Canadian Occupational Safety

30 Canadian Occupational Safety www.cos-mag.com TECHNOLOGY and mitigating risks to people and companies. "Data in its smallest form is just data," says Stewart. "Data that's been analyzed creates some form of infor- mation; information combined with expertise creates intelligence… and that may help create predictive forecasts." He says Goldcorp understands this. "At the end of the day, the data is giving us the direction," says Stewart. "Whether some companies believe to take that direction is really (about) cul- ture, the ability to adapt to change." Farrow says the greatest value in data analytics will be derived on the frontlines. " e site supervisors and managers now have that information, they can see it on a graph. It's really driving a behav- iour change," Farrow says. "We are now getting at the precur- sors of what is causing these incidents to happen. e leading indicators can help to make sure that anything you put in place — whether it's additional training or more visible leadership in the fi eld — the leading indicators will have to start telling you how well you are actually doing that and (if there is) a correlation with improved safety." Incident predictions Multinational construction firm Lafarge has been evolving its big data utilization to improve its safety perfor- mance over the last 10 years. With about 80,000 employees across the globe, Lafarge has a more focused approach to data analytics, using two leading indicators: employee engage- ment by management team — under its Visible Felt Leadership initiative — and job observations. "Imagine all these observations going on all over the world, all these conversations, all these interactions, all these engagements with managers and employees, and employees and employers," says Chris Roach, direc- tor of health and safety with Lafarge Canada in Calgary. "We're trying to capture the details of those conversations to give us some solid data of where we should focus our attention." ese leading indicators are fed into a custom so ware program which pro- duces trending reports that identify what types of risks exist at every site, the percentage of safe versus unsafe acts at various sites, and which sites are more likely to have a safety-related incident in the near future, explains Roach. With the analytics tool, Lafarge is able to identify the top risks or sites that need special focus. "For example, we see fi ve per cent of unsafe acts are related to working at heights, then we zoom in on working at heights, zoom in on fall protection training, zoom in maybe on re-issuing our working at heights standard in that area," says Roach. "It allows us to get ahead of those things before the accident happens. We're just observing the unsafe acts and we're able to capture them and then act on them." According to its 2011 global sustain- ability report, Lafarge has dramatically decreased its global lost-time injury rates from 8.35 in 2002 to 0.63 in 2011, thanks in part to the company's data analytics initiative. e same positive improvements are being achieved by other organiza- tions that have started embracing the potential of data analytics for injury and fatality prevention. Denver-based Cummins Rocky Mountain (CRM), a distributor of Cummins and Cummins Power Gen- eration products, started implementing data analytics in 2009. CRM uses Safe- tyNet, a safety management system so ware from Oakland, Pa.-based Pre- dictive Solutions. Within 12 months, the company's recordable incident rate was reduced by 76 per cent and lost- time injuries decreased by 88 per cent. e company enters data collected through safety observations and audits (leading indicators) into the SafetyNet system. e system then generates a report that predicts where the next incident may occur, based on lead- ing indicator data, explains Griffi n Schultz, general manager for Predic- tive Solutions. e predictive model behind the SafetyNet technology was developed through a collaborative study with e Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh. e study used leading and lagging indicators from actual workplace data across 250 work sites. e result was an accuracy rate of between 80 and 97 per cent in predict- ing incidents. e Language Technologies Insti- tute is the same CMU department that helped IBM develop the Watson super- computer that is now helping doctors diagnose rare diseases. SafetyNet generates "red fl ag" reports which tells a company which of its work sites have a higher risk of safety inci- dents, says Schultz. "As you collect more safety observa- tions — leading indicator data — you fuel the data analytics and the predictive models get better and start predicting where your incidents are going to occur, and then you can prevent them," he says. Tim Smith, safety manager for Cum- mins Rocky Mountain, talks about the value of data analytics in reducing the company's injury rates. "It enables us to establish a rela- tionship between leading and lagging indicators so we can understand whether we're looking in the right operations and aspects of our business operations to identify opportunities to get better," says Smith in a video posted on Predictive Solutions' website. What the future holds Still in its infancy, data analytics for injury prevention takes many forms and goes by diff erent names — predic- tive analytics, leading indicators — and the technology that fuels this capability will need a series of enhancements to maximize the potential in predicting and preventing the next injury. For Deloitte, helping companies understand and take advantage of their vast corporate data is key. "What we are looking at is what other points of data do these companies have access to that they have traditionally not tapped into," says Stewart. "We're trying to understand what we don't know… does that data add value when they combine it with other data sets?" One thing experts are certain about is that leading indicators are overtaking lagging indicators in providing good intelligence for improved safety and preventing injuries and fatalities in the workplace. In mining, industry observers note that while the number of lost-time inju- ries has consistently gone down over the last decade, the number of fatalities seem to have plateaued — and safety advocates continue to look for new and better approaches to prevention. "Traditional approaches to date have not seemed to reduce the percentage of fatalities," Stewart says. "So there's a drive to take a diff erent approach to the same challenge and the diff erence here will be looking at all of these data sources and converting them into some form of intelligence." e advantage and value of leading indicators also becomes more preva- lent as companies start to improve their safety performance. "I do think (data analytics) is the next level of health and safety," says Lafarge's Roach. "We're still on that path of fi nd- ing better ways to capture the data, fi nding more consistent ways to capture it. You get to a certain level of health and safety and you start to see your lag- ging indicators levelling off . "We're at that point now where our incident rate is quite low and we've got to do some innovative things to try to get it down to world-class." Lafarge's Western Canada health and safety director, Chris Roach, talks to Vancouver manager, Amir Merat, about worksite safety. Canada's Safest Employers will gather past award recipients in two panel discussions on safety leadership and culture excellence, and what it takes to become one of Canada's Safest Employers. WHERE: CSSE 2013 Conference, The Fairmont Queen Elizabeth, Montreal WHEN: Tuesday, September 17, 2:00 p.m. SPEAKERS: Francois Bourgault, Health and Safety Manager, GE Aviation Guylaine Lacroix, EH&S leader, GE Aviation Eric Boulé, Director of Canadian Manufacturing, Pratt & Whitney Canada Steve Loftus, Owner/General Manager, Innovative Automation DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES? WHERE: Alberta Health and Safety Conference, Keynote panel discussion, BMO Centre, Calgary WHEN: Monday, October 21, 3:15 p.m. SPEAKERS: Yves Tremblay, President and CEO, Pronghorn Controls Monique Britten, Director, HSEQ, Hallmark Tubulars Ltd. Roxanne McKendry, Manager, EH&S, Carewest Dan Strand, Health and Safety Manager, Vancouver International Airport

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