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Widespread Visibility into Safety Performance at SJI

Case Study

With 1,100 employees, South Jersey Industries (SJI) delivers safe, reliable, affordable energy to over 700,000 customers in New Jersey.

The company’s wide range of activities is supported by the Safety team which develops, plans and implements extensive industrial safety programs across SJI.

This includes conducting safety audits of buildings, facilities, tools and equipment; analyzing loss control and accident reports; and maintaining all required safety manuals.

In 2019, SJI’s strong commitment to safety led to the American Gas Association recognizing the business as an Industry Leader in Accident Prevention, citing their low DART rate within the utilities industry.

However, an inefficient system for managing safety data remained a challenge. It was this time-consuming problem that led SJI to source new safety software.

Challenge

For years, the SJI Safety team had been collating data from across divisions and departments using paper forms, emails, and Excel spreadsheets.

Unfortunately, this meant lost time at almost every step of the process. Not only was entering data into a spreadsheet every month time-consuming, but it led to numerous data errors.

In addition, because Excel is not designed to do all that SJI needed, the file became very large and unstable. It would often freeze and crash, causing more time delays.

Furthermore, the data was not connected to any other IT systems, so it wasn’t easy to disseminate safety information across the business.


"The challenges SJI had before Pro-Sapien are common headaches we come across in many organizations. However, it’s clear that SJI has a safety record to be proud of, so it was our mission to deliver a safety management software system to match. The fact SJI was using Office 365 meant we were well placed to help the Safety team maximize that investment with a modern, built-for-purpose, widely-accessible solution."

Colin Espie, Developer, Pro-Sapien


Aims

Recently, SJI made a strategic investment in Microsoft Office 365. The company was successfully using the platform in several ways, including for documents and email—but not yet for safety.

Therefore, when the SJI Safety team came across Pro-Sapien, it was a no-brainer.

Together with Pro-Sapien, SJI set about solving the IT disconnect in several ways:

  • Integration with Active Directory for the up-to-date org hierarchy
  • Access through the SJI SharePoint with single sign on (SSO)
  • Familiar interface easy for users to adopt
  • Forms, libraries and dashboards all on a single platform
  • Power Automate (Flow) enabled integration with other business apps to reduce duplication of effort
  • License structure not prohibitive to allow all employees access
  • Configuration in all areas of the software to match SJI processes

"We first learned of Pro-Sapien in a safety publication article outlining the benefits of a consolidated safety software system. From there, we researched the solution and were excited to learn that it ‘checked all the boxes’ of what we were looking for and so much more."

Craig Stewart, Director of Safety & Quality, SJI


Results

Subsequently, SJI rolled out Pro-Sapien across the group in 2020. The Safety team was able to replace inefficient IT systems and connect Safety to the rest of the company.

Already in the early stages of using Pro-Sapien, SJI is seeing many benefits:

1.   More time for proactive activities

Instead of wasting time on manually entering safety data, the team is freed up to work on proactive tasks such as developing job safety analyses and new safety training.

2.   Greater visibility across the organization

Drill-down visuals have been added to corporate SharePoint dashboards, so there is now greater access to safety metrics and performance across the company.

3.   Rollout of a formal Near Miss program

Using Pro-Sapien as the key tool, SJI is seeing a positive impact from capturing near misses, investigating the causes, and sharing lessons learned.

However, the biggest benefit for SJI has been the widespread visibility into safety performance, thanks to Pro-Sapien’s integration with Office 365.


"Before, the organization only saw what the Safety team had time to distribute. Now, with Pro-Sapien, safety information is right there on corporate dashboards along with our financial and operations performance.

Having safety top of mind and having the entire organization aware of our performance leads to greater involvement in the safety program by all employees."

Craig Stewart, Director of Safety & Quality, SJI


Advice

Unfortunately, industry research shows that many companies still face the same problems as SJI did.

Ditching—and avoiding—disconnected IT takes planning. So, for Safety peers at those companies, Craig Stewart, Director of Safety & Quality at SJI, offers this helpful advice:


"Do your homework and involve your IT team in the evaluations. You may find a product that looks excellent from a safety perspective, but later find it doesn’t integrate well from an IT perspective. Involving other departments really allowed us to identify the best solution for us as an organization. We couldn’t be happier with Pro-Sapien and we’re excited for the things we can now accomplish."

Craig Stewart, Director of Safety & Quality, SJI


In an increasingly IT-dependent world, safety leaders like SJI are pulling ahead in making EHS as easy as email.

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