Contractor management is vital
These days, scribbling on a tear-off permit book just doesn't cut it. There's no traceability, no feedback - and most important of all, there is no controlled and traceable process to make sure that whoever is doing to work is fully advised of the hazards they face and the controls that are required - beyond the engineer's memory.
Yet if you don't do it, and do it well, you run the increased risk somebody is going to be injured or worse, and without the traceability that a robust system provides, you'll have a problem.
"A permit is no protection" may be the cry of the busy engineer, but a mature and robust Permit To Work system - one that helps track that all necessary conditions have been checked and precautions taken - goes a long way towards ensuring that protection is actually routinely, reliably and safely provided. It is not, on its own, a Safe System Of Work - but it is absolutely the core component of one.
You need a way of reliably tracking the known hazards on your site, and the controls that each hazard requires - and that can communicate that data consistently to contractors working on site, without depending on individual engineers to remember to communicate all this information.
Popular with Engineers, Contractors, and Site Health & Safety Managers, Q-PERM is an established and mature solution that helps drive a robust Permit To Work system quickly and easily.
The Q-PERM New Activity allows users to add new activities to the system quickly and easily - colour coding distinguishes between warnings of conditions that should be addressed and actual errors in the data or process.
Keyword detection in descriptions identifies additional permits that may be required:
Checks on contractor insurance expiry and suitability for the work being performed are shown in the same way:
You also get a wide range of additional safety checks and warnings, including:
The permit set is comprehensive, with over 30 permit and document types currently supported, and more being added all the time.
- Fire/Safety watcher not allocated
- Contractor banned from site
- Contractor not authorised for type of work
- Multiple activities in conflicting locations
- Multiple hot works concurrently within the same Fire Alarm Zone...
- Contractor insurance valid, up to date, and adequate coverage.
- Site induction training up to date
- suitability for type of work to be performed
- Details of all known hazards in the vicinity of the location of work - and the controls a contractor must follow for safety - are tracked and reported to the contractor.
- Permits that are mandatory or prohibited at specific locations are clearly identified, and the user is required or prevented from raising them as appropriate.
These are instant and provided by colour feedback, notes on-screen and on-the-fly filtering of lists to include only options that meet your known criteria.
Other core features
- Group Supervision system minimises paperwork where a team of people are working on a single activity under a designated supervisor.
- Risk assessments and method statements can be imported into Q-PERM, logged when approved, and stored against individual activities.
- An easy-to-use template function means that routine recurring tasks can be handled with the minimum of data entry, leaving the engineer's time to focus on ensuring that the contractor is actually operating safely.
- Printed permits are produced to be issued to the contractor allowing a robust and auditable Safe System Of Work.
- A self-updating "Activities Today" screen replaces the T-card system and provides instant, clear, colour-coded information of contractors due, onsite, completed or cancelled.
- A robust handover system means that when an engineer has to leave site, the handover to a replacement is clear, well communicated, and logged for audit.
- Simple logging of ratings at the end of each activity, providing management reports, make it easy to keep track of contractor performance over time.
- Hazards & Controls document ensures that hazards and related controls from the RAMS and hazards and related controls for the place of work and surrounding areas
are examined together, making it easier to identify interactions and mutual risks between them.
- Powerful search and query functions make audit compliance easy.
- An integrated rule-based, role-based notification/workflow system ensures that everyone is correctly notified when hazardous activities are scheduled, altered, start, finish or are cancelled.
The large Q-PERM user base - we are group wide suppliers at some of the biggest names in the business - continues to drive our ongoing development; the permit library now has nearly 40 different permits and supporting documents which cover anything from hot work to contamination to excavation to electrical to LockOut/TagOut. Continuously updated with input from our users these now represent a de facto industry standard.
Q-PERM has a proven track record as a comprehensive, reliable, easy to use product, and is in use in industries as diverse as Food manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals, Light Engineering, Heavy Engineering, Civil Engineering, Transport and large scale Print works.
Q-PERM has all the features you need to get control of your contractors, increase permit to work compliance, reduce risks and hazards to life and property, comply with statutory legal and insurance company requirements and save you time and money. Simple but powerful contractor and permit management software Q-PERM centralises your contractor and permit to work data so there is no duplication of effort. The software does the hard work so you don’t have to.
Key benefits of using Q-PERM for managing Permits to Work
- Costs are kept to a minimum.
- Engineering time is spent on Engineering activities and checks on the place of work - not on searching the records.
- Hazards and controls are communicated to contractors quickly and easily - and without dependence on somebody's memory!
- Contractor checks are performed instantly, and cannot be skipped or forgotten.
- Records are of activities being scheduled, started, engineer handovers, and completed, are easily audited.