Safety beyond duty: How Ember Resources puts people first with SafetyAware

About Ember Resources

As one of Canada's largest producers of shallow gas, Ember Resources is driven by a focused, disciplined, and long-term approach to expanding their natural gas production assets today and sustaining them for generations to come. Deeply committed to the wellbeing of their staff and their communities while prioritizing safety as a core value, Ember Resources boasts a strong safety culture, supported by every level of management and leadership. This commitment is reflected in the company's low employee turnover rates, high employee satisfaction, and their mission of putting people first every day.

The challenge

Ember Resources operates in a challenging and dynamic environment, facing a variety of risks inherent to the oil and gas industry. These risks span social, environmental, and workplace hazards, which can make it a challenge to keep workers safe. Often, workers are either traveling or working alone, and immediate response during an emergency may not be available.

Because of these situations, safety is a key priority for the company. Cody Gowalko, who leads Ember Resources’ control room, emphasized, “I’ve worked with some awesome field staff, right beside them in freezing temperatures… knowing Ember cares so much about our safety means everything to me.”

Safety Training Coordinator, Amy Tetz, also noted...

With any of the challenges below, it is imperative that Ember Resources has the means to react quickly and communicate with stakeholders to ensure safe outcomes, especially with those working alone:

Environmental hazards

Ember Resources operates in challenging environmental conditions. Sudden cold snaps can cause equipment malfunctions and increase the risk of frostbite for workers. Traveling is also a significant risk, with workers facing dangers like getting stuck, hitting or avoiding animals, sliding off the road, and motor vehicle accidents. The average operator travels an estimated 400 kilometres per day, making daily travel one of the highest risk tasks staff will perform. This means Ember Resources takes extreme weather conditions, such as storms and heavy snowfall, seriously. Low visibility and impacted road conditions, combined with the rural nature of their work, means incidents can leave workers stranded and exposed to environmental hazards.

Workplace hazards

In some instances, the aging workforce within the energy industry presents personal health concerns, as older workers may be more susceptible to health issues and slower to react in emergency situations. Handling fluids, liquids, gases, flammables, and heat presents additional risks, including the risk of spills, fires, and explosions. Furthermore, wellhead strikes are a serious concern, with landowners or equipment operators accidentally coming into contact with wellheads, resulting in loss of well control or potentially explosions due to flammable gases.

Social hazards

On occasion, thieves target industrial sites attempting to steal batteries and copper, posing both a risk to the company’s assets and the safety of the employees on-site. Ember Resources is no exception to this. Cody noted the uncertainty that can arise when working with or around unknown individuals, stating, “that’s a scary situation when you're a field operator going out to start a compressor and you don't know what's around the corner, especially when you’re alone at night”.

Why Aware360

Ember Resources selected Aware360 for its SafetyAware solution, which offers a tailored approach to addressing the company's unique safety challenges. SafetyAware is built with a response centre approach, offering customers the option to use one of Aware360’s 24/7 Real-Time Response Centres or monitoring in their own Response Center. Already having response resources available through their control room, Ember Resources opted to self-monitor. With this, Cody and his team have a live view of on-shift staff, no matter where their workday takes them. Through this partnership, Ember Resources has created a comprehensive solution to enhance safety protocols across its operations and derive three main benefits:

Improved two-way communication

By improving two-way communication between the control center and field staff, Ember Resources can swiftly respond to emergencies and ensure the well-being of its employees. Because they self-monitor, field staff using SafetyAware have the peace of mind knowing that if an incident occurs, the person on the other end of the phone understands the intricacies of their duties and the inherent risks, allowing seamless facilitation of support through the software.

Cody commented on the critical role such a tool plays for him and his team, saying:

Efficient integration with existing operations

Aware360's SafetyAware seamlessly integrates with Ember Resources' Emergency Response Plan (ERP), streamlining workflows and enhancing operational efficiency. Amy said, “In the case of an emergency, the control room initiates our ERP and immediately refers to SafetyAware to see who is nearby, either to help or evacuate”.

With built-in SMS and push notifications, Ember Resources can communicate critical information in real-time, facilitating faster response times and reducing downtime. Additionally, a map layer has been added to the software that allows Ember to see their facilities in real-time, and where staff are in relation to them. Geofences (virtual boundaries) enable Ember Resources to create inclusion and exclusion zones, meaning they can view or communicate with staff inside or outside designated areas. SafetyAware also utilizes the LSD location system common in Western Canada and to Ember Resources, which allows for an alternate form of navigating rural Alberta.

Scalability and consistency of policies and procedures

Aware360’s SafetyAware is scalable, allowing Ember Resources to easily implement additional forms such as vehicle inspections and hazard risk assessments, collect and proactively use more data, and prepare for influxes of workers as the oil and gas industry ebbs and flows. Ember Resources plans to continue using SafetyAware to respond to emergencies more efficiently and to further enhance their safety protocols.

Reaping the benefits

In 2019, Ember Resources used their lone worker monitoring solution when an incident occurred in a rural area outside Rockyford, Alberta. Cody was working in the control room when two of their summer students were involved in a truck collision on a dusty road with low visibility. One of the students got in touch with the control room, scared and in shock. Using the platform, Cody quickly located another operator a few kilometers away who could respond while emergency services were enroute. The Ember operator arrived at the scene within 10 minutes, while emergency responders arrived within 30 minutes. Fortunately, there were no injuries to the workers involved, but both trucks sustained extensive damage. If not for the safety platform, Cody would have had to manually call on-shift workers to find out who was nearby or wait for emergency responders. Often, in situations like these, time is of the essence.

Another incident involved a fire in a field where an operator was driving to access a well. Using SafetyAware, Ember Resources was able to quickly have emergency responders dispatched directly to the scene and easily locate nearby staff to check on the situation and provide support. Once again, while the involved staff were shaken up, nobody was injured. Being able to engage a clear-minded individual not only supported the workers, but also provided assurance to the control room staff that everything was going to be alright.

Lastly, on occasion, farmers or equipment operators mistakenly drive into protective fencing or make contact with wellheads. Wellhead strikes can be very dangerous due to the presence of venting gas, and expensive if not quickly fixed. When these occur, Ember Resources uses SafetyAware to immediately dispatch operators to check on the wellbeing of the farmers and make any necessary repairs to equipment.