New IntelliPERMIT workflow rules

The set of rules supported by IntelliPERMIT continues to grow.   These rules allow the system to react more intelligently to permit scenarios and to guide users through the permit process.

 

• Rule #33 states that a permit acceptor may not suspend more than one permit at a time.  This rule is useful in scenarios where isolations are being removed for testing or commissioning of equipment that has been worked on.  The rule should be enabled in order to control this process and ensure that the responsible person deals only with a single commissioning activity at a time.  
• Rule #34 is designed to limit access to particular operations to the person who initiated/applied for the permit. For instance, this is a useful control to ensure that only the original applicant can edit a permit (even prior to it being issued.) 
• Rule #35 governs which permit types may not include isolations – by definition some permit types require work on equipment that is live.
• Rule #36 may be used to ensure that a permit includes a safety lock and key safe number prior to the permit being issued.  This rule only applies to those sites that make use of key safes.
• Rule #37 ensures that if other permits are cross referenced to a “master” permit, the master may not be edited unless the cross references from the “slave” permits are first removed, or they are signed off.
• Rule #38 simply alerts users when signing permits if their competencies are due to expire.  This is particularly useful in the cases where users may not have received emails warning them of the impending expiration of their competencies. 

 

These rules have been published for general release with version 5.  (Hotfixes for version 4.3 SP4 are available on demand for some of these new rules)

 

A more general enhancement also included in version 5 is the opening up of the permit editing process to allow for additional rules to be added without making changes to the core software.

 

Enhancements to IntelliPERMIT workflow and rules

Version 5.0 of IntelliPERMIT includes a number of subtle enhancements to the underlying workflow and rules engine of the system. These enhanced capabilities will not disrupt the functioning of existing systems, nor require any re-configuration unless the site specifically requires the new functionality. While the technical details of these changes may seem slightly obscure, the intention behind them is to allow the system to more efficiently guide users through the permit process and allow them to produce permits that more accurately reflect the requirements of a task. Here are four examples:

1. Precautions and Preparation questions may be configured to appear in the Permit Wizard even if not linked to a specific hazard. This is useful in a scenario where a question must be asked on all permits across site but is not necessarily associated with a hazard. Unless a hazard is linked to this question, no rule is applied to the given answer. However, the user is forced to supply an answer.

2. Authorisation questions may now be linked to specific hazards. If a question is linked to a hazard, then it only appears if the permit includes that associated hazard. A practical example of where this may be used is in gas testing where a question should only be displayed and the answer validated if a gas hazard is included on the permit.

3. The workflow actions may be optionally configured to only appear for specific permit types or if the permit includes specified hazards. If no hazard or permit type is specified in the configuration, then the action will be visible for all permit types and for all hazards. Again, this is useful to more closely tailor the workflow to the requirements of the specific permit and ensure that users are only presented with relevant actions to perform.

4. Question rules now support the “NOT” operator. This allows a rule to be set that allows any answer except a specific response. For example, a question may have 3 options in a dropdown: Yes, No and N/A; and a rule set to “NOT No”. This means that both “Yes” and “N/A” will be valid responses to this question.