HSE's new AFESH® Suite Software + GINS® waste management program

By Richard Ebakhaye, Executive Director and Head of Projects at HSE Management Ltd.

HSE ‘counts’ on new AFESH® Suite Software + GINS® waste management program, to save millions of dollars for African operators.

Early proponents that adopt standardized and enterprise-wide Environmental, Health & Safety (EH&S) policies and practices, value the huge cost savings and improved company reputation that its proper management and monitoring can present over a relatively short time.

Irrespective of industry or country across Africa, achieving sustainable operational excellence and values that power the much preferred returns on investments, is increasingly faced with generous challenges like power, security, regulatory bottlenecks, technical capacity and poor infrastructure that supports loss or assets depreciation amongst others.

To increase profitability for industrial operators in Africa through enormous cost savings and value addition, HSE Management Ltd recently introduced its 'African-specific' range of AFESH® Suite Software; an enterprise-level system with the capacity to fully leverage Environmental, Health, Safety and Crisis Management data to assure compliance, reduce risk and enhance business performance for its clients anywhere in Africa.

When deployed independently or in conjunction with our incredibly improved Green In-situ (GINS®) waste management program, our clients can easily translate such operational challenges as is found across Africa, into a competitive advantage that could make their competitor go green with envy.

Our combination of the AFESH® Suite software and the GINS waste management program are distinct but significant elements of the use of information technology and advanced environmental engineering techniques, as vital infrastructure additions to making our clients benefit from a holistic, and integrated approach to managing EH&S concerns and turning it into a powerful driver for sustainable growth.

Real-time knowledge of compliance metrics and cost-savings in waste treatment and disposal techniques which our systems apply, allows organizations to optimize their resources, share best practices enterprise-wide, eliminate costly multiple systems and support a culture of continuous improvement of all EH&S activities – and effectively demonstrate these achievements, says Richard Ebakhaye, HSE's Executive Director, Projects.

A file picture of one of GINS® waste water treatment plants on an oilfield site in Nigeria.

He further added that the variety of modules relevant to client operations enable these products to generate valuable information that compliment any EH&S program requirements of your company, whilst showing open compliance-related tasks remaining at the end of each month, providing customized report monitoring systems and user-time assessment that ensures they are properly used by your employees.

SEEPCO, one of Nigeria's fastest growing Oil & Gas operators have benefited largely from the use of HSE's GINS® waste management program. Having been extraordinarily successful in various oil exploratory and drilling activities within Nigeria's hostile Niger-Delta region without any incidence arising from environmental health &safety issues, they have been able to manage same with operational excellence in a very cost effective manner.

As a result of the peculiar operating climate, David Omaghomi, SEEPCO's Environmental Coordinator, needed to evacuate drilling waste from several locations to distant treatment facilities, track and verify countless regulatory compliance and contractor EHS tasks, whilst  managing all training records to position the company for continual growth.

He also needed to reduce the company's carbon footprint, as well as the amount of time that was spent capturing and managing data through a multitude of spreadsheets and applications. In his words, the of use of HSE's AFESH® Suite Software and GINS® waste control programs worked like magic.

"After an initial review, we realized we needed to find a way to improve our ability to assure compliance with multiple regulatory mandates, reduce time and cost required for data collection, entry and reporting, reduce potential risk to data integrity from duplicate data entry/QC issues and standardize EHS systems according to our corporate guidelines. HSE's sustainability software was chosen for its ease of use and powerful functionality as well as its scalability, which will allow us to invest gradually in the software as the company and its needs continue to grow."

"During a demo, we saw how powerful and user-friendly the HSE tools were and thought it was a good fit for us. Other vendors didn't offer a modular format like that of HSE. Really they gave us the flexibility to get exactly the solution we need now and add more features and functions at a later date - rather than having to invest in everything up front," added Mr. Omaghomi.

"The time savings alone justified the purchase of the tools. It's a great tool for the team that will pay dividends both now and down the road," said Mr. Omaghomi. "We saved 30-50% overall of the time we previously spent on management and reporting of EHS data. The more people using the software and entering information directly into it, the better the data quality and cost savings will be for SEEPCO."

"Going with HSE's tools here at SEEPCO just made common sense," Mr. Omaghomi concluded. "HSE's latest deliverables has saved SEEPCO SO much time and money It used to take us anywhere from a couple hours to a couple days to try to answer an inquiry. Now it takes 5 minutes or less to track down the answer and we're more confident in the results. The time and money savings are huge. This system is going to give our company a sustainable efficiency advantage."

In conclusion, more remains to be done in improving the quality and application of EH&S best practices across the continent says Richard Ebakhaye, thus prompting us to develop a forum for the healthy interaction amongst professionals, Corporations, Governments and the people of Africa, through the Africa SSHE Digest – a continent-wide professional magazine with a focus on Safety, Security, Health & Environment; which is to be launched in the 3rd quarter of 2010. For subscription details, adverts and commentaries, please contact the editor by email on editor@africasshedigest.com

Richard Ebakhaye is an Executive Director and Head of Projects at HSE Management Ltd. His experience covers a broad range of Environmental Health & Safety applications for various industries an nd he has used information technology and cost effective waste management techniques to offer huge returns for their clients across Africa.