Implementation and digitization of risk assessment in the work permit

The challenge

During a regular government audit, our client received an anomaly. It turned out that the current work permits did not include sufficient risk assessment. Work permits are created in an existing system. A risk assessment was not part of it. The biggest challenge is in the size. Dozens of departments, hundreds of people make work permits. All have to work on a different way of working, different behavior.

Our approach

This improvement must be made, or the deviation will become a violation. At the same time, the solution must be practical and accepted by the many users. Our approach consisted of 3 steps:

Containment development: creating a quick solution to prevent worse.
Contaiment implementation: implementing the solution.
Digitization: making solution user-friendly by digitizing.

Together with a representative group, the temporary solution was developed. Based on laws & regulations, a flow and questionnaire for the risk assessment was created. Each group member created buy-in from his/her constituency (incl. suppliers) as a representative. After a pilot, implementation started in all plants and teams. In the process, daily users were first trained and then coached on how to use it to achieve quick results.

At the same time, work was done to digitize the risk assessment in Powerapps (Microsoft). This involved linking to the work permit system to achieve maximum user-friendliness. This "beckoning perspective" helped enormously in the acceptance of the temporary paper solution.