Doncasters Group engineers a safer, fairer workplace

Doncasters Group Ltd is a leading international engineering company that manufactures precision components and assemblies for the aerospace, industrial gas turbine, specialist automotive, petrochemical, construction, industrial, transportation and recreation markets. Achieving a group turnover of over US$1 billion in 2010, Doncasters Group employs 4,900 people at sites across the UK, continental Europe, the USA, Mexico and China.

The number of governmental regulations and reporting requirements for organisations is increasing every day. With sites in multiple countries, co-ordinating these requirements efficiently and effectively was a major challenge for Doncasters Group.

The company’s goals included minimising incidents, developing a reliable reporting system, and benefiting from standardisation across the company.

Adam Holbrook, Group European Environmental Health and Safety Manager at Doncasters Group Ltd, explains, “As our business continues to grow, keeping facilities up to speed with regulations becomes more complex. We are always focused on keeping the number of accidents as low as possible, and we wanted to enlist the on-the-job expertise of our employees to find the best ways for maintaining a safe and productive working environment.”

By standardising on a single, integrated health and safety solution across all locations, Doncasters Group could also benefit from easier reporting capabilities.

“Our US sites were unable to access our old health and safety management system,” comments Holbrook. “This meant that we missed out on many of the benefits of consolidation – for example, it was difficult to share best practices or carry out company-wide reporting. We recognised that a fully shared system with group-wide accident reporting and risk assessment could help cut administration costs, and, more importantly, improve overall health and safety performance.”

Selecting GBS FastWorks from Group Business Software
Doncasters Group selected the GBS FastWorks Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) management suite, a comprehensive, innovative health and safety solution from IBM Premier Business Partner Group Business Software (GBS). Built on IBM Lotus Notes and Domino, GBS FastWorks offers a set of tightly integrated modules for Occupational Health and Safety, Environmental Health and Safety, Quality Management, Enterprise Risk Management and Integrated Management, and eliminates the complexity of managing compliance with regulations, standards and corporate policies.

“GBS FastWorks is running on a Lotus Domino server in the cloud, so we can access it easily and simply through a web browser,” says Holbrook. “It is highly configurable and you do not need technical skills to use it, so our staff have quickly become familiar with it. Even so, GBS have been superb in providing initial training for employees and ongoing support for those joining the company, enabling us to get the best out of GBS FastWorks.”

GBS helped Doncasters Group install the solution on a host server in Edinburgh, with a replication routine set up overnight to synchronise data with the other group locations. In addition to training sessions, GBS showed the company’s IT teams how to carry out customisations to suit the local environment. For example, US sites tailored their systems to meet the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards.

“GBS FastWorks offers us a range of capabilities that have enabled us to increase the efficiency and flexibility of our approach to health and safety,” comments Holbrook.

“We can use the solution to log accident reports and investigations, instigate preventative or corrective action and notify the relevant people of this, undertake risk assessment, set up objectives and manage claims.”

Increasing fairness and accountability in the workplace
GBS FastWorks includes features that allow managers to delegate actions to specific individuals, and ensures that every employee’s contribution is accurately recorded. In the case of something going wrong, Doncasters Group is able to identify what caused it and how it can be improved. Meanwhile, employees can benefit from more clearly defined expectations.

Moreover, by introducing GBS FastWorks, Doncasters Group is investing in making the health and safety process more transparent and collaborative, encouraging employees to suggest ways to enhance processes.

“By increasing traceability with GBS FastWorks it is easier to guarantee our employees are treated fairly,” says Holbrook. “Actions expected of them are explicitly recorded, providing a valuable record if we need to look back. The system also boosts accessibility – enabling individuals to influence the compliance culture rather than just having it imposed on them.”

Reaching targets with GBS FastWorks
With the help of GBS FastWorks, Doncasters Group has found it easier to achieve accreditation for facilities and prepare for third-party audits, saving on time and money.

“Implementing a comprehensive, integrated solution has simplified preparation for audits and accreditation, as all relevant information is now in one place,” explains Holbrook. “We can prepare templates ahead of time, pulling the data in from all locations as required. Because everything is ready for the auditors or inspectors when they visit, the process is hugely accelerated.

“In fact, the system has received high praise from such visiting external bodies who say it makes their lives much easier. We have seen the benefits for ourselves, as it has proved easier to gain accreditation for our sites, helping us meet targets set at board-level. The frequency and duration of audits has also been drastically reduced.”

Enhanced reporting skills
Doncasters Group has recently developed a reporting tool based on the GBS FastWorks solution, incorporating features such as scorecards, incidence rates and performance against targets to help managers make key decisions.

Holbrook concludes, “Selecting GBS FastWorks from GROUP Business Software enables us to tackle the rate of accidents in an efficient and effective manner. Ultimately, we want to minimise the risk to our employees, who deserve to work in a safe environment, and this gives us the tools to achieve our objectives.”