About
Fourway Communications is a specialist provider of integrated telecoms and technology solutions for infrastructure projects, particularly in the rail, transport, and construction sectors. Their expertise spans design, installation, testing, and commissioning services for critical systems. With teams working in complex and high-risk environments, maintaining a robust health and safety framework is essential for safe operations and ensuring compliance across their sites.
Challenge
In 2021, the Fourway Board set three strategic objectives to replace their email and spreadsheet-based processes for health and safety. These were:
- Support frontline staff: With demanding site conditions, frontline workers needed a simple, efficient way to report and manage safety issues.
- Digital transformation: Fourway wanted to automate administrative tasks, and ensure data security, using mobile technology as the backbone of their safety strategy.
- Data-driven decision making: By utilising safety data to identify trends, improve predictability, and enable continuous business improvement.
When assessing their system requirements, Fourway wanted a tried and tested product but also the flexibility to develop tailored features specified by their operational and HSQE teams. After considering three different suppliers, they selected Notify, a market leader in this field with excellent client references.
Solution
Fourway migrated their email / spreadsheet-based processes over to Notify soon after the assessment, initially adopting the Incident Management and Audit modules. Following that, It wasn’t long before their three strategic objectives became a reality:
- Simplifying life for frontline staff
The Notify App, which is mandatory for all staff, has become an integral part of Fourway’s health and safety ecosystem. During induction, every team member downloads the app to ensure quick and seamless reporting of accidents, incidents, near misses, and even positive observations. Some of the key benefits are:
- Automatic notifications: The Notify App instantly generates emails to notify site leaders and HSQE teams about issues, allowing prompt responses and action.
- Mobile-integrated reporting: Staff can capture time- and location-stamped images, ensuring accurate and efficient documentation of site conditions.
- Preloaded data: The App includes business and project-specific data such as reporting locations and authorised responders, minimising free-text input and reducing administrative time for staff. This also helps with engagement.
- Event categorisation: A simple menu allows staff to quickly categorise events, prioritising risks and accelerating response times.
This efficient, user-friendly approach ensures that safety issues are addressed promptly and data is gathered consistently and accurately.
- Automating activity
Notify automates every stage of the incident management lifecycle, from reporting to resolution:
- End-to-end tracking: Safety events remain open on the App until responders confirm actions have been taken. For more complex issues, formal investigations are initiated by the HSQE team with automated notifications sent to relevant stakeholders.
- Collaboration with clients: Investigative data is compiled into detailed reports, then shared with clients and principal contractors to ensure transparency and alignment with broader safety protocols / procedures.
- Audit and compliance: Notify enables Fourway to digitally document and track every decision, providing a robust audit trail that enhances accountability and supports regulatory compliance.
This automation eliminates inefficiencies associated with manual reporting and allows the team to focus on corrective actions rather than administrative tasks.
- Using data and insight for continuous improvement
Notify’s data analytics capabilities have transformed how Fourway measures and improves safety performance:
- Real-time insights: The HSQE team uses Safety Intelligence Dashboards to filter and analyse data by type, location, and status, enabling quick verification of safety events and trend analysis.
- Strategic planning: Weekly, quarterly, and annual data reviews inform corporate risk assessments, helping Fourway adjust their 5-year HSQE strategy.
- Resource optimisation: By using trend data in Notify, Fourway’s senior leadership team and the HSQE team identifies skill gaps, training needs, and workforce requirements to proactively plan safety campaigns and resource allocation.
By leveraging data-driven insights, Fourway has elevated their ability to predict and prevent risks while fostering a culture of continuous improvement across their whole organisation.
Results
- Improved risk mitigation across all sites with actionable data and insight.
- Significant reduction in time / administrative tasks.
- Improved safety culture through easy-to-use apps and real-time reporting.
Fourway use Notify for Incident Management, Audits and Inspections, Action Tracking and Safety Intelligence