Multi-Site Laundry Implements Permit To Work System

With up to 50 separate areas for different parts of the cleaning process it can become very busy on site. There can also be hundreds of subcontractors working across the various sites on maintenance, testing and upgrading equipment.

The team were struggling to track and manage permits using the previous paper-based system. Visibility of what was happening on each site was insufficient and it was difficult to produce accurate reports.

Moreover, contractor management was extremely time consuming as there were a large number of manual checks on certification and competence to be performed.

The new system fulfilled all the company’s specific requirements.

• Simple User Interface: Jobs move very quickly in this type of business and it was essential that the permit system was easy to use to allow rapid issue and handback of permits.
• Centralised Overview: Managers needed to be able to track activities across all sites to help with resource planning and particularly to ensure that planned activities did not interfere with other tasks happening nearby.
• Isolations Management: A lot of activity centres around the maintenance, repair and upgrade of electrical equipment so it was essential that the system provided a robust way of managing isolations with comprehensive Lockout/Tagout procedures to prevent accidental re-energization of circuits during work.
• Integration of Risk Assessment Management: Risk management is at the core of all CLEAN services’ activities, and so they had to be able to see risks relating to all planned activities. Spreadsheets simply don’t allow this to happen easily.
• Cloud-Based Solution: With multiple sites it was vital to have a secure and easily accessible system, and they insisted in knowing that the security of their data was being taken seriously.
• Contractor Management As part of the permitting process they have to ensure that all personnel performing tasks carry the appropriate certification for the task they need to perform, as well as up to date insurances etc.

Implementation and onboarding staff across all sites was straightforward and the business saw immediate benefits with a much more streamlined and integrated solution.

The system can be accessed anywhere via a browser and there have not been any outages or other issues since it was introduced.

Staff have been extremely supportive of what was actually a fairly big change to their working practices, but they all quickly saw the benefits. Having a centralised database with a single source of truth for all permits and being able to tie in RAMS has been game changing as they can now see permit status changing in real time.

As part of the process, Pisys developed accurate plot plans which provide schematics of each site with accurate locations of each permit, helping to give a more complete picture of what is going on.

Contractor management is now much smoother and the team are able to proactively identify lapsed certificates and other documentation and engage with the companies well in advance of personnel coming on site, which saves everybody time.