The technology-led safety revolutions

When you think of the word safety, what comes to your mind?

It's hard to believe a time when workers getting injured in the workplace was an almost daily occurrence. 

There was a time when young children working on heavy machinery was common practice, and a time when regulatory compliance and environmental health and safety standards simply did not exist. 

We've come a long way as a civilization when it comes to EHS and workplace safety - especially since the start of the Industrial Revolution (18th century), but we still have a long way to go to realize an injury-free workplace. 

The Gap in Safety Tech Innovation

The unfortunate reality is that EHS innovation is lagging general industrial and technological innovation by a decade at the very least. We've seen four industrial revolutions (currently Industry 4.0), but we have only seen two clear revolutions in the health & safety space. 

Protex AI is at the forefront of the 3rd generation of EHS workflows. This short piece will give you some perspective on where H&S is and where it's going.

Foundations of Occupational Health and Safety

Safety became a concern for companies during the Industrial Revolution. Unions were formed, employee rights were established, and workers demanded better and safer working conditions. 

Establishing EHS Teams and OSHA Regulations

The U.S. Congress enacted the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970, and Environmental Health and Safety Teams, or EHS Teams, were created to combat risk and keep workers safe. 

Essential to these teams was the implementation of EHS training, which equipped employees with the knowledge to identify hazards and adhere to safety protocols. 

EHS professionals were challenged to protect workers' health. Frequent audits and measures were undertaken to ensure EHS compliance and make the workplace an overall safer place. 

Managing Safety Risks with Stricter EHS Practices

As the industry began to make use of an increasing amount of heavy machinery, EHS teams were challenged with increasing safety risks. EHS practice became more stringent in the 20th and now the 20th century. 

The introduction of signage, safety regulations (with a small r), and safety standards forced companies to take compliance and incidents more seriously. EHS regulations and environmental management practices are still fundamental to how it is approached today. 

Digital Transformation in Safety Management Practices

In the early 2000s, the health and safety industry was digitized through an EHS management system - document-based workflows and reporting systems were moved to a digital medium. This helped to consolidate the data collected and help distribute incident information to relevant stakeholders. 

Trend Analysis for Improved EHS Performance

With wider uses of computers and other devices like tablets and smartphones, companies like Intelex and Cority allowed companies to log incidents over time in order to recognize trends of accidents and environmental health risks in the workplace.

EHS teams could intervene using trend analysis to reduce the propensity of further accidents. 

Challenges of Manual Audits in Dynamic Environments

This revolution has allowed EHS teams to be organized in their approach to health and safety, but they still rely on manual, intermittent audits of the facility floor. 

Modern factories, warehouses, and ports are such dynamic environments that a facility floor walk only offers a small snapshot of the reality of safety measures.

Proactive Safety Solutions for Modern Technology

We are now seeing a shift in how we perceive safety due to the evolving capabilities of technology. We can now embrace and implement a new form of safety: proactive and predictive. 

Overcoming Limitations of Reactive Safety Programs

A big problem with safety is that we, as humans, cannot always be ‘on.’ Until now, safety has been a reactive concept. We have to wait until an accident occurs before someone gets injured or even killed, before we can say it's an issue. 

This means that near misses and poor safety behaviors are rarely identified and addressed. But this does not have to be the case. Effective safety training simulations can prepare workers to recognize and respond to workplace hazards proactively.

Additionally, data drives the decision-making process, and with advancements in technologies such as artificial intelligence, we can identify risks and trends before they ever become a problem. This allows EHS teams to make more informed decisions earlier, to mitigate risks, and to protect our workers. 

Embracing a New Era of Proactive Safety

We will soon see a new generation of safety where we can create a near-injury-free workplace by identifying risks long before they become a concern or cause injuries.

At Protex AI, we are embracing this new form of proactive safety, empowering companies and EHS teams to realize an injury-free workplace with computer vision that understands risk.

If you're interested in the technologies that will be leading this 3rd generation of health and safety, look at a talk by Matthew Brown, CEO of Donesafe, where he discusses the top 10 technologies leading the 3rd generation of EHS.

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