Ahtna Automates Safety Reporting with FORM OpX
The Alaskan-based company significantly improved its safety statistics and
lessened incident claims with FORM OpX.
Established in 1972, Ahtna Inc. is an Alaska native-owned corporation dedicated to the preservation of indigenous lands and the economic growth of its people. With over 1,400 people employed across more than 20 subsidiaries, including construction, facilities management, infrastructure, oil & gas pipeline maintenance, and food service, ensuring safety and compliance is paramount to Ahtna’s operations in Alaska and beyond. By keeping these subsidiaries safe, Ahtna can continue providing a broad range of opportunities for shareholders and ensure effective management of all Ahtna’s vital resources.
1,440 employees
Having been in business for over 50 years, Ahtna has applied a variety of reporting processes with varied, inconsistent outcomes. With FORM OpX, Ahtna is now managing compliance centrally across the Ahtna portfolio to create a unified culture of accountability, consistency, and safety.
Before using FORM OpX, Ahtna’s process for reporting incidents was complex, inconsistent, and at times ineffective. To report an incident, team members would either print a PDF, fill it out by hand, and fax or email it to an office, sometimes with no confirmation of receipt. This process resulted in missed or incomplete communication, misinterpreted handwriting, and insufficient context. Furthermore, these incident reports provided limited value to Ahtna for the resolution and prevention of incidents. “The incident reports were about half the size they are now,” Laughlin says. “They lacked primary root causes; and corrective actions were limited and at times insufficient. Essentially the report simply documented something happened, and nothing was learned from it to prevent a reoccurrence.”
What we’re capturing [with FORM OpX] is non-biased data. It’s facts. What we had before was paper that just sat there, and now we’re capturing data that was never captured before. This directly affects the way that safety is viewed.
DREW LAUGHLIN
Corporate Safety, Health, and Environment Program (SHEP) Director
Ahtna Corporate Safety Leadership worked closely with FORM Account Manager Jörg and Project Manager Maryna to restructure Ahtna’s incident reports into a consistent, organized, and actionable system. Now, team members use FORM’s intuitive process to easily access and complete incident and hazard recognition reports.
With on-site teams able to submit digital reports—even at secure facilities with limited internet access—Ahtna supervisors can monitor incidents in real time and use that data to identify how and where to focus their efforts. FORM OpX’s configurable data dashboards allow leaders to filter by date, location, subsidiary, and type of incident, creating a story of non-biased information that helps prevent and mitigate incidents.
We’ve been able to take our lagging indicators and turn them into leading indicators, and reduce risk and severity for our employees on a day-to-day basis.
DREW LAUGHLIN
Corporate Safety, Health, and Environment Program (SHEP) Director
In using FORM OpX, Ahtna has not only automated a fully-manual process to streamline data collection and save time, but they’ve been able to capture timely, relevant, and actionable insights that ultimately drive safety for its businesses.
“FORM has been directly involved in helping us reduce the probability, number, and level of severity of incidents,” Laughlin says. “We’ve been able to restructure program components and identify where we have issues and where we can refocus our time.”
Since adopting FORM OpX, Ahtna’s Experience Modification Rate (EMR), a numeric rating used by the U.S. insurance industry to measure and compare the safety of businesses, dropped from .78 to .58–an improvement of 26%. “Our claims have gone down, and the severity of our claims have gone down. All of this is a result of the work that we’ve been doing with FORM and team members Jörg and Maryna.”
I’m able to look at statistics from specific companies and say ‘What have we learned from this? What are you doing to promote safety and build your culture?’ If we can solve even 10% of the national average of unsafe acts, we’re going to see a reduction in incidents and claims. It all ripples.
DREW LAUGHLIN
Corporate Safety, Health, and Environment Program (SHEP) Director
