Toni Penttilä, Director of Product Development at Vitec ALMA, understands why safety and occupational health are the focus of EHSQ operations in the process industry. Before joining system provider Vitec ALMA, Penttilä worked in safety and occupational health roles in the chemical process industry.
-Maintenance and investment projects in industry involve many hazardous tasks, such as opening pipelines and inspecting tanks — often even in operating plants. Managing work permit processes alone is a highly demanding task, Penttilä explains.
Vitec ALMA has developed the ehsqALMA module to meet its customers’ growing legal requirements for safety and occupational health.
-Regulations are tightening and official oversight is increasing, so safety and occupational health processes must be both smooth and verifiable. Our customers need to demonstrate during audits that actions have been carried out in compliance with requirements. The most natural solution is to manage EHSQ events within the maintenance system, since maintenance personnel perform the most demanding tasks and often implement safety improvements, Penttilä says.
ehsqALMA is a module of the ALMA system that directly links safety and occupational health to maintenance and projects. It integrates asset data, related tasks, work permits, risk assessments, deviations, and associated information into a single system.
The greatest benefit lies in the single-system model.
-When a person enters the factory area, they complete a site safety briefing. Validity of hot work and occupational safety cards is recorded in the system. We can see who has the required qualifications and permission to work in the area. When process personnel fill out a work permit, they have real-time access to information about authorized individuals and open maintenance targets associated with the permit.
Preventive and corrective maintenance aims to keep factory equipment operational.
-For our customers, the most important thing is that production runs smoothly and operations are safe. In the chemical industry, this may involve hazardous chemicals, cross-reactions, flammable substances, and even explosion risks. Safety incidents cause a wide range of problems. That’s why flawless operation is essential for both safety and production reliability, Penttilä emphasizes.
Handling work permits in a single system also improves maintenance efficiency. Penttilä illustrates this with a concrete example:
-Some maintenance work involves, for example, chemicals that require certain protections. A work permit can only be issued when the site is secured, the worker has the right protective equipment and has the required qualifications for the task. Traditionally, managing the work permit process is time-consuming, burdens process personnel and, at worst, can cause maintenance work to be delayed.
During production, tasks are typically handled by in-house staff, but investment projects and shutdowns involve subcontractors.
Since they may not be familiar with the environment or its risks, ehsqALMA’s qualification management and defined work methods ensure that subcontractors also operate safely on site,” Penttilä concludes.