In this installment of EHSDA Shorts, Adam O’Neill, Vice President, SafetyIQ, explains why a journey management system is important.
This clip was taken from a webinar titled “Fireside Chat: Asset vs. Human Focus“, as part of the EHS Worker Safety NOW online summit. The full session is available for FREE on-demand here.
The webinar was sponsored by SafetyIQ.
Transcript (edited for clarity):
Question: Why is a journey management system important?
O’Neill: As we can see, what a journey management system is, it’s asking staff to plan their travel. Rather than just jump in a car and drive off, this is asking someone to say, “Hey, I’m going to go from South Carolina to Texas. I’m going to just pause for a minute or two, pull out my cell phone and I’ve got to put in there where I’m going to, where I’m going from, and a couple of rest stops that usually align with check in breaks for the organization. Once I’ve done that, I’m good to go. And before I start, most organizations will then ask for a risk assessment to be prompted on the phone. So just before I start my journey, five minutes before, I’ll be prompted on my mobile just to do a quick risk assessment.”
And that, most of the time, it can be configured however you like, but most people or most businesses tend to do it around whether fit for purpose, vehicle, personal fatigue and things like that. It’s just that stop and check before you start your journey to make sure everything’s ready to go down.
From there, as you start your journey, you’ve then generally got rest stops or check-in points along the way. And as you hit a check-in point, a journey management system will then ask you to take a bit of an affirmative action and just do a single button. “I’m OK,” essentially on the cell phone when you’ve stopped on the side of the road at your designated rest stop. And that just lets everyone know that you’re on track, you’re going the right way and everything’s OK.
If you don’t make your check in after a set period of time. So let’s say you’re 15 minutes, half an hour, late for your check in. The system can be configured to alert someone. So it can be configured to alert usually a team manager at first and just say, “Hey, look, Toby started this journey from South Carolina up to Texas and he’s missed his check in.”
As well as that, if there is actually an incident or an accident on route, that can also alert stuff and it can alert at various levels. Now that’s great in itself but what’s the value in it? Why is it important? Planning, just that act of actually stopping and planning rather than just jumping in the car and going really let’s people actually stop and consider their route, their timings. Is it too far? Is it better to leave at a different time and just take that conscious act of planning the travel.
After that, probably the next one by completing the risk assessment, once again, stop, just have that chance to stop and consider. Pretty true are the other weather conditions certainly in terms of snow or remote areas that’s a real risk. Is the vehicle fit for purpose if you’re travelling again in in really nasty weather? Is a normal front wheel drive car suitable or would we be better taking one of the trucks in the fleet?
In terms of personal assessment, are you too fatigued? You know, is it realistically, is it worth actually instead of leaving Friday night, leaving Saturday morning after you’ve had a decent sleep? So that’s sort of really on the risk assessment.
On the check-ins, really aligns with organizational policies for rest stops. So it’s just requiring that affirmative action to say someone is taking their rest stops.
And then on the last one, probably almost most importantly for most of the people on the call, I’m sure from a business perspective, we’re looking after staff welfare. We’re providing duty of care and we’re ensuring we know where staff are if they need assistance. So we’ve got that support process there behind their travel.