After many years spent working on construction sites, Monica Toews Brown has seen her fair share of incidents and has a very healthy appreciation for safe work practices. She’s also acutely aware of the time it takes to meet the safety requirements that are set for many businesses who operate plant and equipment.
Monica worked for John Holland for seven years, and after that she spent a few years with mid-sized contractor, Daracon and has also had experience in the manufacturing, civil engineering and utilities sectors.
Her formal qualifications in psychology, coupled with significant hands-on experience, means she has the discipline and effective communication skills required to grow and maintain a strong safety culture within an organisation and ensure standards are met.
It was this desire to make a difference that led her to start Red Insight, a Hunter based safety consulting firm that has been operating since 2014 and boasts an impressive array of clients.
Red Insight is a new breed of safety consulting businesses that is using modern technology such as drones (UAV) and cloud based apps to ensure safety is managed even more accurately and comprehensively than in the past, with real time accuracy.
Red Insight has also developed a series of on-the-job exercises designed for plant operators to affect behavioural change. These role based exercises have become a talking point in the businesses where they’ve been used with many long time operators changing their behaviour as a result of the findings.
Monica’s partner James serves as Principal Risk Consultant at Red Insight. He has almost 20 years experience in the safety sector having also worked for major contractors along with a diverse array of in-house and site-based work across the Building, Engineering, Water, Communications and Construction sectors.
James was named WHS Champion of the year in the 2017 Hunter Safety Awards and is currently overseeing safety services and systems being implemented as part of the decommissioning and remediation of the Hydro Aluminium plant at Kurri Kurri.
Monica believes safe plant is a critical factor in ensuring everyone goes home safely after each and every shift.
“Operators are ultimately responsible for how machines are used but this all starts with a pre-op check and other observations and interventions that can minimize risk,” explains Monica.
“I was Introduced to Plant Assessor in 2011. I was impressed with the accessibility, ease of use and the power of the database which linked every machine with the relevant Australian standard in real time.”
“When I started Red Insight I wanted to offer our clients the full suite of risk assessments and safety related services, and machinery safety is a core element of this.”
“When many of them explained they were still conducting clipboard style checks and then cross referencing their reports with the requirements manually I just had to alert them to Plant Assessor.”
Monica explains the benefits for all parties in using a cloud based application such as Plant Assessor.
“What was taking my clients almost four hours, now takes less than 60 minutes. And there are no frustrations with interpreting different handwriting, cross checking legislation or time spent on data entry,” she said.
“It’s the speed, standardisation of templates and reports and ease of use that’s the real benefit for Red Insight and our clients.”
“As they say, time is money, and this platform is the perfect example of that.”
Using Plant Assessor to manage compliance around machinery and minimise the risk of potential incidents is a real point of difference for Red Insight. Many safety consultants do not take the same proactive approach as Monica Toews Brown who views the use of modern aids and cloud based technology as a real value-add for her clients.
One example of the way Red Insight uses the platform is for a client who owns and operates multiple forklifts across various locations.
“I try to conduct inspections with the operator but when this is impractical because of time or distance constraints, the system is so easy to use that I can brief my clients in advance and then talk them through the process over the phone during their first inspection. They find it very easy and can see the advantages right away,” explains Monica.
“We use Plant Assessor for large and small organisations, across all areas of the supply chain and for all types of end users. It’s our one source of truth for machine safety specifications and requirements.”
To see how Plant Assessor could work for you, please contact us.