Safety Where the Work Happens: Simplifying EHS in Aviation
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Report safety issues on tablets, where work happens.
Give refuellers and HSE teams role-specific access.
Keep risk assessments current with scheduled reviews.
How Fingal Aviation Services uses EHSwise, a configurable Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) management software platform, to digitise safety reporting, manage risk assessments and support frontline teams across airport operations.
As an award-winning aircraft refuelling specialist, Fingal Aviation Services operates in an environment where safety, speed and consistency are part of everyday work.
The company provides safe and efficient into-plane refuelling services across airports in Ireland on behalf of Shell Aviation. Its teams are responsible for into-plane refuelling, with fuel bowser drivers and aircraft refuellers working in busy airports.
For its Health & Safety team, this creates a very practical challenge: how do you make EHS reporting accessible to employees whose working day takes place around aircraft and airport operations rather than behind a desk?
Fingal Aviation selected EHSwise to bring its key health and safety processes into one digital platform. With configurable workflows and tablet access, the solution supports safety reporting, risk management and operational teams working in a specialised aviation environment.
Moving EHS Reporting Away from Paper
Before introducing EHSwise, Fingal Aviation wanted to reduce its reliance on paper-based EHS processes.
Tablets were already part of the operational environment, so Fingal wanted EHS processes to be available through the same devices.
This meant employees could record safety information at or close to the point where an incident, observation or issue occurred, rather than relying on paperwork that needed to be completed or transferred later.
Today, Fingal Aviation uses EHSwise across Risk Assessments, Incident Reporting, Observations, Inspections, Action Plans, Events, Permit to Work and Induction & Training.
By managing these activities within a centralised EHS software platform, Fingal Aviation can bring together important safety records and processes that would otherwise be managed separately.
Making the System Relevant to the Person Using It
Introducing a central platform does not necessarily mean every employee should have the same experience.
A refueller working at Dublin Airport has different day-to-day requirements from an HSE Officer. Fingal Aviation therefore worked with the EHSwise team to create role-specific homepages.
When employees access EHSwise, they can be taken directly to the environment relevant to their role. A Dublin Refueller, for example, can see the processes and information intended for that group, while an HSE Officer has access to a different set of functions and information relevant to their responsibilities.
Behind those experiences, permissions can also be managed for different user groups.
The aim is simple: give employees straightforward access to what they need without making them navigate through parts of the EHS system that are not relevant to their job.
Turning Risk Assessments into Living Records
Rather than treating a completed Risk Assessment as a static document, Fingal wanted assessments to remain active and be formally revisited at appropriate intervals.
EHSwise adapted the process to include a review stage. This allows an assessment to operate as a rolling record, with an EHS team member reviewing it at defined intervals.
A cloning capability was also introduced, allowing an existing Risk Assessment and its risks to provide the starting point for a new assessment. Teams do not have to repeatedly recreate information that remains relevant.
Flexibility Matters in Specialised Industries
Aircraft refuelling is a specialised operation. Yet many of the Health & Safety challenges Fingal Aviation faces will sound familiar to EHS leaders elsewhere.
Employees need a simple way to report information. EHS teams need reliable records. Different roles require different levels of access. Risk Assessments need to remain current. Actions need to be followed through. And the technology needs to fit into operational work rather than become another administrative burden.
That is where configurability becomes particularly important.
A construction company, pharmaceutical organisation, manufacturer and aviation refuelling business may face very different operational risks. Their EHS software should not force them to manage those risks in exactly the same way.
EHSwise provides a common EHS foundation while allowing workflows, access, processes and user experiences to be configured around the organisation, its people and its working environment.
For Fingal Aviation, the flexibility of the platform and the ongoing support from the EHSwise team have been particularly important. After more than two years using the platform, the relationship has continued beyond the original implementation, allowing the system to evolve as requirements change.
One Platform, Built Around the Realities of Everyday Work
For EHS leaders considering digitalisation, Fingal Aviation’s experience demonstrates an important point: specialised industries do not always require specialised, rigid software.
What matters is whether the technology can adapt.
By bringing key EHS processes into one accessible platform, Fingal Aviation has created a digital approach that fits more naturally into airport operations, from aircraft refuellers using tablets in the field to EHS teams managing Risk Assessments, Incidents, Inspections and Actions.
Fingal Aviation may operate in a very different environment from a construction company, manufacturer or pharmaceutical organisation, but many of the underlying EHS challenges are the same.
The value of a configurable platform is that it can respond to those common challenges while still reflecting the realities of each workplace.
EHSwise by Kianda is a configurable Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) management software platform that helps organisations digitise and manage workplace safety processes.
Built on Kianda’s low-code technology, EHSwise supports incident reporting, risk assessments, audits, inspections, safety observations, corrective actions and other EHS workflows.
Its flexible approach allows organisations across aviation, manufacturing, construction, engineering and pharmaceuticals to adapt safety processes to their operational requirements.
Discover how EHSwise Health and Safety Software can support your organisation’s safety management needs.
One connected approach. Safer decisions every day
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