In response to the unprecedented challenges arising from COVID-19 and the Government’s social distancing protocols, Reactec has repurposed its system for monitoring workers’ exposure to health risk to create ‘Safedistance’, to enable employers to manage the social distancing of their workforce within construction, rail, manufacturing and other workplaces.
It is said that Safedistance can, based on a wrist-worn device:
Social distancing is likely to be with us for some time and it’s vital that when people get back to work they can do so safely. Reactec’s engineers have moved quickly to determine how its technology could be repurposed to help businesses deploy their workers safely and have created Safedistance meaning that users can have the assurance of a system with a heritage of working in harsh work environments. More than 45,000 of Reactec’s Hand Arm Vibration (HAV) monitors HAVwear, on which Safedistance is based, are already in circulation in the UK. Reactec is offering to enable these devices remotely to add the Safedistance software for free – meaning that its existing clients can ensure safe distancing of employees while also protecting them from harmful vibration.
The Safedistance technology works by using Bluetooth enabled Reactec devices to detect other Reactec devices within a two-metre range. Should a user become closer than two metres apart, both device users are immediately warned with both vibration and audio alerts. The device is returned to its recharging docking station at the end of each shift, at which point details of any safe distancing breaches are uploaded to the Cloud and combined with other data to produce employer reports to assist in the management of social distancing and when necessary to inform contact tracing. All data use is entirely GDPR compliant. The system can be expanded to provide real-time transmission of breaches to enable supervisors to act immediately in managing social distancing and to proactively inform remote management of what is happening in the field particularly in the event of sustained breaches.
Reactec are offering to upgrade existing clients of Reactec’s BLE enabled technology free of charge to Safedistance. There will also be a Safedistance only package where HAV monitoring is disabled to provide the technology as cost effectively as possible; therefore providing a social distancing tool for all employees not just tool operators. Such an approach would also allow some or all the devices to have an afterlife by being upgraded in the future to have a use for HAV monitoring should the need for social distancing technology reduce.
For more information of Safedistance, visit the Reactec website.
