This was our third consecutive year exhibiting at the All Energy Conference – the UK’s largest renewable energy event – at the SEC, Glasgow on 10th-11th May. This event always gives us great opportunities to network with other industry suppliers, experts and thought leaders from the sector and connect with new customers.
This time around we showcased our Lone Worker Alarm Messaging System, alert and monitoring solutions and our new Satellite Devices and spoke with various delegates about why they’re looking for a health and safety solution and what their current problems were regarding telecommunications.
After speaking with a number of offshore workers, including oilrig and wind farm operatives, we noted the same problem arising. The problem was cost; satellite phones come with large initial costs that companies are hesitant to invest in. The Satellite devices we offer however, are not phones per se, they are more like sleeves, that a smartphone can slot into and makes the connection to the satellite network. Because calls are made from a smartphone, users don’t need to worry about transferring their contacts or telephone numbers to a secondary satellite phone. This is great from an operational perspective as it means teams are happy to share devices, reducing costs significantly.
When operatives are working offshore on an oil rig for example, they often find themselves in situations where they are working alone. Lone worker apps offer great protection, however, the level of protection that they offer is extremely reduced in areas where there is no connectivity, which is where a satellite device can help; ensuring that any alarm triggered will alert colleagues and make them aware of the emergency unfolding.
We also spoke with a number of delegates that worked in the maintenance sector that would often travel overseas. Whilst their travel arrangements are often all taken care of, they can at times find themselves on a way to a client in the middle of nowhere, totally at the mercy of a taxi driver. This can obviously be somewhat disconcerting as if something was to happen how would they raise an alarm? And even if colleagues were alerted to their disappearance, without any idea of their location, how would they even find them? Although this maybe deemed an extreme case, the fact that there are lone worker solutions that can detail their exact GPS co-ordinates within in an alarm message system on the market proved to be particularly comforting for those who popped by our stand.
We also found delegates sharing insights with us on any loopholes they felt they have in their worker communications. For those working offshore or in remote areas, they’re not necessarily in a closed environment and have a post lone worker alarm process in operation that escalates an emergency. The solution they had in place was for colleagues to work in teams so that nobody was ever working alone but because of the large areas they were covering, team members were often in different places to each other and often out of sight. If an accident did happen it could quite easily go unnoticed for some time, so it didn’t really prove to be an effective or reliable solution. Furthermore, when working overseas, there is also the difficultly of a foreign language – where important emergency details such as the location or the seriousness of an incident can be miscommunicated resulting in unnecessary delays in workers receiving emergency support or aid, which can be fatal. In this type of situation, it becomes clear how lone worker solutions like ours, which incorporate such a satellite device would automatically solve these types of issues for employers.
So that’s a wrap up of our time at All Energy 2017. We look forward to hopefully seeing you at next year’s event but in the meantime, if any on the above rings true for your business and you’d like to speak with our team of experts - call us on 01494 833123.
Follow ANT Telecom on Twitter and LinkedIn for further news updates.
