment) and create more intelligent strategies, such as maintenance schedules, productivity monitoring and internal processes.

In this way, connected gas safety applications generate wide-ranging gas insights (data) and when these are analysed and then acted upon they can transform performance, process and safety at multiple points within the business.

This is how Crowcon Connect helps businesses to do better through a systematic approach.

Great for Multi-Site Businesses and Fleets

Collecting high quality data and then analysing and proactively using it can help most organisations. However, connected gas safety is particularly useful for multi-site businesses and any business with widely-dispersed gas detection fleets.

For these organisations, connected gas safety also reduces much of the complexity and time involved in manual recording, and provides almost immediate savings in terms of hours spent documenting compliance, retrieving manual records and preparing for audit.

Furthermore, all organisations stand to gain from having an immediately available and real-time, birds-eye view of their devices and relevant information. Connected gas safety insights can be used to:

• Schedule maintenance with the least possible downtime (minimising the cost of ownership)
• Ensure that devices are always in the location required and ready for use (which makes it easier to purchase devices cost-effectively, reduces downtime due to lack of available detectors and minimises device loss)
• Monitor gas levels from various perspectives (by site/team/shift time etc.) and act promptly to control them where required (which may prevent a gas-related disaster)
• Monitor gas at given sites over given periods to improve environmental and sustainability outcomes and/or demonstrate improvements as needed (for example, prove that methane emissions at a given site have been reduced over time).

In this way, connected gas safety initiatives like Crowcon Connect can make a solid contribution to the profitability, safety and sustainability of businesses, their personnel and projects.

If you would like to know more about using connected gas safety insights in this way, please check out our white paper on connected safety for multi-site businesses by clicking here. You can also take a look at the Crowcon Connect pages on our website by clicking here.