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Intelex > Case Studies > Smart Technology and Employee Engagement Raise Safety Culture and Reduce Injuries at SUEZ North America

Smart Technology and Employee Engagement Raise Safety Culture and Reduce Injuries at SUEZ North America

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems

Applicable Industries

Utilities

Applicable Functions

Human Resources
Maintenance

Use Cases

Machine Condition Monitoring
Predictive Maintenance

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
Data Science Services

The Challenge

SUEZ North America, a company responsible for treating 560 million gallons of water and over 440 million gallons of wastewater each day, faced challenges in managing facilities of different ages and stages in building and equipment maintenance, supervising and engaging employees who have not received comparable training, and aligning often varied safety missions and cultures. Accurate incident reporting and data management was key to improving health and safety for workers and satisfying maintenance and operations demands at the many facilities SUEZ manages. Initially, the company used spreadsheets to capture, report, analyze, and correct hazards. As its client list grew and new software and technology became available, SUEZ realized a paper-based approach to incident management had become cumbersome and ineffective.

About The Customer

SUEZ North America is a company that operates water utilities and provides water and wastewater services to municipalities in the United States and Canada. The company also provides long-term rehabilitation and maintenance services to over 4,000 municipal and industrial customers including elevated and grounded water storage tanks. As a result, employees spend more than 1 million work hours a year working at elevations of 100 feet or higher, and so the New Jersey based company must take a serious proactive approach to employee safety. SUEZ North America contracts with numerous clients to operate their water and wastewater plants. This requires managing facilities of different ages and stages in building and equipment maintenance, supervising and engaging employees who have not received comparable training, and aligning often varied safety missions and cultures.

The Solution

In 2015, SUEZ launched an effort to achieve its goals and chose Intelex’s software as the platform to make that happen. SUEZ utilizes Intelex’s EHS Incident Reporting and Management software for capturing, reporting, analyzing, and correcting hazards. Every employee has access to the software and most of the workforce has smart devices through which they can report hazards. Employees access the software and collect data primarily on tablets, and the ease of use has made it attractive even to older workers who often resist using technology to perform tasks they previously recorded by hand on paper forms. A single sign-on feature allows employees to access Intelex and other applications by entering just one set of credentials. As more employees have realized how much easier it is to enter incidents, usage has grown steadily from only a “handful of sites” when it was first deployed to over 120 sites today.

Operational Impact

The company’s Total Recordable Injury Rate (TRIR) is consistently lower than the industry average.
Within two years of adopting Intelex, SUEZ boasted a TRIR of 2.08 while the industry average was 3.00.
Similarly, its frequency rate was 0.61 compared to the 1.40 industry average.

Quantitative Benefit

Days Away Restricted or Transferred (DART) rate down by 24 percent in the past four years, from 2.14 in 2014 to 1.63 in 2018.
Workers’ Compensation Experience Modification Rate (EMR) down by 41 percent since 2009 (1.05 to 0.62).
82 percent of employees agree that the company is committed to safety and their welfare and is investing in keeping them safe. Three years ago, it was 57 percent.