DMB Risk Solutions, LLC

The safety department of a regional telecommunication company developed a sophisticated accidentinvestigation program.  This program addressed worksite conditions, employee behaviors, environmental conditions and contributing actions.  For the system wide rollout, the client’s IT department developed an Oracle database application so that the reports could be completed on-line by managers and supervisors in the field.

To control internal technology expenses, the company had recently rolled out an IT accountability policy where the development and maintenance of all applications were allocated back to the business department  requesting them.  This policy was not disclosed to the safety department until the application was in the “beta” stage of development.  Since Oracle was a new development platform for the IT department, they were essentially learning how to use the system at the safety department’s expense for the over 12 month development time.  The costs allocated back to the safety department were going to be well into the six figures.  In addition, another $60K would be allocated annually to pay for the dedicated server required for the system.  The safety department could not afford the costs associated with the project, so it was abandoned.

We took the existing content from the accident investigation process and converted it to a VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) MS Excel application.  The new accident investigation form is able to “error check” the incoming data and forward a completed form to a pre-designated distribution list via email automatically.

For analysis and reporting purposes, the qualified accident investigation forms are electronically imported into a separate client-server database.  Our resulting design and implementation provided all the utility of the larger Oracle solution for the client at a fraction of the original development cost, with no reoccurring fees.  Also, the application provided the client the ability to update the report content without having to utilize a specialized programmer.