On Wednesday 6^th March 2019, personnel from ZetaSafe along with the ITN production team descended on Ulster Hospital in Belfast. As a respected ZetaSafe client who currently use the software to manage a wide range of complex compliance areas, Ulster Hospital were the ideal partner to showcase how ZetaSafe ensures compliance, increases efficiency and reduces risk.

In hospitals compliance regulations help to reduce the risk of infections and accidents. Here, estates-related litigation complaints have halved over the past few years. Using ZetaSafe has resulted in other efficiencies too.

This opportunity enabled us not only demonstrate how our technology helps companies meet regulations and reduce risk, but also highlight the financial and environmental benefits.

The increasing complexity of modern buildings is making compliance a bigger challenge than ever before.

Large estates with their mix of old and new builds, are under increasing pressure to comply with regulations to keep people safe.

At Ulster Hospital, they manage compliance using the cloud-based electronic system ZetaSafe. And it’s proving a real success.

Rob Nicoll, ZetaSafe Chairman says, “If you manage a building and manage some of these complex pieces of equipment, then what you’re really looking for is that incoming missile – the piece of kit that is routinely failing and is being recorded as being failing. In the past that would be buried in a paper log book, might be on an Excel spreadsheet but once we get that into a database we can start to look for trends and patterns, then we can flag that up, intervene before it becomes a major problem and prevent any possible injury to people, financial risk exposure, reputational damage, those sorts of things.”

ZetaSafe uses an app which can be downloaded to any phone or tablet. Each asset is barcoded so that staff can use their phones to carry out checks at scheduled times. These checks generate masses of information from thousands of tasks but the ZetaSafe database processes it all and presents it on a simple dashboard.

Malcolm Edwards, Technical Consultant comments, “Where sites use ZetaSafe that information is there, right in front of you. You can look at a dashboard and see where the high-risk aspects of the building are. You can look at the non-compliant results and you can get a very good picture very quickly.”

Anthony Trimble, Head of Estates Operations from South Eastern Health & Social Care Trust adds “It’s helped streamline a lot of processes – finance, approval of invoices, you can do them at the click of a button without having to go and physically verify that the work’s been done. In terms of audit it helps us comply with requests for information to prove we’re compliant at the click of a button instead of going away looking for paper. It helps us manage over two hundred maintenance contracts at the click of a button.”

The system can check compliance on practically any kind of equipment in any building: water tanks, boilers, ventilation shafts, emergency lighting – and even the safety alarm on oxygen tanks. Whatever the client’s needs, the software provides.

ZetaSafe have a full support service so you can contact them if you’ve any issues and they’re very accommodating with regards feedback and service delivery.

ZetaSafe believes the IOT internet of things will radically change the compliance landscape in the future. Smart sensors will allow real-time monitoring of a far wider range of assets. In hospitals, that could mean lifts, fire doors, and water taps. At ZetaSafe’s base in the highly acclaimed Silverstone Innovation Centre the team develop the system in such a way that any amount of additional data will still be easy to manage.

Chris Wiles, ZetaSafe Technical Director adds, “We can integrate probes, we can have feeds from other systems, CAFM systems, building management systems. Our APIs allow us to talk to and be talked to from other systems allowing us to integrate with the best of breed of whichever type of system our clients want to use.”

Becky Allen, Client Manager at ZetaSafe adds, “With the use of these softwares, different companies talking to one another, this whole ecosystem of apps, just makes sure that the correct information is landing on the correct laps and again just making it more manageable for people.”

The team at ZetaSafe believes the best way of meeting the compliance expectations of the future is to embrace technology. Their system allows organisations to meet standards, to assess risks, to improve their buildings and most importantly, to keep them safe.

Rob Nicoll, ZetaSafe Chairman says, “We would like to thank Anthony Trimble, Head of Estates Operations and Ryan Conlan, Compliance Manager from South Eastern Health & Social Care Trust who spoke confidently about the realities of introducing cloud-based technologies and the benefits they had experienced such as streamlining processes and the financial and reputational gains directly from an end user perspective.”