One of the largest vehicle manufacturers in the world recently pledged to become fully electric by the beginning of the next decade. To accomplish this feat nearly 10 billion USD was invested to provide the heart of the vehicle, the battery.
Multiple locations were selected for brand new state of the art facilities that would fulfill the need for the batteries. These facilities are estimated to cost between 2.5 – 3 billion USD each for the automaker.
Each of these projects is slated to be completed through a joint venture with multiple trader partners. These trade partners must abide by safety and health requirements of their own companies in addition to any federal and state regulations. Considering the automaker owns the facilities which are being constructed for, the trade partners must also abide by their safety and health policies.
A core safety and health policy of the automaker involves certain means and methods to pre-plan work. This pre-planning process involves listing which tasks will be performed and then identifying any potential risks, along with the mitigation techniques for the risks. The process was multi-layered and extremely thought out, but one factor wasn’t considered: the human nature of the individuals completing the documents.
Issues began arising when the automaker uncovered the frontline craft employees were not thoroughly reviewing the job scope prior to starting work. Skipping this step ultimately puts the employees at greater risk. The reason for this is that if a job step is not planned for then the risks are not identified. If the job step and risks are not identified then safety policies and mitigation techniques can be overlooked or bypassed completely. The automaker knew they needed a different solution, and that solution was NIXN.
By deploying NIXN the automaker was able to meet and exceed their current policy and fill existing voids by creating better workflows from project management to the front line through the following process:
- Onsite safety professionals received accounts and hands on training from NIXN account managers
- The task, risk, and mitigation combinations were customized for the automaker to match existing verbiage and requirements in their policies
- The submitted and approved trade partner plans were loaded into NIXN
- Foreman from the various trade partners were onboarded and trained
- Craft crew members were onboarded
From following the above roll-out and implementing NIXN for the project the automaker was able to accomplish numerous goals including the following:
- Streamlined Workflow
- Daily work plans are created digitally by the foreman
- Craft employees are digitally onboarded and the company can easily retain and access their contact info, craft, years of experience, training records, and emergency contacts
- Safety and project management are notified of the job plans, can review the job plans, and make edits if necessary
- Safety can conduct audits and inspections linked directly to the submitted plans, which provides leading indicators including:
- Advanced safety metrics
- Rates of planned vs unplanned work per company or foreman
- Safe vs unsafe audits per company or foreman
- Corrections per company or foreman
- Near misses
- Advanced Project Metrics
- Crew member information including craft, years of experience, hire-in date, and emergency information is stored
- Manhour tracking is automated per task, per crew, per area, and per company through foreman daily work plans
- Crew experience, crew size, and crew turnover is tracked through foreman daily work plans
- General Contractors or clients can compare safety performance, manhours, and crew sizes across multiple contractors or the entire project
- Incident, property damage, and near miss
- A More Educated Workforce
- Daily reinforcement of potential hazards and mitigation techniques are performed when foreman review and submit job plans with their crews
- Project management and safety professionals are informed of the job description and location
- Safety professionals are guided through audits and able to determine which mitigation techniques should be in place and if a task was or wasn’t included and reviewed
- Better Decision Making
- Trade partners and clients make decisions based off insights rather than knee jerk reactions
- Safety and project resources can be allocated accordingly from identified needs