Not every job happens behind a desk
By Jim Hankins
Utility crews, service techs, inspectors, surveyors, contractors, anyone who works off a boat. Different trades entirely, with one thing in common: for large parts of the day, nobody is expecting them at any particular minute.
Video coming shortly.
Lone working is a schedule problem
The hazard varies by trade. Height, water, traffic, plant, isolation. What does not vary is that an incident only matters operationally once somebody notices.
In an office, that is minutes. In the field it can be the end of the shift, or the next morning, or whenever a customer calls to ask why nobody turned up.
A window set on arrival, sized to the work.
Dispatch logs a job, not a person
Most field operations already track work orders. A work order says a job was assigned. It says nothing about whether the person assigned to it is fine.
Closing that gap does not require new hardware or a new radio network. It requires somebody to be expected back at a known time.
The job grew? Extend and carry on.
A check-in per site visit
Set a window on arrival, sized to the work. Extend it if the job grows, which it routinely does. Check in when leaving.
None of this is a location feed, and none of it produces a productivity record. It answers exactly one question: is this person accounted for?
Missed: the crew roster is told.
Escalation that was agreed in advance
If a check-in is missed, the roster is told. A supervisor, a crew lead, a partner, whoever was configured before the shift.
Because the roster and the escalation order are set up front, nobody is improvising a response at six in the evening while trying to work out who was on site.
Alert rosters and escalation order
An alert roster is the ordered list of people a call-out reaches, and the interval between each step. It is the oldest idea in call-out work. A recall roster with a clock attached.
For field crews the order is usually crew lead, then supervisor, then the on-call number. Setting it before the shift is the entire point: nobody should be working out who was on site at six in the evening while the question is live.
The alert roster, from recall chains to escalation.
Try it
AlertRoster is at alertroster.com. Setting up a check-in takes about a minute.
AlertRoster is a call-out notification and escalation tool. It is not an emergency service and does not contact one on your behalf. It is not a fire alarm, a security alarm, or an alarm monitoring service, and it holds no life-safety certification. It should not be the only way a call-out can reach your people.
About the author
Jim Hankins is the founder and CEO of Cloud Bedrock, LLC and the developer of AlertRoster, which he first launched in 2009. A US Army combat veteran and a 42-year veteran of IT and software development, he has spent much of his career building emergency communications platforms including as CTO of GEOS, the international emergency response coordination service acquired by Garmin in January 2021, and two successful exits. He has also volunteered in search and rescue, supporting the search for missing children.