Petrochemical Industry Pak

EmpCenter® Fatigue Management

Petrochemical Industry Pak

Background

EmpCenter Fatigue ManagementIn April of 2010, the American Petroleum Institute (API) issued an initial set of fatigue risk mitigation guidelines under the heading Recommend Practice 755 (RP 755). The guidelines were developed in response to heightened concerns about fatigue’s impact on employee productivity, morale, and safety, and represent a significant first step towards self-governance among the petrochemical industry. Federal mandates may still follow, but the industry’s demonstrated ability to develop and adhere to effective fatigue risk mitigation strategies may go a long way to preventing further oversight.

RP 755’s guidelines differ from policies and regulations affecting other industries, as the policies are tailored to the unique conditions of petrochemical plants and refineries. For this reason, many fatigue management systems developed for other industry standards are not able to deliver compliance with RP 755 without extensive customization. WorkForce Software’s EmpCenter® Fatigue Management (FM) solution was designed from the ground-up to address industry-specific regulations solely through configuration, and the Petrochemical Industry Pak offers an ‘out-of-the-box’ answer to automating RP 755 compliance.

Aligned to Your Business Needs

The API’s RP 755 rule set lays out ways to remain in compliance according to your preferred shift schedule, whether your employees work 8-, 10-, or 12- hour shifts. Each common shift schedule has distinct guidelines for maximum work durations and minimum breaks, a relatively straightforward concept, but one that cannot be automated using commodity-grade solutions.

EmpCenter FM’s Petrochemical Industry Pak includes pre-configured rules that conform to your unique shift schedules, without requiring any costly custom programming. Policies can be configured for each work site or work group as well, allowing for variations within your organization without compromising on complete and fully-automated RP 755 compliance.

Perhaps more importantly, our EmpCenter FM solution can also be tailored to accommodate your business-specific fatigue risk mitigation policies, in addition to (or instead of) the RP 755 standard. Our experienced professional services teams can work with you to examine shift patterns, review job types, and offer recommendations on how to reduce fatigue—all of which can be fully configured into the EmpCenter FM solution. As a result, you can more effectively determine an employee’s relative ‘fitness for duty’ according to the specific criteria that you have defined.

Powerful Core Capabilities

EmpCenter FM leverages employee time and labor data—sourced from either your existing workforce management solution or through tight integration with EmpCenter Time and Attendance—to track hours worked, tasks performed, breaks taken, time-off scheduled and virtually any other parameter you define. Then, EmpCenter FM identifies and ‘flags’ those employees who are most at risk of becoming fatigued, based on the established conditions.

The ‘fatigued’ classification is entirely flexible and can be derived strictly from RP 755 guidelines, or on any conditions that you define. Factors leading to a ‘fatigue’ classification may include:

  • Overnight shifts
  • Dangerous or highly-repetitive jobs
  • Schedules that lack regular periods of rest
  • Work sets that extend beyond the industry standard
  • Failing to take time off at regular intervals

Once an employee has been flagged as a fatigue risk, any number of activities or actions can be performed. Managers can be proactively notified as soon as a fatigue condition has been met, employees can be removed from a pool of ‘available workers’ eligible for shift placement, mandatory days off can be scheduled—all entirely configurable to match your corporate policies and practices. EmpCenter FM will also track assessments and waivers, as well as provide employees with an opportunity to ‘self-declare’ fatigue, providing yet another layer of protection for you and your organization.

EmpCenter FM also delivers a complete audit trail, capturing all of the data you need to serve as proof of compliance, and making it available at your fingertips.

Petrochemical Industry Pak Features

Arguably the most valuable feature of the Petrochemical Industry Pak is our ongoing commitment to enhancing our application as RP 755 evolves.

The API has made clear that the initial RP 755 guidelines will see at least one, if not several, future revisions. Subscribing to the Petrochemical Industry Pak provides your business with a ‘future-proof’ solution in the face of these looming changes. Our experts will continue to monitor the regulatory environment and make sure that any new rules and adaptations are implemented into your EmpCenter FM solution, ahead of the relevant deadlines.

Compliance and the Bottom Line

Adopting RP 755 guidelines can give businesses much-deserved recognition for adhering to a science-based industry standard. However, proactively addressing employee fatigue—whether via the industry standard or through business-specific guidelines—benefits your organization in a number of ways beyond mere compliance. An effective fatigue risk mitigation strategy, enabled through an automated solution, can deliver:

  • A reduction of health-related issues and absences
  • Increased productivity
  • Improved employee morale
  • Reduced exposure to litigation and risk
  • Improved workplace safety
  • Reduction in errors and quality concerns

Summary

Perhaps due to the prevailing ‘doing more with less’ attitude, recent years have seen a rising tide of fatigue-related incidents across all industries. Research shows that these safety risks, while real and significant, are only one of the impacts of unmanaged fatigue on the workforce. For businesses in high risk and high profile industries, getting serious about fatigue risk mitigation is now imperative. A comprehensive approach can advance a company’s brand and competitiveness, along with delivering clear and immediate benefits to employees. For petrochemical businesses, the RP 755 guidelines provide an immediate roadmap for improved fatigue management, although they are by no means the only available course of action.

EmpCenter FM’s Petrochemical Industry Pak draws on WorkForce Software’s extensive fatigue management experience and delivers an automated solution that both protects your employees and improves the bottom-line.