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IndustryPeople and heavy machinery, in the same space.
Proximity that triggers before contact, crews accounted for at muster, and plant located on a site whose layout changed this morning.
What is actually hard here.
Struck-by incidents happen because a person and a machine occupied the same space and neither knew. Mirrors, cameras and banksmen all help and all depend on someone looking in the right direction at the right second.
Evacuation is the other hard problem. A site knows who signed in. Whether they are still on site, and where, is not the same question — and it is the question that matters during a muster.
What it looks like on site.
The outputs worth having.
- Proximity between people and plant — distance measured directly rather than inferred from a camera.
- Zone entry — exclusion zones, confined spaces, live-edge areas.
- Crew location and count — by level, by area, live.
- Muster roll call — who reached the assembly point and who did not.
- Plant and tool location — including the ones on hire by the day.
- Time in high-risk areas — exposure as an accumulating number, per person, per shift.
Why these, and not the others.
UWB because proximity safety needs a real distance, ruggedised, at a rate fast enough to act on. A warning that arrives a second late has not warned anyone.
Because a measured distance is authorising an intervention — a warning, a slow-down — the measurement should be resistant to spoofing. This is precisely what secure ranging exists for.
RFID for tool and consumable control at the store, where identity at a counter is all that is wanted.
A sensible order of work.
- Start with the plantThe machines are few, they already have power, and they are where the risk concentrates.
- Then the crewTags in helmets or on lanyards. Comfort and charging routine determine whether they are worn.
- Anchors that move with the siteMast-mounted, battery or solar where needed. A site layout that changes weekly needs infrastructure that can.
- Set two radiiWarn at one distance, intervene at another. The gap between them is the design decision.
- Rehearse the musterA roll-call system that has never been tested under a real evacuation has not been tested.
If it works.
- Proximity incidents get recorded as near-misses rather than as nothing.
- Muster time drops, and the count is trustworthy.
- Hired plant is returned on time because it can be found.
Does this look like your site?
Tell us the space, what moves in it, and the decision a position would change. We will tell you which technology fits and what a first deployment would involve.