Perth & Kinross Council

At 5,286 square km (2,041 square miles), remote and mountainous Perth & Kinross is the fifth most expansive administrative region in Scotland. It is sparsely populated but busy with substantial rural through-traffic between central Scotland and the Highlands. The region’s bridges are vital conduits. Additionally, flooding is always a risk – caused by extreme weather and overflowing watercourses – and so regular monitoring of critical transport infrastructure and waterways is essential. Emergency inspections need to be carried out at any time of day or night, often in hazardous conditions and rugged environments, frequently by lone workers.

Lone workers in the specialist bridge inspections team operate daily across the wide Council area, often in areas with very limited mobile phone signal.

The Council implements a Health and Safety at Work policy across their departments. In 2010, after a health and safety review, it became clear that their lone worker protocol at that time, which relied solely on mobile phones, was ineffective and was not a reliable way for lone workers in the bridge inspections team to keep touch due to their working locations.

The Head of the Structures & Flooding Team at Perth & Kinross Council advised, “As a regulated public authority, the Council takes the welfare and security of staff very seriously. Thanks to the lone worker safety solution provided by Trackplot we can carry out our operations with the peace of mind that support is always on hand in case of an emergency.”

The health and safety review highlighted the need for the adoption of a lone worker monitoring solution. Trackplot provides a satellite based solution which operates across all remote and rural areas and does not need mobile phone reception to work. It uses the latest GPS Devices and the Global Positioning System (GPS) to locate the position of lone workers during their working day.

The system was set up to the bridge inspections team requirements enabling their lone workers to Check-in, Track themselves and Check-out at the end of each day. Later the launch of the Trackplot Mobile App enabled the team to customise functions for their specific work activities.

Once successfully implemented, the Trackplot system was then rolled out to the projects team and the structures and flooding team, whose team members also frequently lone work in remote locations. Each team was set up with their own notifications protocols and their line managers given access to the Trackplot Portal to enable daily monitor of each employee out in the field.

The Head of the Structures & Flooding Team at Perth & Kinross Council added, “SPOT paired with Trackplot’s monitoring and alert system contributes significantly to our procedure in helping to keep our lone working and paired staff safe, particularly in remote areas where there is no mobile network coverage. Trackplot have tailored the alert and monitoring system to our needs and users can be secure in the knowledge that they have the means of requesting assistance with their location accurately identified, moreover, they have the peace of mind that if they do not check-in at specific times that this will be alerted to managers/additional support staff.”

Trackplot has provided these specialist teams and their managers in Perth & Kinross Council a sense of security as all their lone working colleagues are monitored during their working day, even in remote locations. The employees feel they have a support network and, should an incident occur, they are able to quickly and easily request help through the ‘Assist’ or ‘SOS’ functions. In such a case, or if a lone worker becomes overdue, alerts are issued to line managers and their location can be identified in the Trackplot Portal through the track feature.