Improving Health and Safety
NZW is assisting Horticulture New Zealand with an ACC funded project looking at ways to improve health and safety across horticulture and viticulture.
Well actually it's not so much a tablet, but a programme that utilizes tablets for managing staff, workload, and hazards within the vineyard. The software programme is called Vinea and was developed by Infopower.
For Mark Naismith, vineyard manager at Akarua, it is the best thing since sliced bread, cutting the time he spends on admin and management by between 40 and 60 percent.
He discovered the software after spending months searching for something that would allow him to get out of the office and back into the vineyard.
"We were in a situation where paper work, management and administration were taking me out of the vineyard or I was doing silly hours and it was becoming difficult. I was also doing payroll for permanent and seasonal staff across all departments ranging from 18 to 70 people dependent on seasonal demands, which was taking a lot of time. So we were looking for a system that would cover a single point of entry for HR, payroll, vineyard costings, management and health and safety."
Systems coming out of Australia and North America didn't work for them, and there didn't appear to be anything that matched Akarua's specific requirements. That was until he discovered Vinea. He says it provides a one-stop programme for all vineyard needs.
There are two components to the software – mobile and office. Vinea office is the hub, where all information is stored. This includes vineyard work records, job requirements, timesheets, worker immigration details, quotes, wages which are able to be exported into payroll, costings and health and safety details.
Vinea mobile is on a tablet which supervisors have out in the field. From his office or in the field following vineyard walks with supervisors Naismith can enter the details of any job, where in the vineyard it is to take place, who is to work there and what machinery will be required (as examples).
"So if the supervisor walks onto a block and the job says leaf pluck Clutha Clone 5, when she pushes that job on the tablet, it has the row number and the number of vines in it that need to be plucked. All the data is there. It is hugely versatile and a massive time saver."
The supervisor can then allocate the jobs, record hours worked, log travel, record weather conditions, manage allowances and deductions directly in the field and send complete records back to the office.
But for Naismith "the really neat thing" is the Health and Safety component now available on Vinea mobile.
"When I put a job or contract out to my supervisor, any health and safety issue associated with that job or that part of the vineyard pops up with a warning on the tablet. The supervisor taps on that and it might say, safety glasses to be worn, watch out for rabbit holes, or don't go in until 12 hours after spraying."
The programme reminds the supervisor to ensure all the workers have been briefed, and they then sign off electronically to confirm. That is recorded and saved for any future audit.
It also allows a supervisor to record any incidents that may happen, on the spot.
While the immediacy is a major advantage, Naismith says removing the reams of paperwork that used to end up on his desk, is even more so.
"My desk used to be the roadblock, where all the paper work associated with the job ended up. I just never seemed to get to the bottom of it."
Everything is saved electronically back on Vinea office, providing easy access when required.
"Then later on I can do a query or report and I can ask anything from the programme, whether that be about a person, vineyard or a piece of machinery. If there has been an incident or a briefing, the programme will pull it up associated with any one of those queries."
Cost wise it is also advantageous, Naismith says, cutting out hours of work that previously had to be done manually. For him personally it has removed between 20 and 25 hours a week of dealing with administration.
"My average working week used to consist of about 60 hours – so you can see what a huge time saver this is for me. And the exciting thing is, it can be used not only in the vineyard, but the winery and cellar door. Anywhere where staff are involved. Plus this is only going to get better as time goes on as it is being constantly updated."
