Touch screens for process and safety training

Touch screens are enabling council workers easy access to job aids and operating procedures that before were buried in out-of-date hard-copy folders.

Many workplaces in remote locations – or those where computers aren’t part of the landscape – have difficulty providing effective material to their staff. Often this can be problematic: at a time when electronic information has become central to the operations of many enterprises, including the implementation of safety, quality and training programs, lack of access can raise significant legal and compliance issues.

Bruce Milne from the Workplace Learning and Development Unit of The Skills Institute saw an opportunity to address the problem at a site in Wynyard in Tasmania’s north west, in partnership with Waratah-Wynyard Council. His unit offers customised workplace training and development of enterprise-specific standard operating procedures and job aids. When he saw the touch screen system that Sprout Labs had developed for another project he became excited about how it might be used to enable access to electronic documentation.

Sprout Labs develop Doc-Touch, a stand-alone system that does not need to be integrated into a network. It has an easy-to-use interface that is graphical, rich and intuitive, and can be used in conjunction with iPads and Android tablets.

Content is no more than two touches away. The system enables easy access to safety information, processes, material safety data sheets and so on. Content can be easily updated (new documents are simply loaded in PDF format), so there is no longer any need to update and distribute hard copy information and manuals. Usage of the system can be tracked and monitored.

The system is now being used at Waratah-Wynyard Council, Devonport City Council, Break-O-Day Council and Burnie City Council.

A new cloud-based version is currently being developed, with support from a WorkCover Tasmania innovation grant. The new version includes checklists and forms and is designed to specifically run on iPad and Android tablets.