From 22-minute paper musters to a live count in under 3.

The site is a top-tier COMAH establishment processing flammable and toxic substances, with several hundred employees and contractors on site at peak and a mix of permanent staff, turnaround crews and visiting engineers. Its internal emergency plan under COMAH 2015 Regulation 7 relied on assembly points and paper registers held by marshals. In timed drills, a full account regularly took over twenty minutes, and the site could not reliably reconstruct afterwards exactly when each person had been confirmed safe.

The rollout followed a standard sequence. A site survey mapped the muster points, gatehouses and process-area thresholds; Safety Detection Points were installed at those locations; and every worker, contractor and visitor was issued a safety tag tied to their induction record. From confirmed order to go-live took a little over a month, phased so the paper process ran in parallel until the automated muster had been proven in three consecutive drills.

Operationally, the change was immediate. Because a single detection point at each assembly area reads hundreds of tags at once and marks everyone safe automatically, the count now keeps pace with people arriving in a rush, and marshals work from a live list showing who is still inside and where they were last detected rather than calling names against a clipboard. Full musters settled to under three minutes.

For assurance, the value is the record. The platform produces a timestamped drill report for every activation, giving the Regulation 8 test evidence the Competent Authority expects and an after-incident account that stands up to scrutiny. During a subsequent intervention the site was able to demonstrate a full, timed muster on demand rather than describing a plan on paper.