George Scroubelos

Executive VP, Dr.

ACRM A.E.

gs-rms@otenet.gr

Greece

The conceptual basis for the proposed Innovative Web Service (IWS) consists of a triad of communication, information, and knowledge exchange. This platform innovation is the engagement of safety with web based information technology. Unlike commercially available Risk Assessment Studies (RAS) software that are based on theoretical concepts in stand-alone applications, IWS works within a community of companies / safety experts, where each member interacts with the community via IWS and together share knowledge and expertise.

Moreover, most commercially available RAS software are not maintenance-specific or cannot be effectively applied to maintenance tasks as they are quite general in approach. On the other hand, a Job Safety Analysis (JSA) is rarely feasible at the early stages of an RAS development.

This innovative web service platform provides step-by-step guidance software for the development of an initial simple RAS to a detailed JSA. It provides an initial Base Risk Assessment Study (B-RAS) as well as a “live” tool by providing a “stand” to all interested parties to share their views and experience in order to improve the IWS B-RAS. The basic concept is presented in Figure 1.

Technical Analysis

The proposed IWS is using client/server architecture to manage and distribute/collect information where users of the system such as industry (safety) managers and safety professionals could act as clients of the system. Each client connects to the web server through the Internet using http protocol and a common web browser such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla or Chrome. Registration of the users (membership) ensures the protection of data privacy. Each individual user has credentials to access his study information as well as the Base Study (B-RAS) and its prototyped library; the server regulates communication among clients and the data accessibility. The accessibility of information stored in the server is determined by the role attached to each client, the three roles that form a hierarchy in the application are ‘user’, ‘leader’ and ‘administrator’.

Role of ‘administrator’

This role belongs to the administrator of the system who has unrestricted access everywhere in the application as well as to the physical server and physical database. The administrator is the application and communication provider and has asserted a claim of confidentiality.

Click Image to Enlarge

Figure 1. The AURA concept towards a common RAS detailed tool.

Click Image to Enlarge

Figure 2. IWS client-server architecture and the basic ‘roles’.

Role of ‘leader’

This role is attached to the IWS safety expert, the beneficiary of the whole innovation. The leader does not have access in other clients’ data unless they have claimed differently using the IWS knowledge-sharing module. The knowledge-sharing module is a communication protocol between users and the IWS safety expert. A user can claim if she/he agrees to share part or whole of the content of her/his study with other members in order to share expertise. The sharing procedure is performed through the ‘knowledge sharing module’ of the platform. The raw information is not directly accessible from the other members while it is unrated and unclassified, therefore it is further processed by the leader in order to qualify the given information and finally to enrich the B-RAS library and publish a new version of the B-RAS.

The sharing procedure aside, the IWS safety expert has many other responsibilities. She/he is responsible for the structure, completeness and usefulness of the content of the IWS and the maintenance of B-RAS and its prototyped library. Moreover the IWS safety expert plays the role of the system administrator to register a new user, to halt an existing user due to violation of the IWS rules and finally to manage all services provided by the IWS platform as well as technical assistance to the client community.

Role of ‘user’

The role ‘user’ is the target group of IWS. A user is a physical person, an organization or a company that has access to the IWS library and can use B-RAS constituent parts. The user can build a new study for his installation by using the IWS library or assemble a new study by using previously stored parts and/ or by using B-RAS constituent parts. The user can have the new study saved in the server site and have it updated regularly. Finally, due to the peculiarities of each installation, study elements such as incidents, dangers and causes that do not exist in the IWS library and the B-RAS study should be revised. For this purpose the knowledge-sharing module provides the appropriate interface to provide the IWS with feedback.

Moreover, the platform facilitates the communication between the IWS safety expert and the user. Thus, many services can be easily developed and provided via IWS.

The core of the server application is the system’s relational database. The server application draws up users’ data and membership information from this database in order to serve clients. The interaction between clients and database is regulated by the server according to the simplified schema in Figure 2.

When a user aims to access stored information she/he must initially login to the system using credentials and consequently to access database table information attached to the user role. Thus, when a user is trying to login, given credentials are compared with the ones stored in the database and the application server can determine user privileges and user accessibility.

Server transactions are protected against any web threats using database programmability (stored procedures) and Microsoft .NET framework.

The IWS database contains three kinds of tables, user oriented tables, B-RAS oriented tables and membership tables.

User oriented tables

Each user can initiate a study for his/her facilities. The initialization procedure is a connection of the tables concerning a safety study with the identity of the user. These tables can be accessed only by ‘user’ role and occasionally by ‘leader’ role – if the latter has got special permission by the user (through sharing module). On those tables safety study information such as dangers, causes, incidents, etc. as well as company and personal information are stored.

Click Image to Enlarge

Figure 3. Study hierarchy for RAS and B-RAS for general activities (per workplace area) and to maintenance activities (per speciality); the first and last rows are common in both cases.

B-RAS oriented tables

The leader has access to a group of tables including safety study information. This kind of information has been qualified and prototyped in order to be distributed to the community of users. The users can ‘copy’ records from B-RAS tables in order to populate and customize the study-related tables regarding their needs.

It must be noted that User-oriented tables are by definition a subtotal of the B-RAS oriented tables, and IWS allows the later table population by clients in ‘user’ role via the sharing module, this is the main innovation of this study. Of course, the process of adding new records to the B-RAS is regulated by the leader and the knowledge sharing module is responsible for this.

Membership tables

Membership tables are the ones that concern membership information such as user names, passwords, roles and relationships.

Graphical User Interface (GUI)

The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is the communication interface between the user and the IWS system. Our policy is to use common web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Chrome or other commonly used, cross platform, easy to download/ install and free of charge browsers. For this reason the IWS GUI is designed using HTML forms and components, the relationship among forms is determined by the database. Data manipulation controls such as Add, Update, Delete and Navigate records of the database tables are available in the forms interface. Any data transaction is performed then using standard HTML posts. GUI is kept simple and a hierarchy among forms is created.

The root of the form is the user and the study entity. All of its constituent parts structure the hierarchy of Figure 3. RAS and BRAS share the same hierarchy schema, however the data accessibility and form functionality is determined by the role attached to the client: A leader can build a B-RAS and accept/reject data-material that is proposed by a user, and a user builds a RAS by using ready stored parts from the available B-RAS.

Deliverables

Apart from the RAS, the IWS provides the capability of choosing among various risk assessment models that calculate the total Risk Factor, propose priority ratings and produces a list of the proposed measures per priority in order to facilitate the assessor. Finally bar-charted graphs are produced to illustrate the Risk Factor’s variation before and after measures implementation, while an intermediate (existing situation) rating can also be added. The risks list and the risk variation bar-charts can serve as an executive summary of the achieved progress, additionally a Management Action Plan is produced from which various dynamic health & safety improvement factors can be deducted.

Expectations

It is expected that a significant part of the Greek industry (metal, plastic, beverage and pharmaceutical industries) will be registered to the IWS and be providing valuable feedback about working issues. The IWS will be promoted both through the Hellenic Maintenance Society as well as the European Forum of National Maintenance Societies (EFNMS) so that more companies are expected to register from the pool of the society members. Comments, corrections, suggestions are welcome since they can potentially become parts of IWS.

In case this IWS is well accepted and used at European level, it will contribute to the reduction of maintenance activities accident rates so that they converge to the lowest industry accident rates.