MySafety App: mobile technology applied to improve Forest Safety

Summary Description:

Safety culture is the product of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies and patterns of behaviour that determine the commitment to an organisation’s safety management. Therefore, as a result of assembling more comprehensive data in real-time data, the project will drive a fundamental advance in the industry’s safety culture, so improving safety practices and training which, in turn, will reduce the numbers of incidents and fatalities.

The key objective of the project is to replace ineffective, out-dated, paper-based processes by deploying low-cost, smart technology to operators in the forestry industry so that they can record incidents more easily, be assured of their personal safety and respond to periodic questionnaires which will provide the industry with its first ever holistic assessment of its safety culture.

Project Outcomes:

"After the first two years of the MySafety project, its outcomes were signifi cantly in advance of initial expectations. The usability of the App has been optimised for operators by providing a standard, easy-to-use reporting mechanism suitable for many different needs, and development has also focused on evidencing their access to site documents. Serendipitously, the secure communication channel provided by MySafety is well matched to the roles and responsibilities defined in FISA’s recent Guidance on Managing Health and Safety in Forestry. Now, in 2021, the project focus is on data fl ows and integration in order to embed MySafety within FWM’s operational processes. Because the technical architectures of most FWM’s systems are completely different, we have begun to investigate how to provide consistent and effective flows of information from MySafety"

An article about the MySafety app, published in Forestry and Timber News in June 2021, can be read here.