FortisAlberta Prioritizes Worker Safety on Power Platform, Boosting Productivity and Earning Key Tech Award

FortisAlberta Inc. is a large energy company based in Canada, delivering safe and reliable electricity service to more than a half-million residential, farm, and business customers across central and southern Alberta. The company operates in 240 communities across 124,000 kilometers (7,700 miles) of power lines. FortisAlberta’s team comprises more than 1,100 employees, including 350 first-line workers who need to be kept safe from preventable injuries. The company is committed to ensuring the safety of its workers, particularly those working on power lines, by implementing robust injury prevention plans (IPPs) before any work commences at a site. FortisAlberta has a strong focus on safety and innovation, as evidenced by its recent recognition with Canada’s Safest Employers Award for Most Innovative Use of Safety Technology for 2021. The company has embraced digital transformation to streamline its operations and improve safety measures, leveraging Microsoft’s Power Platform to transition from a paper-based process to a digital solution for managing IPPs.

With 350 front-line employees working on power lines across the province, injury prevention is an enormous priority for FortisAlberta. Thus, before any work commences at a site, an injury prevention plan (IPP) must be created to identify the risks and hazards staff need to be aware of and the actions they must take to stay safe. This plan must remain dynamic throughout the lifecycle of the project site, as any change to the job could introduce new risks, requiring new plans of action. Before adopting a digital approach, FortisAlberta used a paper-based system to complete and manage IPPs. Supervisors had to fill out paper forms and send them by email to the Safety department within 30 days of project initiation. Recordings of meetings were captured on handheld audio recorders and cross-referenced with the paper forms during random periodic checks or following an incident. To share the IPPs, employees took photos or made photocopies of the completed forms and sent them for site auditing. This made it challenging to pull information together in time to be reviewed at team safety meetings. The paper-based process created several challenges. Handwritten IPPs were not always legible, which made it difficult to record accurate information. The check boxes on the IPP form did not accurately reflect the job’s scope of work, its roles and responsibilities, or its hazards and barriers. The paper forms required double entry, necessitating additional administrative work. And it could take as long as two weeks before forms got to the head office, if they didn’t get lost along the way.

It was clear that moving from a paper-based process to a digital solution would alleviate several pain points. With FortisAlberta’s IT leadership deeply invested in Microsoft’s technology and product stack, Power Platform seemed like the perfect place to start. To prove the technology could meet the requirements for this use case, FortisAlberta teamed up with digital partner Fidelity Factory, a Microsoft Gold Partner with deep experience using the Power Platform to empower business transformation for its clients. Fidelity Factory leveraged the rapid development capabilities of Power Apps to create a quick proof of concept. Its successful introduction led to an end-to-end solution being built in just two months. The completed solution was deployed in the fall of 2018 to a pilot user base of 220 daily users. The following spring, it was introduced to the FortisAlberta’s medium- and high-risk employees, as well as their managers and directors—all of whom adopted the digital IPP solution immediately. The new process starts before work begins at a site. Site supervisors create an IPP, identifying important information, as well as work hazards and mitigations, using a custom-built .NET application. At the work site, a Power Apps canvas app enables the supervisor to view and edit the relevant IPP for their site. The app, which runs on the supervisor’s personal mobile device, allows them to record audio so that their review of the IPP can be stored as an audio record. They can also use the app to record safety meetings and easily associate the recordings with the relevant IPPs for easy review. Moreover, the IPP mobile app works both online and offline, allowing users to work uninterrupted regardless of connectivity at their location. The visually appealing and user-friendly interface—enabled by Power Apps—facilitates quick and easy reviews of IPPs. And linking audio recordings to an IPP is simple and straightforward.

• The new IPP system has delivered huge benefits to FortisAlberta. By formalizing IPP data entry, the company can ensure all IPPs are completed to the same high standard.
• The streamlined process of creating and executing IPP and safety meetings has enabled quick and easy access to all the data associated with each site and project.
• The digitization of paper-based forms has eliminated the prospect of forms getting lost or damaged or requiring manual checks to ensure completion.

• The digital IPP system has now been in production for more than three years and is deployed to more than 500 field staff members.
• On average, the app is used to process 120 IPPs every day.