Every day thousands of field work orders are carried out across the UK. Tasks vary
from digging up and repairing a leaking pipe to working with high voltage cables.
Even with the preparation that the field crews are briefed with ahead of arriving
at the job, each one has unique characteristics which need to be assessed on site.
Striking a utility system such as a high voltage cable or a water pipe while digging
is a common cause of injury. Over six years, 3,972 injuries were reported: that is
almost two per day. In addition to the health impact on workers, safety incidents
result in substantial fines.
At the same time, productivity is a significant problem for field crews. They often
have to deal with a job being blocked before it can even commence. This can be
for a simple reason such as not enough barriers having been loaded in their van
for the job site, or having been given incorrect tools for the job, or it could be
more complex such as a relevant permit to work was not issued before they left
the depot. Regardless of cause, these blockers frequently block jobs for several
hours. FYLD analysis shows the average time it takes to get moving once a job is
blocked is 1.5 hours. Job blockers are estimated to impact 30% of jobs. That is a
lot of time for workers to be off the tools.
Safety challenges of field jobs
Utility field crews start their work by performing an on-site risk assessment. This
task aims to identify the hazards associated with the job and determine effective
control measures. Even today, these risk assessments are largely paper based.
Sometimes digital versions of paper are used. Field crews carry out these
assessments day in, day out, turning them into a routine task. The kind of routine
task that not a lot of thought goes into. They are rarely treated as an analysis of
the hazards of each job and a planning tool to ensure those hazards are well
controlled.
Team leaders do not have access to safety professionals who can give real-time
input to the risk assessment. This kind of specialist support is always available for
incident investigation after an injury. Imagine the impact safety professionals
could have if we flipped this norm on its head and let them contribute to the
safety of a task before work commenced.
Job blockers – which in our experience impact 30% of jobs - introduce new risks.
Crews frequently deploy work arounds to get the job done. It means they are
working outside of approved processes and procedures, a well known source of
risk and incidents.
Productivity challenges of field jobs
Productivity is also a significant challenge in the utility, construction and
highways sectors. Crews need permits from the relevant authority before
commencing their task. They frequently discover the need for different tools or
team members once on site, delaying jobs while waiting for the issue to be
resolved. Most of the time they are working a long way from base and getting
supplies out to site takes a long time.
Team leaders out on site can seek help from supervisors to remove their job
blockers. But with each supervisor overseeing multiple crews, with their phone
running hot with them in reactive mode, it takes time to reach the supervisor and
action a solution. They are rarely at the site where they could have the most
impact. In the end, a job may be delayed for several hours or even be abandoned
and replanned. Each time this happens, there is a negative impact on customer
satisfaction along with operating costs or contract profitability.
Even if supervisors had the time to review the most common causes of blocked
jobs or delays – and solve repeat job blockers – they rarely have the needed
information at hand. Most companies have no systemic way to track what really
happens out on a job.
How artificial intelligence and digital systems overcome the challenges
of field jobs
At FYLD we are harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to help our
customers overcome both safety and productivity challenges.
Our AI-based risk assessment solution enables field crews to make a step-change
in the quality of their risk assessments. This happens through field workers having
to get out of their vans and take a video recording of the job in front of them.
They talk about the hazards they are seeing, and the hazards they would expect
but are not seeing. Voice and imagery recognition software enables the FYLD to
identify hazards and apply control measures automatically which have previously
been agreed with the company. The results of the AI process facilitate a higher
level of discussion about the tasks and the risks involved. Essentially, the field
crew is developing their own bespoke safe work process based on the site-specific
conditions and hazards.
Moving from a paper-based system to a cloud-based application enables real time
collaboration. The FYLD platform makes it possible for safety professionals and
supervisors to proactively provide input instead of today’s norm of responding
only once an incident or injury occurs.
Online collaboration between field crews and their supervisors also facilitates a
step-change in productivity. Job blockers can be identified through photos and
messages captured in FYLD. Supervisors become aware of delays as they happen
and can action solutions immediately. The timestamped history of job progress
through photos and messages, coupled with FYLD’s data driven recommendation
engine, provides quick wins for improved productivity.
Supervisors can make informed decisions about which sites to visit. They have
access to all the risk assessments making it possible for them to identify the
highest risk jobs. They also know where the most significant job blockers are – or
where they are likely to arise. AI systems give supervisors access to the
information they need at their fingertips to optimise their time and ensure they
are making better decisions about where to focus their attention.
FYLD in action
FYLD is an AI tool designed to improve the safety and efficiency of field teams -
whether they are working on a construction site or roadside. The application uses
video and audio inputs to identify hazards and suggest control measures for jobs.
In an extensive trial with a major utility, the solution was adopted by 750
users across 14 depots, with impactful results. The company‘s risk visualisation
increased dramatically and interventions increased resulting in a reduction of
incidents and injuries by 20% compared to the previous period. It is very clear that
FYLD is keeping field workers safer than paper based tick box safety.
Health & Safety experts know that every single safety intervention they make has
the potential to save a life. A powerful example of this emerged
during a FYLD trial where a Visual Risk Assessment (VRA) picked up a hazard
related to an underground cable. The position of the cable made it vulnerable to a
cable strike in carrying out the work. A supervisor, who was not on-site at the
time, saw this risk in FYLD, in real time. Their intervention led to the temporary
stopping of the job so that the risk could be properly mitigated.
Another trial involving 21 users at a leading contractor for the utilities and
highways sectors showed a steady increase in the number of safety interventions.
Over 270 interventions from supervisors and safety professionals occurred in just
a 4 week period, demonstrating a high level of support to field crews. Safety
professionals and supervisors are viewing the frontline workers FYLD risk
assessments in real-time and helping teams to make the best decisions about
control measures to prevent the likelihood of Incidents or injuries manifesting.
These kinds of interventions are simply not possible for companies using paper-
based systems or tick box safety questions on electronic tablets.
The future of AI for field teams
Field workforces are under pressure from many angles. Their work is high risk,
and profitability is tight. FYLD enables companies with large field force operations
to deliver safer, more productive operations.
Forward thinking companies know that delivering safer work sites through the use
of cutting edge AI tools, incidents and injuries will decrease. Great safety and
supported field workforces drive employee engagement, which has great
productivity benefits.
The future field team will leave the depot with their vans packed just right to
complete the job they are going to. The right people will also be in the van, with
the right permits in place before they leave. These profitability improving
outcomes can only be delivered by companies who embrace a data led approach
to managing their field workforces, and who embrace the use of data in real time.
AI driven field force platforms like FYLD enable this future. Paper is removed,
data is captured about safety and operations in real time, as they actually take
place. With BCG studies 1 showing that forward thinking field workforce
companies can increase workers availability by 50% and time taken to do routine
jobs by 25% through deployment of solutions like FYLD, the size of the prize for
early movers is large.
Our partners said:
Chief Executive of SGN, John Morea, commented:
“At SGN, we are committed to embracing digital transformation in order
to improve the service we deliver to our customers, and to make our operations as
safe and sustainable as possible. FYLD is playing a key role in our delivery of this
ambition, and since rolling it out, it has made a significant impact on our
operations in a very short time. FYLD has empowered our field workers by making
1 https://www.bcg.com/en-gb/publications/2018/how-utilities-can-boost-workforce-productivity-digital
paper-based methods redundant, and allowed them to collect data and turn it into
actionable insights.
“By leveraging the smart, AI-driven data from FYLD, we have been able to identify
risk before it poses harm, prioritise tasks, and improve safety, productivity,
sustainability, and quality across our operations.”
JT Clark, Managing Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), said:
‘’To capture the long-term benefits of a field workforce transformation, we need
to establish visibility of program outcomes at a granular level, across the entirety
of the team and tasks involved.
“FYLD’s AI driven, seamlessly integrated solution, does exactly that - ensuring your
hard-earned transformation dividend is unlocked on a sustainable basis.”
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