Operations Team Integrates Process With Microsoft Teams

A team of long-time Mowi staff has put together a system to integrate health and safety processes within Microsoft Teams.

Campbell River Operations Manager Paul Pattison and Campbell River Area Coordinator Dave Pedersen put their heads together to produce a verification step within Teams that dovetails perfectly with the DATS System Mowi employees use to track important data and information.

“We’ve created a system that uses Teams as a verification step,” notes Pedersen. “In our management system, we have policies, procedures, specifications, certifications, government body regulations, etc., that monitor, record and inspect.

“Now there’s a verification step where you record data to verify what you’ve been doing and saying, to verify your inspections.”

Pattison and Pedersen have used Teams to create lists and forms, enabling staff to go completely digital with iPads and iPhones to verify activities.

“We can now get away from paper completely, and we can upload pictures and data and create forms so people can answer a simple yes or no to a text question,” Pedersen says.

Pattison’s expertise is in “anything to do with computers” and production, while Pedersen focuses on management systems and compliance.

We can find a deficiency and trace it back to the point earlier in the day where it happened and identify it,” Pedersen says.

“The two of us got together, and we have good synergy,” Pedersen states. “We put together a PowerPoint featuring work flow and how we manage our risks as an area. Teams and OneNote are used as part of our verification records for health and safety, environment, fish health, food safety, production and quality.

“Because we were using the DATS system already, we wanted to build a digital workplan describing all the things we manage like health and safety, fish health, environment, food safety, quality and production in this work plan.

We then do a risk assessment identifying all the task’s risks and controls in the work and then we communicate it.

If there is a deviation like an accident or incident that is reportable, it goes straight into DATS.

If we have it documented in the workplan and the risk assessment is communicated, then it could be an open and shut case in DATS with minimal efforts.

It will help identify negligence, if there is any, if the controls are written and communicated.

DATS helps investigate, find the root cause, correct and prevent further incident and much more. Teams makes DATS even less work.”

It has been particularly useful during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it includes an orientation aspect that has every visitor to every site sign on and go through Teams checklists to answer and verify WorkSafe BC COVID questions, such as: “Have you been out of country? Do you have symptoms? Do you have a high temperature” etc.

A COVID file within Teams includes items to fill out regarding travel to a site, taking the name of the boat and passengers, record temperatures, and keep stock of cleaning, health and safety supplies on the boat.

“Every single boat fills this out prior to any trip to any site,” Pedersen points out. “We have a site safety plan specific to every single site. We have a log of what they’ve cleaned, what they used, what they need, etc.

“It compiles it into Excel so the data can be mined. As well, we’ve set it up so we have graphs to see who is reporting, and what. It’s quite an extensive verification system.”

Pedersen observes that the system capture all the data to be compliant in all our management systems.

We’re trying to teach our guys to digitally plan and communicate to avoid deviations that would disrupt or stop work flow and cause incident.”

Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

“It’s been absolutely unbelievable in our area,” says Pedersen. “Everybody understands it. We’ve now taken it a step further, as Paul has developed a maintenance tracker.”

With the maintenance tracker, progress can be followed through either tickets or on the schedule itself.

“A task can be created by anyone. We then accept it, assign all the stakeholders, allocate it, send it to a contractor, mark it as ‘in progress,’” he explains. “The minute we update the ticket, whoever it is assigned to gets an automatic email. If they reply to that email, it embeds it into that ticket.

“As soon as it is marked ‘in progress,’ anyone assisting gets a notification immediately and they understand that it’s booked.”