Lone Worker Safety

[jthompson]

Hi all

 

Does anyone have any particular measures in place to address the issue of lone worker safety? I'm particularly interested in whether anyone is making use of any commercial apps/devices for this (e.g. https://staysafeapp.com/).

 

Obviously there are some basic common sense measures that can be adopted for free, such as checking in with colleagues before and after certain types of work, but for people working alone for long periods day after day, those sorts of measures are likely to lapse or not be robust enough when it really matters.

 

I guess what I'm looking for is a signing in/out mobile app that prompts for periodic check-ins, perhaps on an hourly basis, whilst signed in, with some kind of alert raised for a missed check-in.

[mavhc]

Monitor idle time on laptop + idle physical movement on phone, if both are >10 mins they're dead or asleep, gps ping to find them

[hardtailstar]

Monitor idle time on laptop + idle physical movement on phone, if both are >10 mins they're dead or asleep, gps ping to find them

 

Not everyone works on a laptop or has phone on them.

 

I always carry the works radio when I am lone working.

[Psion_emulation]

Monitor idle time on laptop + idle physical movement on phone, if both are >10 mins they're dead or asleep, gps ping to find them

 

Ohhh crikey no. This solution has more holes than a sieve.

 

If you want a technical solution to this problem, there are specialist man down alarms for this sort of thing.

 

I would never suggest relying on some scripts on a laptop to ensure someone's safety.

[DrBeaker]

Interesting to follow this as I'm the sole tech onsite and can often go for hours between speaking with people.

 

Even with a site radio one time it was only me who had one, was switched on and I didn't get an answer.

[Ditto]

I'm working at a charity that is on a school site, but quite a few staff will be 'lone workers' with young people and we have details in our Health and Safety policy as to procedures to follow. Fundamentally, it involves a check-in system with a second contact with a management escalation route for issues with check-in. It's mandatory for lone workers to have a mobile phone (company will provide if required). There's also a dedicated checklist/risk assessment form. Staysafeapp could be of interest to the management team - any idea on costs?

[mavhc]

Ohhh crikey no. This solution has more holes than a sieve.

 

If you want a technical solution to this problem, there are specialist man down alarms for this sort of thing.

 

I would never suggest relying on some scripts on a laptop to ensure someone's safety.

 

The original suggestion was for an app.

 

You're not ensuring someone's safety if you're relying on any one system, or relying on checking in every hour, now you've just gone 59 mins before knowing they fell off a ladder. Whereas the gravity sensor in your phone/watch can know that instantly. In fact just get a smartwatch that can read your blood pressure, heart beat, knows when you're moving and when you've fallen.

[jthompson]

Some commercial systems do have fall detection and the like.

[Ditto]

The original suggestion was for an app.

 

You're not ensuring someone's safety if you're relying on any one system, or relying on checking in every hour, now you've just gone 59 mins before knowing they fell off a ladder. Whereas the gravity sensor in your phone/watch can know that instantly. In fact just get a smartwatch that can read your blood pressure, heart beat, knows when you're moving and when you've fallen.

Better still, provide them with a permanent chaperone. Oh, I guess they won't be a lone worker then.

[mavhc]

Some commercial systems do have fall detection and the like.

 

How much per device? Compared with what, £200 for a smart watch, or basically free for software on your phone.

 

Of course no one's defined what we're trying to avoid yet

[jthompson]

Trying to avoid workers being left for hours or days on end if incapacitated for any reason. Mainly thinking site and IT staff during school holidays.

 

I've no idea of cost as I'm just at the asking around stage tbh. I should think that a mobile app would suffice, however, since our IT and site staff all carry mobiles when at work.

 

Having a targeted alert raised within at least an hour seems like a decent starting point to me. Yes, a full sensor array on a smart watch can get loads more detail about heart rate, etc, but I would quite understand why someone might be sceptical about being asked to wear one by their employer.

[DrBeaker]

Trying to avoid workers being left for hours or days on end if incapacitated for any reason. Mainly thinking site and IT staff during school holidays.

 

I've no idea of cost as I'm just at the asking around stage tbh. I should think that a mobile app would suffice, however, since our IT and site staff all carry mobiles when at work.

 

Having a targeted alert raised within at least an hour seems like a decent starting point to me. Yes, a full sensor array on a smart watch can get loads more detail about heart rate, etc, but I would quite understand why someone might be sceptical about being asked to wear one by their employer.

 

Are they company provided mobiles or personal devices?

[mavhc]

There seem to be 100 websites selling android apps, of course none give prices, and most of them seem to also mention blackberry apps, so yeah.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4570297/ Android fall detection.

 

If someone has an iPhone and Apple Watch 5, it's pretty easy

 

Even without a smartphone bet it would be possible to script FreePBX to call someone every 30 mins and require them to press a number between 0 and 9 to prove they're alive.

[Zammo]

There seem to be 100 websites selling android apps, of course none give prices, and most of them seem to also mention blackberry apps, so yeah.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4570297/ Android fall detection.

 

If someone has an iPhone and Apple Watch 5, it's pretty easy

 

Even without a smartphone bet it would be possible to script FreePBX to call someone every 30 mins and require them to press a number between 0 and 9 to prove they're alive.

 

That would be crazy annoying and would be a nightmare if the person was in a meeting or something

 

Stick to a proper product I would say

[jthompson]

Your scripting would also have to account for who is needing to be polled, when they're on and off duty, how to handle a busy line, whether any alarms raised have been noted or dealt with by a supervisor, etc.

 

I understand the temptation to exhaust the roll-your-own solutions before buying anything in, but I feel this is something best handled with a reliable, purpose-built service. If only because I would personally find it pretty devastating if a colleague were to be found in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs on a Monday morning because my script failed to fire on the Friday night.

[mavhc]

Lone working in a meeting? I guess you'd get a lot done.

 

It would work the same way anything like this works, someone signs in to say they're lone working, and signs out. Or just it assumes you're there because the supervisor said you were, and you'd sign out if you weren't.

 

You'd set it to fail safely. If the user doesn't get a call then they'd know it's not working, and the supervisor would get a message each day 30 mins into the day, so they'd know it wasn't working if they got no message.

 

Use uptimerobot to detect if a process is running remotely by having it open a port.

[Zammo]

I clearly meant if the person with the device goes into a meeting and therefore isn’t going to answer their phone.

 

As someone else said, more holes than a sieve. Get a proper man down alarm or don’t do it at all.

 

Scripts, Android watches, PBX scripting, signing in and out, bosses having to check daily messages, uptime checks...it sounds horrible tbh

Edited March 4, 2020 by Zammo

[forkies]

We have man down and lone worker on our radios. Can be turned on/off with a button, simply press a button when it starts beeping for a checkin. If no button pressed then alert call is made.

[mavhc]

I clearly meant if the person with the device goes into a meeting and therefore isn’t going to answer their phone.

 

As someone else said, more holes than a sieve. Get a proper man down alarm or don’t do it at all.

 

Scripts, Android watches, PBX scripting, signing in and out, bosses having to check daily messages, uptime checks...it sounds horrible tbh

 

How does the proper system work?

[TechMonkey]

No offence @mavhc, but do you have current or past experience of a lone worker system in use successfully?

[mavhc]

Nope, no one's bothered to implement one for me when I'm the lone worker, that's why I'm interested in different approaches

[Roberto]

I think the first approach might be to identify exactly what your requirements are. You may decide you have different requirements based around people walking around quiet site during a quiet period when the (so effectively isolated to some degree but not entirely) vs. people working on site during the holidays by themselves.

 

There should also be a risk assessment should there not? Aim to reduce/eliminate the occurrence of this happening at all and then reduce/eliminate the inherent risk in a task where possible. Decide on appropriate response to types of risk as part of this too, and ensure that's viable also. What if the one person nominated to call an ambulance is the person who is in difficulty?

 

Then you can look to purchase an appropriate solution or solutions depending on precise need.

[TechMonkey]

I'm interested as well as we are sometimes in alone and the Estates team are often alone all over the site. The OP asked for examples of systems in use that work so maybe let's see what comes up from people that are using them. Respectfully, if you roll your own system that works then I'd be interested to hear about it or maybe start a thread asking if anyone has ideas how to do this with minimal cost or using off the shelf components and start a discussion to iron out the kinks. Otherwise this is all dragging an interesting thread of on a tangent.

[mavhc]

Let's start with the manual version: Supervisor phones all the lone workers every x hours to check they're ok.

 

Automate this by having a system ask the workers every x hours, and tells the supervisor who's not responded. Need a way to say who's lone working, do they manually sign in, or does the supervisor create the list?

 

You also need to account for the technology failing, low battery warning, out of range etc.

 

Alternative is an active system that monitors the user's health, heart beat, falls, blood pressure, alerts straight away instead of after x/2 hours on average.

 

Now your user is injured and needs to be found, so where are they? GPS will possibly help, or WiFi tracking within a building

[zendenTechy]

Let's start with the manual version: Supervisor phones all the lone workers every x hours to check they're ok.

 

Automate this by having a system ask the workers every x hours, and tells the supervisor who's not responded. Need a way to say who's lone working, do they manually sign in, or does the supervisor create the list?

 

You also need to account for the technology failing, low battery warning, out of range etc.

 

Alternative is an active system that monitors the user's health, heart beat, falls, blood pressure, alerts straight away instead of after x/2 hours on average.

 

Now your user is injured and needs to be found, so where are they? GPS will possibly help, or WiFi tracking within a building

 

I think the OP wanted to know of people who actually have a system in place, why do you keep proposing weird solutions you haven't tried and taking the conversation off topic???