Noreen Delaney, Asset, Governance, Safety & Compliance Manager, ESB Telecoms
The requirement to engineer network solutions has become ever faster in the telecommunications industry, as the demand for high-speed communications is ever increasing. We must ensure that the highest level of safety remains a core value throughout all our activities in planning, building and operating telecommunications sites.
In today's climate, ESB Telecoms is more committed than ever to delivering safe and efficient connectivity solutions to its valued customers. As part of ESB's Net Zero strategy, the organisation is working towards a future that protects our customers and the economy by maintaining the security and affordability of energy.
The steps we have taken to deliver a safety focus can be broken down into three key areas.
Ensuring a Safety Management Strategic Focus:
Under the Safety, Health and Welfare at work Act 2005, site owners are duty bound to provide full site details to anyone attending and/or working on their sites. To effectively fulfil the required commitments, a focus on safety must be embedded into businesses at a strategic level.
As part of our safety management ethos and customer-centric focus, ESB Telecoms introduced the Towers Safety Extranet application in 2008. This was designed to allow users to view ESB Telecoms site information and submit work requests efficiently.
With a high volume of work requests undertaken on sites annually, this solution sought to:
Ensure that contractors return home safely.
Be as informative to our customers and contractors as possible.
Over the last 14 years, we have continually looked at areas to enhance the application to improve this process.
Listening to Customer Challenges
Providing a site safety management system that manages safe access to site and provides the telecoms operator with real-time visibility enables them to make design decisions before going to site. The diversity of telecoms locations can be far-reaching geographically, and access can be weather-dependent. Therefore, safety management systems allow the operator to see their equipment and the space available on the structures without having to leave the office and collaborate remotely.
When listening to our customers' needs and challenges, we identified a fundamental issue with the Technical Proposal process: customers could not view available space on our towers.
Before a Technical Proposal submission, a customer had to collate the available space on the tower from a site survey. This increased additional customer costs introduced significant delays to the submission and ultimately delayed approvals.
Prioritising and Addressing Customer Needs:
The customer must be at the forefront of the design process in creating an innovative solution when designing a new system, especially where they are the end user. This needs to be done without a preconceived solution in mind, through active listening to the customer’s needs, addressing their requirements and incorporating their challenges. The design must provide an agile solution that can adapt to the ever-changing landscape of new technologies and customers’ requirements.
Our Solutions
In response to our customer requirements, ESB Telecoms significantly enhanced the ESB Telecoms Safety Extranet, incorporating an Asset Management module with the following capabilities.
Technical Proposal Form
Updating our process to a digital Technical Proposal form offers the following customer benefits:
Ease of application with a single Technical Proposal for each site
Sustainability with the removal of multiple paper submissions
Improved customer experience during equipment updates
Ease of tracking approval status of a Technical Proposal
Ability to review historical changes on a Technical Proposal
Inventory Database
The customer benefits of the inventory database are:
Real-time data on equipment infrastructure installed on the tower
Equipment specification offering
Allows improved customer network planning
3D Tower Model
The use of the 3D Model gives the following benefits:
Remote desktop analysis instead of on-site surveys
Reduces carbon footprints by no need to travel to a site
Automatic model updates during Technical Proposal updates
By implementing these updates to the Towers Safety Extranet, we have put our customers' needs at the core of our strategy while delivering future-proof digital solutions anticipating further industry challenges.
In summary, Safety, Health, Welfare and the Environment must be an integral part of the overall business and operational plans in every industry and not exist solely as a stand-alone strategy. When a company is ahead in creating plans to handle potential threats and then develops strategies to address them before incidences occur, they are more likely to ensure continued positive outcomes. People's safety, health and welfare should always be integrated as a core value of each organisation. In doing so, the continuous re-evaluation and improvement of processes and systems will prevent severe injuries and illnesses, property damage, lost production, and negative environmental impact.
At ESB Telecoms, we aim to continuously improve our customer processes to remain committed to delivering safe and efficient connectivity solutions across Ireland. The inclusion of the Asset Management module is a milestone in our customer-centric, safety management approach, and customers can now track digital real-time data on our Towers infrastructure.
In the coming months, the continuous digital investment includes an upcoming project to barcode all equipment installed on Tower sites following Technical Proposal submissions. This will reduce the time our contractors and team need to spend on the towers, therefore reducing risk. It will also offer improved identification of equipment instantly as opposed to waiting for an annual climb down. We are always seeking solutions for your safety and infrastructure needs.
To find out how ESB Telecoms can help your business with connectivity or to get more details concerning our extensive tower estate, don't hesitate to contact us today.
For more details, contact your ESB Telecoms customer relationship manager or email salesenquiries@esbtelecoms.ie.