Glasgow based software house GEMsoft7 has bucked the gloomy economic trend with a flying start to 2009; signing two new major contracts and increasing its staffing levels. BAA Gatwick and Vale Inco, a large Canadian based nickel producer, have both purchased P2W, GEMsoft7’s web based Permit to Work and Contractor Management software. P2W is used by organisations world wide to help them meet their Health and Safety responsibilities.

“We are absolutely delighted with both contracts.” said Phil McKell, Managing Director at GEMsoft7. “BAA Gatwick adds another Airport Operator to our client list in this sector, while Vale Inco represents our first major deal on the American continent. It’s a great start to 2009.”

GEMsoft7 has recruited two additional staff to support the increased growth. Manoj Bedi is a Product Support Engineer who will be working with the GEMsoft7 support team and development teams. “I’m really looking forward to the variety that working in a SME inevitably brings and the opportunity to work more directly with clients,” he said. John Chalmers joins as Operations Manager, responsible for client deployments. “It’s great to get stuck in to a major new contract as soon as you arrive. BAA Gatwick is really interesting, but I’m grateful that the rest of the team have already done the implementations with GEMsoft7s’ other airport clients, so it’s not quite so new for everyone else!” he laughed.

“We’ve quite a few additional contracts in the pipeline,” added Phil McKell, “so I think they’re both going to be very busy for quite some time!!”

GEMsoft7, the Glasgow based software development company, has secured an additional contract with international energy services company, Wood Group Engineering (North Sea) Ltd. GEMsoft7 will provide its electronic Permit to Work Management system, P2W, to support the operation and maintenance of a second floating oil production facility in the North Sea.

Wood Group is providing operations, maintenance and engineering support for a number of high-tech Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) units, in the Chestnut Field of the Central North Sea. As Duty Holder for the Voyageur FPSO, Wood Group approached GEMsoft7 to provide the essential supporting health and safety software after P2W was successfully deployed on it’s sister vessel, FPSO Hummingbird.

“Wood Group was extremely impressed by P2W’s flexibility, and its rapid deployment time on Hummingbird. GEMsoft7 has a good understanding of our operations and we are confident that they will be able to deploy P2W in time for Voyageur’s launch later this year. In adopting P2W on another platform Wood Group is moving towards standardising it’s Safe System of Work across all platforms. This will make life easier and safer for our engineers working on these innovative oil units,” said Dave Stewart, Production Facilities Manager at Wood Group.

“The FPSO technology that Wood Group provides support services for are exciting projects in the North Sea,” said GEMsoft7’s MD, Phil McKell. “We were delighted that Wood Group came back to ask us for a second licence to supply P2W on Voyageur and we are looking forward to working with them as other FPSO units are launched.”

London City Airport has chosen a specially preconfigured application of GEMsoft7’s Permit to Work software, P2W, to help manage and control the movement and activities of contractors working at the airport.

“P2W was developed from the outset to be configured by its users”, said Phil McKell, MD of GEMsoft7, “but it became clear that management at London City Airport were looking for a plug and play approach, so we created a version of P2W that can be up and running very quickly in an airport environment.”

London City joins BAA Stansted and Dublin Airport Authority on GEMsoft7’s Airport Operator customer list. “We wanted a system that we could implement and use straight away,” said Gill Squires, Head of Property Services at the Airport. “With our input and the expertise GEMsoft7 already has in working with the airport sector we have put together an airport specific set of permit types and authorisation procedures which P2W will help to automate.”

The Airport Operator version of P2W includes a preconfigured Work Authorisation Permit and risk-specific permits, some of which relate exclusively to the airport operators, such as the Crane Permit, which is required by law for all movement of cranes or tall construction equipment within a 6km boundary of an airport.

London City will use P2W to check that all contractors arriving for work at the airport are expected on site, known to the system and authorised to do the job required. “Airport Operators have a unique set of health and safety requirements so GEMsoft7 is delighted to be working with London City Airport to help them manage the safety and security of their workers and passengers“ said McKell.

GEMsoft7 Ltd, creators of electronic Permit to Work and contractor management system P2W, today added another airport operator to their client list with the announcement of a new major contract win with Dublin Airport Authority, (DAA).

One of the ten busiest airports in Europe, Dublin is expecting to increase passenger throughput to 35 million by the year 2020. To support this growth DAA has embarked on a €2 bn investment programme which will see the upgrading of the customer check in area, a new boarding gate and a further new terminal, set to open in 2010.

DAA approached GEMsoft7 after seeing P2W in use at Stansted Airport. “The increase in the amount of construction work has led to many more contractors and staff working in potentially hazardous environments around the airport. The airport’s engineering managers needed a system that would give them an overview of all the planned, past and current activity. GEMsoft7’s P2W fitted the bill exactly,” said Tom McShane of Turner Townsend, who is working with DAA on their health and safety processes.

P2W allows DAA to record who is working at the airport, what they are there to do and that they have the appropriate security clearance to work there. As the volume of activity increases over the next few years they also needed a system that will scale and adapt to match their safety and security requirements.

“We saw that P2W is being used to handle more than three hundred contractors and maintenance staff at Stansted. We also understood that the system was originally developed with the requirements of airport operators in mind, so the system already closely matches what we need; anything extra we can easily configure ourselves,” said Rowan Fogerty, Head of Safety, Security and Operational Compliance.

Phil McKell, MD of GEMsoft7 said, “The Airport operators are an important market for GEMsoft7 and so we are delighted that P2W will be part of the ambitious developments at Dublin Airport.”

GEMsoft7 today announced an important contract win with their first customer from the Pharmaceuticals sector, Napp UK. Napp has chosen GEMsoft7’s electronic Permit to Work and Contractor Management system, P2W, to help manage the health and safety of its staff and contractors.

Based at the prestigious Cambridge Science Park, Napp employs more than 800 staff who develop some of the world’s most vital pain relief medicine. Napp’s four sites operate using best practice pharmaceutical development and manufacturing standards and this principle is reflected in the management of the health and safety of workers while on site.

Napp’s health and safety management team wanted to ensure that all the activities of staff and contractors undertaking potentially hazardous work were recorded and managed in a single IT system. Napp also wanted a Permit to Work and Contractor Management system that was flexible enough to be configured in line with their existing hardcopy procedures and would cater for any future changes to its working practices.

Because P2W is browser-based it can be accessed by authorised users from any internet connected PC, giving a view of who is on site at any time; what they are there to do and that they are authorised and security cleared to be there. P2W is designed to be configured by users to match their own processes, so that the system always matches current working practice.

“We wanted a Permit to Work system that worked along the same lines as our other IT systems that manage the various aspects of the site,” said Caroline Roberts, Napp’s Head of HSE. “The health and safety of our workers and contractors is of paramount importance to Napp so it was very important that we found a system that reflected the processes we use to manage health and safety. P2W has all of the requirements that we needed.”

Phil McKell, MD of GEMsoft7 said, “We are delighted to add Napp to our list of clients and are pleased to be associated with the vital work that they do. We are also very excited about adding Pharmaceuticals to the list of market sectors that GEMsoft7 serves and are looking forward to adding more Pharmaceutical customers in the near future.”

GEMsoft7, the Glasgow based software development company, has been awarded a new contract by international energy services company, Wood Group Engineering (North Sea) Ltd., to provide P2W, GEMsoft7’s electronic Permit to Work Management system to support the operation and maintenance of an innovative floating oil production facility in the North Sea Chestnut Oil Field.

Wood Group is providing operations, maintenance and engineering support for a Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) unit in the Chestnut Field of the Central North Sea. As Duty Holder for the operations, Wood Group approached GEMsoft7 to provide the essential supporting health and safety software after a recommendation through another of GEMsoft7’s energy sector customers.

“As Duty Holders it is imperative that Wood Group continues to demonstrate first-rate Health and Safety best practices to our employees, contractors and clients. With the development of a new corporate Safe System Of Work for the Chestnut Project, we also need supporting software that is extremely robust, easy to deploy and cost effective,” said Peter Tait, Wood Group Asset Supervisor.

P2W is easy to use and configure by customers and straightforward to deploy with the minimum fuss and expense. While P2W has greater flexibility and functionality, it is also significantly cheaper and faster to implement than competing products. This is critical for organisations involved in the exploitation of marginal “stranded” oil fields. As well as the obvious economic advantages, because P2W is web based, authorised users can securely access, query, report on, and manage activities on multiple and diverse sites, even floating oil platforms in the North Sea!

“The FPSO technology that Wood Group provides support services for are innovative and exciting projects in the North Sea,” said GEMsoft7’s MD, Phil McKell. “GEMsoft7 is delighted to help Wood Group provide these services to their customers with our own innovative P2W software.”

New Construction, Design and Management (CDM) regulations came into effect on April 6^th this year that place wider-reaching responsibilities for Health and Safety on all of the organisations involved in construction projects. Glasgow-based software developer GEMsoft7 is helping its customers to meet their obligations under the new legislation.

Communication is key to the new regulations which stipulate that all of the parties, including the clients commissioning the work, have a duty to “coordinate their activities with one another in a manner which ensures, as far as is reasonably practical, the health and safety of persons carrying out and affected by the construction work.” For projects lasting more than 30 days or 500 person days, a CDM coordinator has to be appointed who is responsible for making sure that the parties do communicate properly. Each organisation has to demonstrate that it has independently checked the competence and resources of all of the workers.

The key issue for everyone involved in a building project will be in demonstrating that these responsibilities have been met. How do you prove that all site workers have been properly trained and inducted and that this information has been shared between all of the various groups responsible for their welfare while they are on site? In the past, when accidents have occurred, it has often been difficult for the investigating authorities like the Health and Safety Executive to find the evidence that proper communication has taken place.

CDM 2007 also focuses on site security and states that workers should not start work on site unless “reasonable steps have been taken to prevent access by unauthorised persons.” Fences and warning signs are no longer sufficient; organisations will be required to check the movements of all personnel coming on to site and that those people have the appropriate authority, competencies and training to be there.

GEMsoft7’s Permit to Work, Access Control and Contractor Management software, P2W, helps overcome these problems while creating process efficiencies and encouraging safer working practices. P2W allows users to record, store and view details of all contractors and their companies, including their training and induction records and their previous health and safety performance. When workers arrive on a building site P2W is used to check their details and to issue photographic visitor passes. If the worker does not leave the site again at the expected time P2W raises a warning to alert the site manager.

Because P2W is web-based, organisations can authorise access to the system to all of the individuals involved, creating a more effective flow of information around sites and across companies. The journal functionality in P2W automatically records all actions taken on the system and who made them. While no software can take the place of human diligence in ensuring a safe construction site, P2W will enable the safety conscious organisation to enforce visible and hence safe means of control over both site access and the coordination of work within the site. In addition, it will help organisations prove their compliance with CDM 2007, should things ever go wrong.

Glasgow based GEMsoft7 has been awarded a contract to supply its electronic Permit to Work and Access Control system, P2W, to BAA at Stansted Airport.

Safety and security of staff and passengers are of paramount importance to BAA. Following best practice guidance set out by the Health and Safety Executive, BAA, like all organisations, is required to log, monitor, record and store Permit to Work safety information relating to potentially hazardous work activities.

With more than 23.1 million passengers passing through Stansted each year all building and maintenance work has to be carried out with safety as the highest priority and with the minimum disruption to staff and passengers. In an airport environment where many thousands of work permits are raised each year BAA has to cope with the added complexity of ensuring that all staff and contractors are authorised to undertake work, especially when working “airside”.

BAA approached GEMsoft7 after researching the market for suitable systems that could be implemented quickly without disrupting the working practices of ongoing building projects. In particular BAA was looking to replace its exiting paper based permits with an electronic system that could be used easily by staff and contractors, regardless of their previous IT experience. BAA was pleased to discover that P2W is extremely easy to configure in order to mirror existing operational practices without having to rely on GEMsoft7 to create expensive bespoke changes to the software.

Because the P2W software is browser-based BAA hosts the system on its own secure servers, without having to depend on third parties to ensure that the data remains secure. This also meant that the procurement and implementation project was undertaken within a relatively short timescale and BAA is now considering rolling out P2W to its other UK airports.

Franca Poglio, Project Manager said, “P2W is going to significantly improve the way BAA Stansted manages its health and safety and contractor data. We now have a system which is secure but also easy to access for authorised managers, regardless of their location. P2W will not only record and store permit and access information but it provides us with more accurate reports that will help BAA improve its work management operations in the long term.”

Phil McKell, Managing Director of GEMsoft7 added, “P2W was developed with exactly this type of requirement in mind. We were delighted that BAA chose P2W and we’re really pleased with the uptake of the system by BAA’s users and the success of the project so far.”