CASE STUDY
Communication for safety and efficiency at water treatment plant
SafetyNet software provides a complete solution for handling two-way radio communications and alerts and monitoring the location of workers indoors and outside at a major water treatment plant, improving communication, safety and efficiency.
BACKGROUND
PMR Products client was tasked with providing communication and worker safety at a site covering more than 15 acres and incorporating a Victorian pump house, modern blocks housing processing areas, decommissioned sand beds and smaller ancillary buildings, replacing a legacy system of analogue radios, mobiles and pagers.
SOLUTION
The streamlined solution provided makes use of Bluetooth beacons and GPS technology and Hytera two-way radios, which work with both technologies to provide coverage both indoors and outside
Location Monitoring and Communication
In the control room SafetyNet software monitors three key elements:
- The location of two-way radios users inside covered by Bluetooth beacons is shown on schematics of the building, with an icon for each radio tracking movement
- The location of two-way radio users covered by GPS are shown on a map of the site
- The communications enables control room staff to communicate with radio users, either one-to-many or as private calls, and to manage Lone Worker and Man Down alerts from radios, which provide for worker safety.
A full telephone interconnect allows radio users to make and receive telephone calls effectively making the onsite radios system a very powerful extension to the mobile telephone network
Alarm Handling
The water treatment works is a complex operation, and the control centre handles in the region of 1500 alerts a day from BMS and SCADA systems and the two-way radio users. Integrating the Hytera digital radios with SafetyNet software allows operatives to receive SCADA and BMS alerts direct to their two-way radio wherever they are on site so has freed them from the control room.
