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May 10, 2023

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Working in collaboration with SUEZ UK to create safer sites

SiteZone has been working closely with SUEZ, a global group that provides water, waste, and resource management solutions to millions of people and businesses worldwide, to reduce the pedestrian plant collision risk across their UK sites with SiteZone proximity warning systems.

Paul Marsden, Director of Health and Safety at SUEZ UK who has been leading the project, said:

“Due to the nature of our waste recycling and recovery activities in SUEZ, we have a significant volume of vehicle and plant movements daily with potential for pedestrian interaction. We initiated a programme called ‘Zone Access Restrictions’, which assessed our sites, ensuring we:

  1. Have physical barriers in place segregating people, vehicles and plant.
  2. Ensure appropriate work task orientation to remove people from ZAR areas during high-risk activities.
  3. Provide clear visual and procedural management standards to warn people of the risks and areas they are restricted from entering.

This work proved invaluable in creating safer workplaces for our people. Still, we noted we could go further to assess how adequate our risk controls were and understand the behaviours of our teams in managing these risks, which is when we engaged with SiteZone.”

How does SiteZone work?

Our proximity warning system alerts both the driver and pedestrian when an exclusion or detection zone is breached. Everyone onsite, including visitors, is issued with a tag which they test at the start of the shift. If a pedestrian gets too close to moving plant and enters the exclusion zone of the machine:

  • The driver is alerted
  • The external alarm will sound
  • The tag will vibrate

Paul went on to say:

“The SiteZone System collects data about all interactions between people and plant on site to enable us to monitor and analyse our performance. When we first installed the system at Avonmouth, we made a 97% reduction in zone breaches in just three months using the data. It gave us visibility of what was happening on the ground, and we made long-lasting site improvements, including redesigning pedestrian routes, reducing access points, and improving physical barriers. We also increased awareness and changed behaviour amongst the workforce on-site.

Paul concluded:

“It’s a partnership with SiteZone. We work together to implement the system and use it to make real, lasting site improvements to keep people safe. The system complements our other site safety measures and allows us to create real behavioural change. It is a valuable aid for the operator to alert them as to the presence of a pedestrian.”

You can see the full video here.

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