In today’s episode of the Dust Safety Science podcast, we are doing a mid-year review of the Dust Safety Professionals platform.
We started Dust Safety Professionals over two years ago. We have been in a pilot phase for the last year, and we will be moving into a second phase in 2022 to understand how people will use this platform. This episode will give a recap of what we’ve done with Dust Safety Professionals from January 1st, 2022 through July 1st, 2022 and answer the following questions:
- Why is it important?
- Why are we running it?
- What are the improvements we’ve made to the platform this year?
- What have the results been? And where are things headed from here?
Why Are We Running Dust Safety Professionals?
As Dust Safety Science has grown, we’ve been more effective at educating people and increasing awareness at different levels: industry, government, and associations. As a result, we’ve had more people asking questions through our Helpdesk and other channels. It was these Helpdesk questions that ‘sparked’ Dust Safety Professionals.
In terms of questions, we get everything from “Can combustible dust explode in a freezer?” to “I want an explosion vent panel that operates at 400 Degrees Celsius.” In late 2021, we started piloting what is now Dust Safety Professionals to deal with questions like the latter.
We still have our Helpdesk system where we write educational information for people who want to know about combustible dust. When these questions come in, we send them either to the Helpdesk team or to Dust Safety Professionals if they need to be connected with somebody to get a job done at their facility.
This really plugs into what we call our Dust Safety ecosystem. We have Dust Safety Science, which is our awareness platform, Dust Safety Academy, which is our educational platform, and Dust Safety Professionals, which is our connection platform. As a result of these three platforms, we are able to drive our “A Road to Zero” mission, which is to see zero fatalities worldwide from dust explosions by 2038.
Dust Safety Professionals is easy to use. If you need, for example, someone to help make your facility safe, you go to the platform and fill out a form. Within 72 hours, we want to connect you with someone who can help you solve your problem. Our vision is to have a connected network of subject matter experts that’s quick and easy to access, effective in solving challenges related to combustible dust, and has coverage across the world.
The History of Dust Safety Professionals
DSP actually began in a very different format in 2018. This was when we were just starting the Combustible Dust Incident Database and Dust Safety Science. At the International Power Show in Chicago in 2018, Dr. Chris Cloney did a presentation where he shared stories about facilities that didn’t realize they had a combustible dust problem until it was too late: people were injured or killed and communities were affected. Ten companies joined and now, five years later, we have over 55 member companies.
What Improvements Have Been Made to the DSP Platform?
We’ve made four major changes over the last six months. The first is that we added an extensive amount of information to the back-end systems for Dust Safety Professionals. For every one of our almost 55 member companies, we’ve tried to add as many offices as they have around the world and tagged those subject matter experts based on experience and background. When we get a request, we drop a pin on the map and look through all the offices of our member companies and the subject matter experts. Today we have 55 members with 191 offices and over 200 subject matter experts.
When we get requests, we evaluate what the requirements are. If it is a request that can be handled by anyone who meets the right criteria, we find who is local in that area. At the end of the day, our goal is to provide the best connection possible for the user making the request, while also being fair and transparent to our member companies. As the platform grows, the results speak for themselves.
Change number two is formalizing our standard operating procedures for Dust Safety Professionals. At the end of the day, we want to make sure that the people who have dust safety challenges are getting the support that they need, so we have been working heavily on standardizing this entire process over the last six months and hope to be able to release our standard operating procedures soon.
Change number three is that we had a lot of members join Dust Safety Professionals in December of last year and January this year. The really exciting thing is that they’re non-traditional service and equipment suppliers, such as full engineering, procurement and construction companies, incident investigators, ducting providers, and more.
The last change is that we’re doing a lot more work to celebrate the successes of Dust Safety Professionals. Weekly updates across social media and bi-monthly updates in our magazine, really drive the use of the platform. When people hear that we solved the challenge for a rubber production company in Minnesota and they run a rubber production company in Germany or Ohio, they think “Oh, well, that’s the challenge that I have as well.” Celebrating those successes drives change and drives users to the platform as well.
For the first six months of this year, we’ve had 31 user requests, made 25 connections, and have had 12 quotes or placements through Dust Safety Professionals. The quotes have totalled $64,750 USD, with 40% of that work having already moved ahead and been completed. In terms of the requests that came in, over 50% of them came in from the United States. The other requests, including Canada, Australia, Sweden, United Kingdom, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and New Zealand.
A request recently came in through an international company looking for specific testing to support their ongoing risk assessment activities in Canada. We were able to make the connection with the company and get the sample shipped for testing within 10 business days. In another instance, a consulting company from Dubai was looking for subject matter experts on dust hazard analysis to support projects out of the UAE. We were able to send contacts and resumes of three Dust Safety Professional members.
The biggest challenge we have today is the breadth of knowledge and understanding needed to tackle combustible dust challenges. Remember- we’re not even doing any of the work. We’re just guiding people toward what the best options might be for them to move forward. This could include anything from dust collection, vacuum systems, explosion protection, hazard analysis testing, very unique applications, environmental remediation, and incident investigation. Our team is constantly educating itself on what we need to know to help these people and get best results for them.
Conclusion
At Dust Safety Professionals, we’re all committed to getting people the information they need, even if it means one company referring a potential customer to a competitor. We’re all trying to go towards the same Road to Zero mission. When we get there, we can actually move combustible dust safety forward. If you want to join Dust Safety Professionals as a member, you can email Chris at [email protected] or connect with our team.
If you have questions about the contents of this or any other podcast episode, you can go to our ‘Questions from the Community’ page and submit a text message or video recording. We will then bring someone on to answer these questions in a future episode.
Resources mentioned
Dust Safety Science
Combustible Dust Incident Database
Dust Safety Science Podcast
Questions from the Community
Dust Safety Academy
Dust Safety Professionals
Dust Safety Share
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