Flexible Cost-Effective Risk Management Software

Omniware is a global software business specialising in risk management. Its two core products, Omnicom and Omnisafe, help major corporates in diverse business sectors on all five continents to manage their health & safety and contract management processes efficiently and cost-effectively.

The Omniware Overview
Both are complete turnkey solutions to taking the risk out of complex procedures.  Essentially off-the-shelf products - reflected in their value for money - these two multi-functional tools nevertheless have the flexibility to be tailored, both technically and design-wise, to our clients' specific requirements.

And while they are designed to operate, where necessary, as stand-alone business tools, they will also integrate and interface successfully with other software systems, such as  SAP and Oracle.

With their origins in the oil and gas industries on the Norwegian continental shelf, Omnisafe and Omnicom have undergone significant refinements during the past two decades, in order to meet the increasingly complex business needs of its blue-chip global client list.

Omnicom Professionalises Contract Management
For procurement professionals, the key issue is about creating efficient supply chain management. Omnicom is used as a contract management solution by organisations as diverse as State of Ohio, USA; Rio Tinto, Australia; the UK Atomic Energy Authority; Oil Search, Papua & New Guinea; and BHP Petroleum, USA. In short, any organisation that is serious about managing its supply chain professionally and efficiently. Omnicom is a complete web-based contract/project management system, which supports the full contract/project life cycle from initiation, tendering/award, through management and close-out.  Its adaptability means you can make it work for you, to suit your own business's individual practices and processes.

In Australia, for example, as in many other parts of the developed world, where alliancing is popular, Omnicom is widely used as a key management tool in EPCM projects (Engineering Procurement and Construction Management) to allow procurers in major consortia to take advantage of the efficiencies gained from a non-adversarial relationship, whilst working towards jointly-held project aims in a spirit of mutual trust and cooperation.

Case Study
Rio Tinto's Iron Ore Expansion Projects group manages multi-billions of dollars invested in strategic expansion projects across the Western Australian Pilbara iron-ore operations. The business has an ongoing alliance with a number of engineering, procurement, construction and management consultants (EPCMs). These EPCMs design, build and deliver the complex projects required by Rio Tinto's Pilbara operations.            

Background
Rio Tinto is a diversified mining company holding a portfolio of world class interests in aluminium, copper, diamonds, gold, coal, iron ore and industrial minerals. It has operations spanning six continents and is the third largest mining company in the world.

The US$1.4 billion Dampier Port upgrade project instigated the search for a life-cycle contract management solution that used leading edge technology, was scalable, robust, adaptable and easy to use and, importantly, fast to implement.             

Key Objectives For Omnicom
The Contract Management solution was integral to getting the port upgrade built ahead of schedule and on budget. Omnicom had to be up and running fast to achieve this goal.

In a single database, Omnicom had to reflect purpose-built project group processes with EPCM input from the lead consultant. The consortium wanted system-controlled processes and wide visibility e.g. close-outs and approvals, cost schedules, people. Also governance across all consultants and the project group itself was a major objective. Simple data entry and streamlined business processes were essential, as were proactive notifications - when consultants have the tools to promote efficient outcomes, this translates to less cost to the project group.

Other objectives included using historical data to produce project and business reporting on contracts, which in turn support improved resource planning, accurate forecasting and risk mitigation.

The solution initially had to support 20 - 30 users (which subsequently grew to over 400).            

Timescale
Time was of the essence. Omnicom was in production in just two and a half months from first contact. Omniware matched Rio Tinto's large project experience and demonstrated the ability to listen to, and deliver on, complex business concepts.

Omnicom Summary
The Omnicom contract management system is a complete procurement software solution, for everything from initial concept to final closeout. It covers all aspects of the process, and guides the user through a quality process. The software is a full web application as well as a traditional Client/Server application running on Oracle or SQL Server databases.

Workflow and email notifications and reminders are used to maximize efficiency and integration with existing work routines. In addition the system is multi-lingual and supports any number of languages simultaneously, not only on texts and screen labels but also on data and look-up lists.

Our procurement software offers you integrated reporting and report designer which, added to exceptional search and manipulation capabilities, make retrieving data from the system a snap, regardless of what you are looking for. Custom searches, graphs and text reports are easily made by the end user.

Adapting our contract management system to your company process and policy is at the heart of everything we do at Omniware. All Omnicom installations are customised to our clients' specific needs, to ensure maximum leverage of their processes.

The Growing Importance of Health & Safety
Omnisafe, the Health & Safety product offered by Omniware, is currently in operation with (among many others) Shell Shipping, The UK Ministry of Defence, a major Australian construction and engineering conglomerate, Nigeria LNG, and the Apache Corporation, USA.

Why do these businesses take their responsibilities so seriously?  The short answer is two-fold: one is negative - their senior executives do not wish to end up in jail; the other is positive: it can be proven that positive health & safety policies increase business efficiencies and profitability.

Taking the negative view first: during recent years, there has been much talk about holding senior executives to account for corporate failures, which result in death or serious injury for the company's operatives.  In practice, no one has yet gone to jail, but with each succeeding year, as governments throughout the world tighten their health and safety legislation, it seems it is only a question of time before someone in the corporate corridors of power spends some time behind bars, as a result of their business's failure to protect their employees from harm in the company's day-to-day operations.

Given that the appetite for legislation is driven from the USA and Europe, and since the UK effectively acts as a bridge-head between the two, it is worth studying recent developments in that country, which probably reflect actual or potential plans for similar legislation around the world.

Corporate Manslaughter
There, businesses responsible for work-place deaths now face massive fines, and some may even be forced to close down as a result.  Under legislation passed earlier this year, employers who cause the deaths of workers or customers through gross negligence may be convicted of a new offence of corporate manslaughter.

There is no upper limit to the potential size of these fines, but it seems that a likely starting point for a first-time offender pleading not guilty may be a fine equivalent to 5% of the offender's turnover, averaged across the three years prior to sentencing.

To date, the largest fine imposed on any UK operator under previous health and safety legislation is the £15 million on gas distribution company, Transco, in 2005 for an explosion in 1999 that killed four members of a Scottish family.  That represents less than 1% of the business's turnover, but under the new regime, the company could expect to be relieved of at least £75 million, if convicted of corporate homicide.  And that 5% starting point can be halved OR DOUBLED, according to whether there are mitigating or aggravating circumstances.

Fines for breaches of health and safety laws but not corporate manslaughter will be half the rate, but will still represent a significant increase on current penalties, which tend to vary between £100,000 and £1 million, where responsibility for workplace deaths is established.

Imagine, then, if you are a £1.8 billion turnover company and you offend under the new legislation.  Whereas previously you may have escaped with a relatively small six-figure rap on the knuckles, under the new arrangements you could be waving goodbye to £90 million or more.

Governments throughout the world like to be seen to be tough on safety breaches, wherever and whenever they occur, and they will not necessarily back away from taking the tough decisions, however strong the lobbying power of big corporates.  In the event of a major incident involving a multiple loss of life, they know that in a culture of blame, fuelled by massive global media coverage, the buck stops firmly with them.

In the past, there have been difficulties in finding one senior person in the company who knew enough to incriminate him.  Under the new legislation, a crime is committed where an organization owes a duty of care to take reasonable care of a person's safety, but the way in which its activities have been managed or organized amounts to a gross breach of that duty and causes death.  To convict a company, though, the prosecution must prove that the failure came substantially from 'senior management', which also means that the assessment of a defendant's corporate culture can be legally relevant.

'Corporate culture' can be found in an 'attitude, policy, rule, course of conduct or practice within the corporate body generally or in the part of the body corporate where the offence occurred.  Evidence may be led that the company's unwritten rules tacitly authorized non-compliance or failed to create a culture of compliance.'  This definition comes from the Australian Capital Territories, which was the first state to introduce an offence of Industrial Manslaughter, relying on this new rule of attribution.

Why is this an issue?  In the UK alone, 300 workers a year are still killed in work-place accidents, and this figure rises to around a thousand when you add in those who also die of long-term occupational diseases, such as asbestosis.  Extrapolate that globally, and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Turin, Italy, estimates there are 270 million accidents a year and over 2 million deaths.  Indeed globally, more people are killed at work each year than are killed in wars.  With globalization, the increasing industrialization of developing countries and the growth of multinational companies, it is highly likely that the laws of the developed world, and in particular the law of corporate manslaughter, will be not far behind.

On a more positive note, however, and perhaps more importantly, there is also evidence that, where Health and Safety best practice is taken seriously, as it now is in the US and Europe generally, those accident and fatality rates can be cut dramatically.  According to the Turin Union of Industry, in the last 50 years work-place deaths have fallen by 70% and half of that improvement is telescoped into the last five years, when health and safety legislation has been at its most stringent.

As Magne Ogneday, Norwegian Health & Safety guru, has explained, "Safety skills have become scarce commodities, but there are no reserves waiting to be found. Training, skills and experience cannot be discovered; they must be created. Compared with the level of industry activity, there is a shortage of skilled people, and the availability of safety competence is being stretched.  It is not just immediate productivity that is impaired by an adverse incident: the loss of reputation can seriously impair a business's ability to recruit and raise capital.  Businesses need to start to see compliance as an opportunity rather than an obligation."

Omnisafe alone cannot solve all these issues, but investment in such a system at least demonstrates that the business is taking it seriously and directors can be fairly certain that charges of corporate manslaughter are unlikely to be brought.

For more information about Omnicom and Omnisafe, visit www.omniware.com or contact:

Peter Hawkins
Vice President - Sales & Marketing
T: +44 7866 573 925
E: peter.hawkins@omniware.com
www.omniware.com