A way of working sits at the bottom of the order.
Hard safety limits outrank every person. Every person outranks the software. A way of working is software, and nothing moves because one was loaded. A person on your crew still walks around the machine, starts it and clears it, on the day, every day.
The unit in a truck cab, the releases at the shifter · The group's own render
Who outranks whom, and the software is last.
Every question about safety on a site running a licensed way of working comes back to this order. It is short, it does not change from job to job, and nothing we make can climb it.
- 01Hard safety limitsThe machine's own limits and the rules of the site. They outrank every person on the ground, and nothing below them is ever asked to argue with them. A proposal that would cross one does not run.
- 02Every personThe operator in the seat. The person who walked around the machine that morning. The one who chose, by name, whose way of working runs. Each of them outranks anything in the software, and each of them can stop it.
- 03The softwareA way of working. It proposes what an experienced person would do next, and it does nothing until a person above it has said go. It cannot promote itself, and no setting moves it up the list.
Nothing of ours sits above a person, and nothing sits below a way of working. A machine that moved on the software's say alone would have moved on nobody's authority.
Ready is the machine's state. Cleared is a person's word.
A machine can reach fitted and ready on its own, and it will report each of them on its own. Cleared to work is a different kind of thing. It is a person's word, given on the day, after the walk-around, and a machine cannot give it to itself. The states below are in the order they happen, and the line between the machine's part and the person's part is the whole point of listing them.
- Fitted
- The kit is on the machine and the machine reports it. A state the machine reaches by itself.
- Ready
- A way of working is loaded and the machine says it could run. Nobody has told it to.
- Cleared
- A person has walked around the machine, started it, chosen by name whose way of working runs, and said go. Given on the day, every day, with their name on it.
- Running
- After the clearance and never before it. The count starts from the same choice, so the hours and the clearance sit on one record and neither can be adjusted without the other.
Yesterday's clearance does not carry over. There is no default and no last-used. A person starts the machine, every day, and before every job the choice of whose way of working runs is made again with their name on it. Choosing is an act, and the act is where the count begins.
A way of working proposes. It never authorizes.
What a way of working carries is a proposal: where an experienced person would slow, how they would load it, what they would do when the ground is not what the drawing said it would be. It stops at the proposal. A technique that has been loaded has no authority of its own, and nothing moves because it was loaded.
It proposes the next move
What an experienced person would do here, offered to the machine as a suggestion and nothing more. The suggestion carries a name, and the name is not an authority.
A person authorizes the work
Somebody on the crew chose whose way of working runs, by name, and cleared the machine on the day. Their word is the authority, and nothing in the software can stand in for it or outlast it.
The limits decide the rest
Whatever is proposed, and whoever authorized it, the machine's hard limits sit above both. A proposal that would cross one does not run.
A person starts the machine, every day.
Nobody walks up to a machine that is already running under a way of working. Somebody started it, chose by name, and said go, and their name is on the record before the first hour is counted.
A directional drill rig at the treeline in low winter sun · The group's own photograph
Nothing is learned on the machine.
What crosses is a signed release, and a named person signs it.
We build a way of working from admitted records, and we do it away from the machine. No machine on a site is learning while it works, and no machine is changing its own way of working between one pass and the next. The person in the seat is not the subject of an experiment. The machine they are running carries a released way of working or the basics it came with, and nothing in between.
What reaches a machine from us is a release. A named person signs it, and the record of what went into it is kept from the first day rather than assembled when somebody asks. If a release is ever wrong, there is a name on it, and the question of what went in and who signed is answered by the record.
Nothing of ours is connected while a person works.
It has no actuator and no wire to one.
The recorder watches from outside the machine. No harness is cut, no controller is touched, no power is taken off the machine. It cannot move a machine and it cannot stop one, so it is not an interlock and it is not a guard, and no part of any safety case rests on it. The machine's own safeguards are unchanged and still operating, and the controls feel exactly as they did before any kit was fitted.
- Where a separate recorder is used it runs on its own battery and reads the dash the same way you do, by looking at it.
- A photograph of the disconnected state goes into the record, before and after, where it cannot be swapped out quietly.
- It comes off and leaves no mark.
Every part of this is something a person can walk up to and check, and the photograph is there so that somebody can check it years later.
The person whose way of working it is can withdraw it, and the running job finishes.
A withdrawal stops a way of working starting anywhere new from the day it arrives. A job already underway finishes, because stopping a machine mid-pass is its own hazard, and a safety position that created a new hazard to honour a withdrawal would not be a safety position. Nothing new starts under it after that. The owner is told the day it arrives, and the next job goes back to their own operator's way or the basics the machine came with.
The same order of authority holds through a withdrawal as through any other day. The hard limits still sit at the top, the crew still says when the machine stops, and the way of working that is being withdrawn has no more say in how the job ends than it had in how it started.
Ending a licence never means a machine stops where it stands. It means the next one does not start.
It is not a faster machine, a safety device, or a legal opinion.
The claims below get made for things like this, by people who would like to sell you one. We do not make them, and you should not accept them from anyone.
- It does not make a machine faster. A better way of working makes better decisions about when to move. The hydraulics, the process and the material set everything else.
- It is not a safety device. Nothing here is an interlock, a guard or a stop, and no safety case should be written with any part of it resting on us.
- It does not replace the walk-around, the start, or the person who says go. It cannot clear a machine and it cannot keep one cleared.
- It does not run a site without people. It proposes. A person authorizes, on the day, every day.
- We give no legal opinion on warranty, conformity or liability. Whether an arrangement touches any of those is for your counsel, and you should not accept an opinion on it from any vendor, including us.
Talk to us.
If you are writing a safety case, or being asked to sign off on somebody else's, write to us and we will tell you in plain words where a way of working sits in it, and where it does not.