Alton Towers Case Study

Video Transcript

I’m Jonathan Ellis. I’m the Health and Safety Director here at Alton Towers Resort.

One of the challenges, and it’s an exciting challenge, is just the size and extent of the theme park on a major resort. We have 550 acres here.

People know us for the large rides, but we also have a number of other things that are not always as well-known. We have a number of hotels. We have a very large waterpark. But on top of that, we have our own combined heat and power plant. We generate are own electricity. We’re on our own water supply here. And all of this need’s maintenance, repair, improvements, upgrades, and that then brings in a large army of contractors.

It’s very evident that this is actually the busiest time for contractors, and it really hits home the need for
the team here at Alton Towers to have the right tools to manage contractor safety.

The Control of Work system from VelocityEHS has provided a facility where, from my perspective, I can now see across the entire park who is bringing in contractors when and where, and what work they’re doing, which enables us to coordinate it so at a very simple level, we don’t end up with two people trying to be in the same space at the same time.

The old system was just a paper permit system. It was in one office, but now it’s more visible, and security actually requests the contractor to have a permit upon arrival. So there’s no excuse. They can’t gain access until their permit is raised.

I think the easiest and most transparent thing for Control of Work is the site map. I mean, that shows us that there’s work activity taking place from various different contractors. And if we’re planning work and we want to be in a location that’s already occupied by another contractor, we can take that into account when we’re planning our work.

A real benefit of the Control of Work system is the speed as it makes it a lot quicker and easier for us to get contractors on site. No longer do we have to wait at security to do induction and sign in, and we can do all that beforehand so people can arrive on site, check in, and get to work straight away.

Implementing the new Control of Work system went really well for us. It was quite a straightforward process.

Probably the biggest benefit of working with VelocityEHS with this system was the support we were given right the way through. And to be fair, we’re still getting that support now as we’re learning the system.