SOL-X by SOL-X, is an industry leading Behavioral Based Safety system that combines an enhanced control of work with a holistic approach to crew wellbeing, in order to improve worker health and safety culture.
A primary benefit of SOL-X is improved operational efficiency of Permit To Work (PTW) workflows. It is estimated that our customers experience an average of US$60,000 to US$180,000 in crew productivity gains annually per vessel after switching from paper-based solutions.
Along with the fully integrated PTW system, the work on the go capabilities and paperless system have streamlined workflows, improving overall turnaround times. Furthermore, SOL-X’s near real-time capabilities have enhanced safety operations monitoring, and procedural compliance to work processes.
- Operational Excellence
- Reduces the time and effort required to complete the forms and to obtain authorization, as well as automatically save such documents in searchable formats.
- The time savings free up crew resources for higher value hands-on tool time, such as machinery and equipment maintenance.
- Enables better management of their work rest hours.
- Preparing Documents
- Automatically sets up the necessary documentation and workflows once the job is selected from the digital database of permits, reducing downtime spent on document management.
- Permit Request And Risk Assessment
- Integrates Risk Assessment with Permit Requests, making it possible to prepare and submit them concurrently.
- This reduces repeated information, removes clerical errors, and provides a standardized and uniform risk assessment across the fleet. Furthermore, workflow protocols within the digital system ensure that all required fields have been completed, facilitating efficiencies on the subsequent approval process.
- Additional features such as pre-filled fields and pre-identified risks based on historical references and best practices, the system contributes to time savings – a 50% reduction, and a more robust risk assessment and permit request.
- On-site Checklists and Isolation Certificate
- SOL-X’s work on the go solution totally changes the way the crew approaches safety checklists onsite.
- The built-in validation and the step-by-step guide further assure managers of safety compliance as well as ease of completion – reducing more than a third of the time usually spent on these steps, while providing all crew visibility of real-time data across the vessel.
- Permit Approval
- An electronic review and approval system improves this process by eliminating the need to manually transport, scan and email the form.
- A well-implemented solution also automatically communicates the required approval requests directly to the Master and Office Superintendent, following a set of approval matrices aligned with each type of PTW requested.
- As it is a fully integrated PTW system, the review process is simplified for cross-references.
- Furthermore, a digital format makes it possible to incorporate pre-defined rules and alerts, and notifies the approver if any inputs exceed certain thresholds. This provides the Approving Authority near real-time access to relevant information for appropriate risk management and decision-making.
- SOL-X has reduced permit approval times by an average of 20 minutes when office approval is not required, and an hour when it is. This has shortened the waiting time between permit completion and crew execution of the actual job, while ensuring that the shore team is kept up-to-date when the vessel needs to communicate with them.
- Document Filing, Storage And Retrieval
- Documents are instantly stored and archived on the local server, and automatically tagged with searchable keywords – freeing up the crew to focus on higher value-added jobs.
- Cumulative effect on audit or inspection preparation, as documents can be easily retrieved and searched.
- Audit Preparation
- Since digital PTWs can be replicated from the vessel’s local server to onshore databases, they further facilitate audit preparation by compressing time and distance. This allows auditors to commence their review of permits and other documents remotely, without any interruption to the vessel crew.
- Furthermore, the available data can encompass the complete range of operational documents, thus providing a more comprehensive view of vessel operations.
- By eliminating the physical paperwork, ships can operate more sustainably on an environmental and operational level. The digital PTW system helps reduce the amount of paper required to process the PTW tasks each day and during audit/inspection, as well as improve space and document management onboard.
- It is estimated that a vessel uses an average of 39,000 sheets of paper annually for PTW-related documents onboard and in the office. This is equivalent to 5 trees per year, therefore converting to the digital format significantly reduces the carbon footprint of each vessel.
For more details, please refer to our infographics on the distinctions between Digital PTW from SOL-X and Manual PTW.