An Intranet / Internet based system which not only allows employees to take an online Health & Safety Training course, but also tests comprehension and provides an organised audit trail.
Problem:
Health & Safety training for the BP UK workforce is a mammoth task. Trainers spend a disproportionate amount of time travelling between offices, organising training seminars and managing a throng of colleagues in an auditorium at each event.
To test the effectiveness of training, comprehension tests must be conducted on paper and graded by hand. Following this, building passes may be issued – but UK law requires an audit trail, and regular training refresher courses. With a large staff turnover, the paper-based systems are becoming increasingly burdensome.
Solution:
An Intranet / Internet based system which not only allows employees to take an online Health & Safety Training course, but also tests comprehension and provides an organised audit trail.
As you can see from the screenshot, the video window for this app is fairly small. That’s because BP have very strict guidelines about how much bandwidth is available for video streaming, so we came up with the best compromise of quality against image size while staying within the bandwidth requirement.
We also streamed subtitles along with the video. These were switchable on/off using a javascript function. Following completion of the induction, the user is then required to complete a short comprehension excercise. Failure can mean either a re-test, or (if the user fails a number of times) human intervention. The number of failures is set by the admins for each induction, as is the person notified, if human intervention is chosen as an option.
Rather than just build a one-off system for BP (great though it is), we advised them to have us design a version which would let them modify the induction content – and also the comprehension test questions. They agreed that this would be a good idea, so we suggested a step further would be that they should be able to publish completely new inductions for different staff, or different offices. Then things got interesting.
Using the first system as a prototype, we implemented it at one location in London’s Docklands. Our analysts spent some time with BP management studying user behaviour (and also admin behaviour) before we reconvened to specify the next implementation at another location. An interesting question for the project team was this: Should we adopt a single installation with multiple accounts for different office locations, or should we have a separate stand-alone installation for each location?
Recognising the potential inefficiencies of multiple software versions on different servers, the tech team wanted a single, multi-site application. The management side of the team wanted autonomy and complete “ownership” of each installation. In the end, it was decided that multiple installations would be used. Over a 12 month period, Richardson Digital designed and implemented (along with the project and tech team) a further 3 installations at different BP offices. They estimate that the new training system has saved hundreds of thousands of pounds in improved efficiencies, but more importantly, goes a long way to improving the safety of the workplace – and you can’t put a price on that.