Growing EHS IoT Investment Opens The Door To Holistic Dynamic Risk Management

Growing EHS IoT Investment Opens The Door To Holistic Dynamic Risk Management

The IoT age is making its impression in the world of EHS. The Verdantix Global Corporate Survey 2021 saw an unprecedented number of corporate firms planning to pilot new connected technologies such as mobile EHS applications, wearables, proximity sensors and environmental monitors. The allure of real-time data insight is spoken frequently by EHS technology vendors and corporate safety heads alike. However, ensuring the power of IoT data is leveraged to its highest potential is no easy task, meaning many corporates are still reliant on lagging insight driven by traditional EHS methods. Dynamic risk management is a concept being spearheaded health and safety frontrunners, which aims to maximise the impact of real-time data by uniting several areas of risk mitigation on a single system.

Verdantix defines dynamic risk management as “a holistic visualisation of risk built using real-time leading and lagging data streams, that enables efficient reactive and proactive mitigation actions.” Our analysis finds dynamic risk management to be one of the most promising concepts for EHS development. Effective solutions aggregate and analyse real-time data of operational, asset and human factors to give a more vivid insight into on-site risk. Vendors including Intelex, Damstra and GOARC are frontrunners in providing connected platforms that manage and consolidate multiple IoT data streams from the edge. Dynamic risk management also relies on several agile analytical tools, take Enablon’s dynamic bow-tie risk models and Sphera’s operational risk digital twin, which allow firms to better visualise and pre-emptively address hazards at multiple levels of granularity.

Dynamic risk management’s impact on employee safety will continue to grow. Real time data insights are particularly valuable when used to closely manage the interface between workers and assets through control-of-work process. Within the last two years, both EHS and asset management vendors have been quick to integrate control-of-work solutions within their real time data solutions to better manage risk, witness VelocityEHS’s acquisition of OneLook Systems and Yokogawa’s acquisition of RAP International. Verdantix predicts that dynamic risk management solutions will promote better alignment and collaboration between Operations, Asset Management and EHS business units when addressing safety.

When adopting nascent digital solutions like dynamic risk management, firms can run into a complex variety of infrastructure, technology and process challenges. To help guide corporate firms, Verdantix interviewed 9 prominent vendors in the space to develop a Best Practices report, detailing the critical success factors to consider when implementing a dynamic risk solution. The report further details the benefits of dynamic risk management, the prominent challenges firms face when onboarding solutions and the best technology, people and process practices when evolving from traditional EHS processes.

How to best transform traditional EHS processes to dynamic risk management, please access our report Best Practices: Moving EHS Towards Dynamic Risk Management or register for the accompanying webinar Transforming Traditional EHS To Dynamic Risk Management.