About

Best Safety Moment Awards Entry: Forth Ports (3)

Award Nomination:

We have been working on a project to improve our safety management system. The management system had been in place for almost ten years and in the main the structure and content had not changed since its introduction, with the exception of any changes driven internally or external to the business. It was in some places exceptionally large and cumbersome containing repetition and duplication across the procedures. There was significant room for improvement to make the SMS more user-friendly for those who were required to navigate and use the system.
The first step was to ask our colleagues what they thought of our existing Safety Management System Procedures and other documentation. Not surprisingly here was some of the feedback:

  • They are too long.
  • They are heavily scripted.
  • The requirements contained are difficult to interpret.
  • They are often a replication of regulation or guidance from other sources.
  • They are difficult to find.
  • The access system is not user-friendly.
  • Documents can too easily be over-written and manipulated.


A summary of the outputs of the project are as follows:

  • Development of SMS toolkits
  • Developed using Adobe Creative Cloud Apps.
  • Interface with the Evotix Assure System.
  • H&S intranet page redesigned to facilitate two click (maximum) access.

Additional Information

The project began with the development of a project brief identifying a project sponsor, project leader and project team members. The below summarises the project brief objectives, scope and deliverables.

Project Objectives

The overarching objective was to make the management system user-friendly limiting the amount of time spent by any user to get to the relevant information. To establish clear and unambiguous supporting information such as guidance and forms and to avoid re-creating guidance from external sources such as HSE guidance. Finally to improve the systems to enhance the safety planning and execution of work tasks.

Project Scope

The project covered the Forth Ports Group Safety Management System and the first priority was developing the procedures that underpin the lifesaving rules. Once these were completed the remainder of the safety management system would be developed.

Outline Project Deliverables

  • Work with the H&S and Port Teams to simplify and digitise management system documentation to improve end user experience.
  • Remove all repetitive information across the procedures.
  • Review the current system procedures to allow us to capture the information currently repeated throughout the operational documents procedures.
  • Develop a training matrix as part of the process that identifies all training requirements in the management system.
  • Work with the management teams and the training department to map the training to operational and management roles.
  • Remove unnecessary narrative in all procedures to improve usability.
  • Determining a simplified procedure template, utilising flowchart and electronic hyperlinks where possible.
  • Once the training matrix is developed work with Training and the Management Teams to complete a gap analysis to determine any improvements required to either the SMS or training delivered.
  • Work with IT on developing the HSE Intranet page to deliver a user-friendly SMS access and navigation model.

A project plan using MS Project was created which followed the below process flow for each of the SMS elements under development:

  • Development of Toolkit
  • Peer and other stakeholder review
  • Amendment following peer review
  • Digitisation of interactive documentation
  • Launch of new toolkit.

The plan was executed and a new interactive, simplified and digitised safety management system was born. The following are the main improvements to the system.

  • Single page interactive flowchart Standards.
  • Tool tips providing definitions.
  • Guidance, forms and other Standards accessible through buttons or icons.
  • Interactive guidance with clickable links to relevant sources.
  • Fillable forms using free text, date calendar fields and tick boxes.
  • Button tools for printing, saving or clearing.
  • Button for support.

A demo video of the system has been developed to demonstrate how all systems work together to improve end user experience. The result is an overall improvement in the planning of work tasks in order to ensure safer systems of work are developed, implemented, monitored and reviewed on an ongoing basis to ensure our staff all go home safe.

Feedback from the business has been very positive and this has driven a real appetite for continuing to digitise and simplify not only safety management systems but other managements systems in the business. We are continuing this development work, working with other teams across our group, to continuously improve our systems.