“ Having instant visibility of all work packets taking place from one central location across six feed mills up and down the country has dramatically changed the way in which we govern compliance ”
'We are a medium sized feed milling company providing high quality poultry feed to the farming industry. We currently employ around 300 people at six sites across the UK.
We run five feed mills and one extrusion plant, which differ in size from fairly small with only one production line and a couple of grain silos to our largest site which has four production lines, multiple storage areas, silos, engineering teams and transport departments.
The sites run 24/7 to provide enough feed to the poultry rearing industry to allow us to be a critical part of the UK food chain.
In 2020, we decided that we needed to move away from ourpaper permit to work system.
We decided that a cloud-based E-permit system would suit our purposes and one of the first companies we looked at was Pisys.
After a couple of demonstrations to our engineering teams and mill managers, it became clear that the Pisys Permit to Work system would deliver what we were looking for and within budget.
Above all, we were looking for a PTW system that was user friendly and easy to pick up or teach. The system had to be adaptable, and we found that the Pisys system was exactly that. We have updated our own version three times since installing and have created a POWRA (Point of Work Risk Assessment) from scratch using one of the unused panels within the system.
This means that work can be thoroughly assessed by our engineers and mill staff outside of work hours If the job isn’t a routine task.
Permit To Work software meets regulation and compliance requirements
From a compliance and regulation point of view, our company is in a much better position than it was. We have tied in the company list embedded within the permit to work system with our approved vendor list. This means that permits cannot be issued to contractors that are not on the system. This gives us a level of control over our contractor management that we never had before.
Stopping a permit being issued if safety criteria is not met or because a contractor isn’t cleared onto our approved list is a great way to improve site safety and ensure compliance.
Permit Plot Plans
Most of our larger sites now have a ‘plot plan map’ showing where permits are active. This is another huge benefit over our old paper system. It is easy to see at a glance if a task is already being carried out in an area. This is essential for handling simops where one task could potentially impact on another.
Remote access to permits
Having instant visibility of all work packets taking place from one central location across six feed mills up and down the country has changed the way in which we govern compliance dramatically. Being able to scrutinise a work permit remotely to ensure that our colleagues are completing them fully and accurately is a great way to spot where someone might need extra coaching in safety procedures. Overall, I would say that the PTW system has moved our company forward a long way in a few very key areas.'