Identifying the problem
United Steels delivers a wide range of services to the steel industry, including heavy and light gauge decoiling, slitting, shearing, and blanking. It does this all from its busy processing plant in Kingswinford. The site is always on the go, receiving regular deliveries of raw steel which it turns into usable components before shipping them out to customers, overseeing the whole process from end-to-end.
The processing plant is full of heavy machinery, all of which needs maintaining and operating safely. Materials need storing securely, and its fleet of trucks needs managing too. It’s a very busy environment where any slip in safety standards could easily have serious consequences for United Steels and its employees on the workshop floor, but paper-based processes were holding it back.
Finding the Solution
United Steels wanted to adopt more efficient ways of working throughout its business, including for health and safety, because old-fashioned manual processes and endless paperwork were stopping it from achieving more.
It originally wanted a digital system that could deliver risk assessments and method statements more effectively, simplifying their creation and communication. This would then free up time to focus on other important issues that would make a material difference to site safety.
United Steels chose Work Wallet because of its simplicity and low cost, but quickly realised it could help in many more ways.
Delivering the Outcome
Having seen how effective the app was at delivering risk assessments, United Steels now uses all of the Work Wallet modules to manage every aspect of its health and safety, benefiting from discounted “all-in” rates. They particularly like the incident reporting tool, and have seen a 75 percent reduction in accidents on site in only twelve months.
The system’s ease-of-use is driving high adoption rates among staff at the plant, winning over technophobic users. They can report issues quickly using the app, knowing they will be seen and addressed, while senior managers get full and instant oversight of everything that happens. Better communication and data means safety issues are addressed quickly, in a targeted way, and staff are kept safe.