Thursday, March 28, 2024

App to power health and safety

Avatar photo
The virtual boundary fence will be a reality on a new health and safety app developed by former Synlait Farms-Purata Farms chief executive Juliet Maclean and two colleagues.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

As a contractor or visitor approaches the farmgate they’ll get an alert on their smartphone from the OnSide app telling them they’ve arrived at the property and allowing them to see known risks.
They’re then required to review the risks and acknowledge they understand them as part of the electronic sign-in procedure.
Photos of the risks can be uploaded so the visitor can see them as well as read about them.
The farm manager then receives an alert to tell them who has arrived on the farm and that they’ve signed in.
The time the visitors leave the farm and cross the virtual boundary is also recorded on the app and web-based system.
The chief executive of OnSide, Ryan Higgs, was previously Purata’s innovation manager.
He says the system has been designed so it’s easy for farmers to set-up their farms, pinpoint, identify and describe the risks.
Risks can change daily or even more frequently so the programme is designed to be updated easily.
He says it goes further than identifying risks. OnSide helps farmers to develop their own health and safety plan on the web.
It steps them through setting-up a plan and allows them to say what they’re doing to actively manage, minimise or eliminate risks. The programme helps by providing suggestions and examples.
Higgs said the company had consulted extensively with farmers and corporate farming entities and found they wanted a system that was about more than compliance, with a genuine desire by the industry to keep all those onfarm safe.
Information used in the plans is stored in the cloud so farmers don’t have to manage a paper-based system.
Jade Software developed the system and it’s expected it will be released to the public in early autumn in time for changes to the Health and Safety at Work Act.
Higgs said because it’s a web- and app-based system updates could be carried out as required.
Additional features will be added over time based on customer feedback.
Higgs worked for Purata for about a year and before that completed a PhD at Cornell University in the United States, where he had completed his masters as a Fulbright Scholar.
He has an honours degree from Massey University in Applied Science.
Maclean was a founding director of Synlait which later separated the two arms of the business to become Synlait Milk and Synlait Farms.
She then became chief executive of Synlait Farms which was renamed Purata following a buy-out by Shanghai Pengxin.
Maclean left Purata in May last year.
Both Higgs and Maclean are directors and shareholders in the start-up technology company along with Michael Falconer, previously an investment banker and adviser to Synlait during its capital raising.
He also has senior management experience with Carter Holt Harvey and leadership of health and safety in the challenging forestry sector.

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading