Fort St. John, British Columbia — A field worker with a service company, was driving from Lower Burnt River to Hasler in blizzard conditions with -10oC weather while performing work for an energy producer when suddenly the fuses in his truck blew.
Out of cellular range and alone on a mountainous back road in plummeting temperatures, the field worker reached for his self-powered Blackline Safety (TSXV: BLN) G7x wearable device. As a comprehensive lone worker safety monitoring system, G7x has an Iridium satellite uplink to Blackline’s 24/7 live monitoring team. At 13:12 MST, he used his G7x two-way messaging to send an alert to Blackline, requesting assistance.
Blackline’s in-house Safety Operations team received the worker’s alert message. Within five minutes his supervisor, sent a message to his G7x that help was on the way and dispatched a team of two employees to begin the long drive into the field. Fifty minutes later, the worker was safely picked up by his teammates, who drove him and his vehicle to safety in Chetwynd, a town located between Fort St. John and Prince George in northern B.C.
“I’m a true believer in Blackline Safety,” said the field employee. “I don’t know if I would have made it…the Blackline G7x was a life-saver for me knowing that someone was coming, so I didn’t have to trudge 10 km in a blizzard.”
His supervisor in Ft. St. John, B.C., said, “I went online and could see where my field worker was on the Blackline Safety portal…he was working in an area with no two-way radio coverage or cell service, and I knew it would be dark soon in the heavy snowfall.”
Blackline’s customer originally chose G7x to improve the safety of employees who are working alone in Canada. This involves many employees in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan. Previous use of SPOT devices or cell phones were limited in their reporting ability and the dangers with using cell phones in vehicles while driving made the investment in safety an easy choice. Today all remote field employees have G7x units in their trucks.
“Automation is a key reason we use the product and the added ability to detect a problem if an employee is incapacitated improves our ability to help our people who need to work alone,” said the supervisor. “We found the Blackline Safety bridge invaluable… if our field worker didn’t have help coming, it might have been 3 hours before a crew would be sent out — I knew my employee was safe and he knew he had help coming — that was a big relief and our leaders in the safety department, they see this incident as kudos to Blackline Safety.”
About Blackline Safety: Blackline Safety is a global connected safety technology leader. Providing comprehensive live-monitoring and wireless gas detection, we help teams working in hazardous environments respond to emergencies in real-time and manage efficient evacuations, accounting for everyone’s safety along the way. With millions invested in technology research and development, Blackline Safety is recognized for quality and innovation. Our talented team of designers and engineers create and manufacture in-house — from wearable technology and personal gas detectors to cloud-hosted infrastructure and web-based interfaces for global industry. We deliver the world’s first turn-key, work-anywhere, connected safety monitoring solution with gas detection, 3G wireless, satellite communications, two-way speakerphone, push-to-talk, employee messaging and live monitoring to meet the demanding safety challenges and increase productivity of organizations in over 100 countries. For more information, visit www.BlacklineSafety.com.
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