Journey Management - Everyone's Responsibility - Pioneer Safety Solutions Safety Moment April 2022
Journey Management - Everyone's Responsibility
For a majority of the professionals working within the transportation and oil & gas industries, commuting is a regular component of our daily tasks. This could be commuting to and from the office if you hold an operational role, operating in the field with a company-owned vehicle in the safety department, or operating as a professional driver hauling cargo from point A to point B.
Regardless of where you are planning on traveling to, journey management is an essential component to helping ensure you are prepared for the commute ahead, so you ultimately arrive safely.
When completing your trip preparation, it's crucial that you identify potential risks that you may come across along the way. Depending on where you are headed, this could include traffic conditions, weather, reduced visibility, wildlife, construction zones, and more.
After you have identified the potential risks, possibly using the map app on your phone to check traffic conditions, checking the weather forecast, or speaking with a friend in the industry that recently did the same commute to inquire about the road conditions, you can create a plan to help ensure you arrive safely.
For starters, you need to consider how long the commute will be. Although we are entering springtime here in Alberta, depending on the time of day and wherein the province you are located, this could mean a beautiful sunrise, that leads to rain showers, snowfall, and then sun by 12:00 in the afternoon. Knowing the weather forecast will help you plan how long the commute could take so you leave accordingly.
Something to consider prior to your departure, again depending on the distance you plan on traveling, could be to integrate a communications buddy to whom you provide a check-in text. Now, this does not have to be anything crazy. My wife likes it when I text her when I arrive at the office so she knows I'm safe, so something as simple as "I'm here" could suffice.
Regardless of the type of communication that you do, text message, phone call, email, etc. it is crucial that if you integrate this sort of communication system, that you follow through each time because the one time that you don't could be the situation where you actually need help.
Now, we can take journey management a step further when we start to consider what types of telematics systems are available in the market today, that can simply be installed into your company vehicles. For example, GPS. Pioneer Safety Solutions offers an industry-best solution for GPS & In-Vehicle Mentoring System that helps organizations oversee their journey management responsibilities with simplicity.
When a professional driver is dispatched from Calgary, Alberta to Vancouver, British Columbia, the level of risk can significantly increase for their trip and it truly is a team effort to help ensure your professional driver arrives at their destination safely. With the use of GPS, you have the ability to monitor their location throughout the trip and use their location and compare against incoming weather that the Rocky Mountains can present.
Furthermore, with the increased use of electronic logging devices in commercial vehicles, professional drivers can manage their journey according to the hours available in their day and workshift limits. If a professional driver is headed West near Banff, Alberta, and has 3 hours of on-duty driving available in their day, but they are driving in a flash storm that can occur as you approach the Rocky Mountains, they know their legal hours will run out before they arrive in Golden, British Columbia.
With the use of GPS and electronic logging devices, professional drivers can now make the safe decision and find a safe location to rest and dispatch will be able to validate where they park for the night to ensure their professional driver is safe.
While there are a number of components to consider when taking journey management into account, the most important thing to remember is that it is everyone's responsibility to manage it accordingly.
If you have questions about your health and safety, or transportation safety requirements as an organization, I encourage you to contact us at Pioneer Safety Solutions today.
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