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The ninth annual Readers’ Choice Awards 2024 list was determined following Canadian Occupational Safety’s team compilation of an impressive list of vendors and suppliers from the nationwide OHS community.
Readers were invited to rate the best safety suppliers in an online survey, with responses being completely confidential.
The 2024 winners showcased leading-edge solutions, including:
cloud-based HSE training software
naturally thermoregulating safety shirts
in-class, blended, and online safety training certification options
human-centric, personal protection industry-changing technology
The need for leading-edge safety solutions is even more important in Canada, as data from the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada shows that accepted lost time claims is at its highest nationally since 2002, at 348,747. In addition, the number of claims per capita has risen in every province and territory compared to 2020 levels, apart from New Brunswick. This can be partly explained by the industrial slowdown due to the pandemic; however, it still remains that more injuries and incidents are being recorded.
In 2022, there were 993 workplace fatalities recorded, and among these deaths were 33 young workers aged 15-24, with this demographic also recording 40,203 lost time claims due to a work-related injury or disease.
The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, a government organization, stated, “These statistics only include what is reported and accepted by the compensation boards; there is no doubt the total number of workers impacted is even greater.”
The most common type of injury by far recorded in both 2021 and 2022 was “traumatic injuries to muscles, tendons, ligaments, joints, etc.” The following nature of injuries that were recorded the most were “respiratory system diseases” and “surface wounds and bruises.”
COS’ Readers’ Choice winners of 2024 are all committed to reducing these numbers and making the workplace safer for all Canadians.
Category: Wearable Technology
Location: Toronto, ON
The ingenious product is an easy-to-use industrial-grade wearable device that facilitates safer productivity in heavy industries, particularly mining.
It is equipped with a modular sensor suite enabling situational awareness, including:
location
presence of dangerous gases
worker’s vital signs
Location awareness allows operators to make quicker decisions in response to real-time activities on the ground.
Cortex Design develops potential technologies and accelerates them into a commercial system using a human-centred approach. The Smart Helmet Clip was designed for Deloitte, which was searching for new efficiencies for enterprise clients in the mining sector.
The problem involved that one of the largest costs for running underground mines, which can be over two kilometres below the surface, is ensuring that shafts are well ventilated and workers are provided with oxygen, but this requires fossil fuels.
Deloitte sought to:
reduce the burden of running these oxygen systems
increase the speed of operations by understanding where people are underground and where to pump oxygen
create a system to alert if any noxious gasses are present
It carried a pilot to find companies to design a wearable ruggedized watch.
In Cortex’s research process, it realized a watch would not be practical.
“They are legally required to wear watches underground so that they will know the time to check in with surface operations on the hour,” says Cortex’s founder and CEO, Dylan Horvath. “But the watches were so uncomfortable to wear for some of the miners because they’re under their personal protective equipment. They’re operating heavy machinery, and there’s lots of dust in that environment, which can get caught underneath their watches and rub against their skin.
“If this wearable is meant to monitor their activity, we want them to wear it all the time, so a watch is probably not going to be the right form factor.”
The Smart Helmet Clip not only alerts ground level to a potential emergency in the mines but also relays messages sent from above.
This dual function allows:
improved communication
less human error
safer workplace
The device fits on any helmet and alerts miners to danger.
“You can’t alert someone with a buzzing alert on their wrist because their whole body’s buzzing most of the time,” says Horvath.
“Every miner wears a radio so they can be in constant communication with surface operations, but they don’t always hear their radio because of all the noise, and they don’t always see that the radio is on or off. So, we decided to add a very simple light signalling technique.
“The surface operators can send a signal to an individual miner, and they can be colour-coded too. It’s not obstructing their view, and it can light up right in front of their face to let them know that they’ve got something to attend to and that they don’t have to stop what they’re doing.”
In addition, the Smart Helmet Clip detects:
environmental conditions
activity of a miner, whether walking or in a vehicle
behaviour changes, such as if the miner is fatigued
“All of these things can increase safety underground, and they don’t have to do anything different than what they’re doing now,” Horvath says. “Putting their helmet on and turning on the Smart Helmet Clip is also a way of checking in and out, so management knows who is underground.”
The survey for Canadian Occupational Safety’s ninth annual Readers’ Choice Awards 2024 took place between April 1 and 26, 2024. The COS team compiled for nomination an impressive list of vendors and suppliers to the OHS community from across the country, based on the team’s knowledge and additional research within each area.
Readers were invited to cast their ballots in an online survey, and responses were completely confidential. Research participants were asked to rate products and services available to the OHS profession across a number of categories, including consultants, emergency management, ergonomics, facility safety, and more. The top three nominees who received the most overall votes were awarded the Readers’ Choice designation.
