EHS & Sustainability: EHS&S
Natural Power Adopts a Modern EHS Platform to Enable Comprehensive Risk Reporting
Following its implementation of SAI360 EHS&S, Natural Power anticipates a stronger governance and management framework that will efficiently accommodate risk scaling as the company grows.
BACKGROUND
Natural Power is a global service provider and independent consultant for green energy projects. Since 1995, the company’s expert teams have provided advice on more than 6,000 projects to help create a world powered by renewable energy. The company provides services related to onshore wind, offshore renewables, solar, hydro, renewable heat and infrastructure. Clients look to Natural Power for analysis, engineering, planning and permitting, environmental project management and due diligence services.
THE COMPLIANCE CHALLENGE
Natural Power is a multidisciplinary company whose work involves frequent working offline and in isolation in remote environments. As its customer base grew, it was clear that the company’s initial method of using spreadsheets, Word documentation and an outdated incident management system was not providing a unified view of EHS performance and risks across the organization. Among the challenges the company faced were:
- Limited transparency making oversight difficult
- Limited organization-wide accessibility to software tools that made it difficult to improve risk cultures and develop effective governance
- Lack of integration with multiple key systems, leading to unnecessary administrative hours
- Limited integrated reporting, which made delivery of the risk governance framework inefficient
Ultimately, this limited, clunky and isolated system did not provide the modern risk governance framework suitable for a fast-growing company that would properly mitigate risks at all levels of the organization. Risk was measured differently in different areas, leading to an
incomplete understanding of liabilities.
THE SOLUTION
Adopt a dedicated EHS and Operational Risk Management platform that enables team members at all levels to understand risks, report them through a readily accessible mobile platform and manage related actions as part of a larger risk management framework encouraging organization-wide change. Natural Power selected to roll out four SAI360 EHS&S modules: Audit Management, Behavioral Based Safety, Incident Management and Risk Management.
- Audit Management: Enables audit planning and follow-up through out-of-the-box reports and notifications.
- Behavioural-Based Safety: Proactive preventative-based safety reporting
- Incident Management: A central platform provides a single source of truth for recording and responding to a wide variety of incidents and events.
- Risk Management: Aligns the risk process with established standards through tools including a risk register, risk bowtie, risk appetite and key risk indicators.
THE RESULTS
Simple, real-time capture of observations and incidents through mobile reporting. Centralized information management that offers multiple ways to view and leverage information within a single platform, streamlining workflows and reducing time spent collecting and compiling key risk data from multiple sources.
The implementation of the new platform benefited from SAI360’s FastStart implementation service, which allowed Natural Power to hit the ground running with easy configuration, transparent costs and quick-start user training. The SAI360 implementation methodology resulted in rapid ROI and swift adoption of best-in-class risk and safety modules.
REAL-TIME REPORTING
“THE BIGGEST RISK FOR US WAS ALWAYS FIELD-BASED TEAMS.”— Andy Precious, Senior Project Manager
Under the previous system, field-based teams performing a variety of functions would have to wait until they had reception to report incidents. This frequently led to staff submitting incidents/risks when back in the office, adding to the overall administration burden.
The solution needed mobile accessibility and a simple interface to allow everyone from on-site service teams to ecologists at remote sites to submit incidents and observations anywhere, at any time.
A UNIFIED PROCESS
“AUDITS AND INSPECTIONS WERE DONE THROUGH MULTIPLE SITES, DOCUMENTS AND CHECKLISTS WITHOUT A COMPANYWIDE PLATFORM TO MANAGE AUDIT AND INSPECTION INFORMATION.”— Bethany Butler, HSEQ Administrator
The solution needed to house all processes so that each department and team could use the same tools and produce clean data without the need for manual collection, formatting and elimination of duplicate information.
CENTRAL OVERSIGHT
“BEFORE, CENTRAL OVERSIGHT WAS CHALLENGING. WHILE THINGS WERE BEING DONE, IT WASN’T AN EFFECTIVE USE OF PEOPLE’S TIME.”— Andy Precious, Senior Project Manager
The solution needed to offer a simple way to track actions across the platform and escalate incidents or risks through a variety of management structures, breaking down the barriers of the spreadsheet-based system to allow efficient collaboration and management of risk data.
HOW SAI360 DELIVERED
Natural Power’s risk management working group chose SAI360’s EHS&S solutions because the platform offers these features that fulfilled RFP requirements:
- Modern and intuitive user interface, including configurable dashboards that are easy to navigate.
- Centralized action tracking throughout the platform with clear accountability.
- Integrated auditing, incident and control management.
- Multi-functional Roam mobile application to support risk management and submissions in the field.
- Cloud hosting that provides high levels of availability and minimizes internal support requirements.
- API that integrates the solution with the organization’s existing systems.
- High-caliber security specifications that align with Natural Power’s security requirements.
As a result of the new platform going live, there has been a significant increase in the volume of risk information submitted, especially from field teams. The new system captured 46.5% more incidents and 42.5% more observations over corresponding five-month periods from 2019 to 2021.
Employees across the organization are experiencing improved efficiency now that technicians, inspectors and auditors can submit information from anywhere and trust that once they’re back online, the information will automatically transfer to the central platform.
HSEQ Administrator Bethany Butler notes that “we have a lot more people trusting the platform and using it more.
”As more information is populated within the platform, Natural Power anticipates the development of a stronger governance and management framework that will efficiently accommodate the scaling risks of taking on more clients and projects.
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