SOCIAL DISTANCING AND INFECTION TRACING PLATFORM ‘WORK SAFE’ LAUNCHES TO HELP BRITISH BUSINESS STAY OPEN
– Social distancing and infection tracing solution Work Safe, launched by EMSOL, will help workers prevent infection through safe social distancing
– Work Safe delivers workplace track and trace and enables employers to immediately identify individuals who might have come into contact with a known infected team member
– Work Safe will help businesses in Britain to keep operating safely through a second wave of COVID-19
1 OCTOBER, LONDON: EMSOL, the company that enables healthier urban worksites through analytics, today launches Work Safe, a social distancing and infection tracing platform especially designed for high density working environments.
Work Safe, co-funded by Innovate UK’s COVID-19 recovery Fast Start programme, is an easy to use system designed to help people keep themselves safe at work as a second wave of COVID-19 develops, keep British firms open for business and safely accelerate up to pre-COVID levels of productivity.
Sectors with large workforces operating in close proximity in for example, manufacturing or construction, are facing challenges in keeping team members socially distanced and safe. Work Safe enables team members to feel more confident about going to work, knowing that their safety is being continually assessed and they are being helped to socially distance.
Work Safe is the workplace track and trace and employers can gain visibility and control of COVID in their workplaces to increase safety, keep their business functioning and keep Britain open for business. The system also monitors locations and times of the day that are particularly busy in order to better arrange staff movement, workplace cleaning and shift scheduling.
In the event of an infection an employer can input known infected individuals, then Work Safe immediately identifies those they have been in close contact with to take rapid, target action. This ensures an entire team does not get infected and the work site is able to continue functioning and only targeted people need be self isolated.
Work Safe enables employers to track social distancing breaches by who was involved, the location of where they occur, and the time and date of when they happen through a secure, cloud-based platform. If social distancing breaches occur regularly, managers are able to take immediate action to train specific team members, improving site safety and compliance.
Work Safe removes the problem of relying on individual responsibility to download an app and keep it tracing while they work. The NHS COVID-19 app has so far only been downloaded by 20 percent of the population across England and Wales. Another significant benefit of Work Safe is that it is a preventative solution, focused on workers avoiding getting infected in the first instance, and secondly being able to track those who have been in contact with an infected individual.
The tool is a physical fob that is worn by all workers and is particularly useful for industries like construction, clothing manufacturing, food processing and food manufacturing, where there is a high number of people working in close proximity. No mobile phone or personal download is required.
Work Safe reduces financial and reputational risk for business by identifying where an infection couldn’t have happened on site, and also by being compliant with social distancing and hygiene rules and guidelines.
EMSOL are experts in ingesting and processing high volume streams of location data for improved worksite health. Work Safe was developed building on this expertise, while also responding to the need for social distancing to keep business working and the economy afloat.
The product is being trialled by brands including construction management company Structure Tone, and international consultancy and construction company MACE is about to embark on a trial at London School of Economics.
Freddie Talberg, CEO and Founder, EMSOL said: “As we gear up for a second wave of COVID-19, businesses are under a huge amount of pressure to keep operating while also keeping their workforce safe. Now is the time for businesses to begin preparing themselves to ensure they can keep operating as normal and keep their staff safe and in work.
“Work Safe is the workplace equivalent of track and trace and it enables employers to keep operating as normal and keep the lights on in Britain. This system is designed to take some of the pressure off construction, manufacturing and processing industries and make it easier to keep their workforce safe, operational and productive.”
Tom Fiddian, Innovation Lead at Innovate UK said: “As a second wave of COVID-19 develops, Innovate UK is committed to supporting business-led innovation in response to the global disruption.
“EMSOL’s Work Safe is a product that will help British business avoid widespread infection in high density work spaces, keeping those businesses open and organisations functioning as normal. The benefits of this tool for industries like construction or manufacturing are considerable.”
Iain Casagrande, Director, Structure Tone International said: “Structure Tone is committed to site safety and we understand that we will be living with COVID-19 for the foreseeable future, so we need to deliver a COVID-safe work site for our operatives and we need to keep our sites operating for our clients.
“Our trial with EMSOL Work Safe gave us the visibility and control we would need to ensure a COVID-Safe worksite by delivering evidence and insights to help us avoid infections spreading and trace the infections to specific operatives if needed.
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About EMSOL
EMSOL was founded in 2017 by Freddie Talberg and has since grown to service Croydon Council, London School of Economics, Birmingham New Street, EastWestRail, Cross River Partnership, Balfour Beatty, Veolia, Network Rail, Mace and Hanson.
EMSOL are experts in tracking location and ingesting significant amounts of data through their previous experience in monitoring air quality. Their air quality platform pulls real time data from IoT (internet of Things) monitors to track spikes in emissions of noxious gasses and they’ve worked with Balfour Beatty, Veolia, Network Rail and Hanson.
EMSOL is committed to individual privacy and all data storage and transmission is encrypted, can be 100% anonymised and is managed in compliance with GDPR and our customer’s policies.
About Work Safe
Work Safe captures an employee’s location every second, analyses for distancing breaches and sends actionable information to all relevant team members. Alarms can be instantly sent to a supervisor to manage breaches of social distancing in real time.
Work Safe has been trialled with construction management company Structure Tone. During their trial, Structure Tone received real-time clear, actionable evidence of social distancing breaches allowing them to take action with additional operative training or reclassifying employees under a “close working” rule within the platform, changing shift and site movement patterns which allows for those who need to work closer together and to mitigate future site based COVID-19 risks.
Find out more about Work Safe at www.worksafetrace.co.uk
Contacts
Malusa Kilonda
+44 79 4344 3321
malusa.kilonda@wearesevenhills.com
