Specifics

Those of you in the HSE (Health, Safety and Environment) and related fields will be familiar with the term "Incident".

The At Work Software^TM range provides for records of, and analysis of, various types of incident (employee, non-employee, environment, plant/equipment, structure, property, general) but a slightly different terminology is used.

"Unplanned Event" is used to refer to an overall happening, and each consequence of the event is referred to as an "Impact".

Each Unplanned Event can be tagged with an Event Type .. which typically could be "Incident", "Accident", etc (you build your own list to choose from).

So, if a car accident occurred that involved two employees and a bystander, there would be one Unplanned Event (of type "Accident" if you like) and, arising from it, one Plant/Equipment Impact (the car), two Employee Impacts, and one Non-Employee Impact.

Each of the Employee Impacts is what many of you would, in the past, have referred to as an "Incident". However, the term "Incident" is a little misleading in that (in general language usage) it implies a single event.

The terminology we have adopted (Unplanned Events and Impacts) is consistent with relevant Standards, and is also consistent with the language which a layperson might use to describe such a happening (eg "an event occurred which was unplanned, and which had an impact on two employees, a non-employee and a motor vehicle").

Importantly, this terminology reflects a more flexible database model which recognises that a single event can have multiple discrete consequences.

The At Work Software^TM range provides for eight different types of Impact arising from an Unplanned Event:

• employee,
• non-employee,
• environment,
• plant/equipment,
• structure,
• property or ours (that is not plant/equipment or structure),
• property of others,
• general (to cater for anything less specific, such as an impact on security).

The subset packages of the At Work Software^TM range naturally provide for fewer Impact Types:

• Risk At Work allows only General Impacts to be recorded,
• OHS At Work allows you to record Employee Impacts and General Impacts, and
• HSE At Work allows you to record Employee Impacts, Environment Impacts and General Impacts.

For each of the Impact Types available, you can link any number of Impacts with each Unplanned Event.

Rehabilitation

The At Work Software^TM range also provides comprehensively for the management of both worker rehabilitation and environment rehabilitation.

Expenses

Detailed records can be kept of the expenses associated with Unplanned Events and, more specifically, with the individual Impacts arising from Unplanned Events. These expenses could be direct ones (such as the cost of hiring temporary workers) or indirect ones (such as the cost of lost production).

Associated Workers' Compensation Claims can also be managed.

Our first product, OSH At Work^TM, released in 1997, was originally named OHS Analyst because we built it from the ground up to provide users with immense flexiblity in analysing incident data. This same flexible foundation has been built into the complete At Work Software^TM range and many analytical facilities will be progressively added. You are most welcome to make contact with your requests and suggestions.