First aid signs commended at Imperial's Health and Safety awards

Danny Harvey receives his commendation from Provost Professor James Stirling

Awards for outstanding commitment to health and safety at Imperial were presented to staff at a ceremony last week.

The Provost’s Awards for Excellence in Health and Safety were established to honour individuals and teams whose endeavours have resulted in significant improvements in health and safety over the last year.

Danny Harvey, our Technical Services Manager, was highly commended for his innovative software that generates clear first aid signs, tailored to individual locations.

The 12-storey Electrical Engineering building is the tallest on campus, and Danny's system is designed to help ensure emergency response arrives as soon as possible.

The new signs have several advantages. Danny explains: "The list of first aid responders on each sign is based on its location, so the three nearest first-aiders are now always listed first."

"Our previous signs showed a fixed list of first aiders. This meant that the person at the top of the list was usually the only one who got called out, regardless of the location, and the only one who had experience of attending."

The signs also enable visitors unfamiliar with the building, to identify the room number and location clearly, which could help reduce response time in the event of a call out.

Danny acknowledged the help of his colleagues - including Phil Jones and May Tang. "Much thought was put into the layout of the sign so as not to overload the reader, and to highlight the most important information using colour, text size and layout."

"My team are very creative and excellent problem solvers. At our regular safety meetings we sketched out the idea of an ideal first aid sign, and with my software engineering skills I was able to make that idea a reality."

Having identified the problems with generic "static" signage, Danny now hopes to present his solutions at the next Faculty Safety Meeting, with a view to seeing them adopted more widely across the campus.

Our congratulations to Danny and his team.