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Glyde: Making Workforce Accommodation Smarter
Dominic Letts, COO and Steve Wallis, CTOBased on the recent reports, these projects require almost half of the projected 21,000 national workforces to execute these projects at the committed and feasibility stage. Some of these projects are expected to create over 2000 construction jobs, along with 600 permanent jobs. However, places renowned for mining like Perth are also infamous for its high cost of labour. To run these projects successfully across their lifespan (which is close to three decades), mining and energy companies need to address a plethora of challenges and opportunities; worker accommodation, for instance. Despite the availability of many mining accommodation villages across the country, mining and energy companies seek options to keep employee productivity on the peak to deliver projects on time and within budget.
This is where Glyde strives to make a difference.
Thriving as a part of Fleetwood—an expert in permanent modular construction—Glyde is a one-stop solution for all workforce accommodation facilities needs.
Harnessing the Power of IoT in Workforce Accommodation
To provide quality mining accommodation services for employees to relax and recharge, Glyde has emerged as a game-changer for accommodation villages in Australia. At the core of this success lies a buzzword: the Internet of Things (IoT).
It’s been more than a decade since IoT penetrated the world of mining and resources. In an ambitious bid to extract valuable seams of iron ores miles below the ground level, human operators meticulously plan their attack and control the operations. However, with IoT, these operations now can be executed with professionals sitting in an office space thousands of miles away from the site. While the strategies to improve workplace productivity and safety using Industry 4.0 is not new in the mining and resources landscape, the companies are still far from harnessing the full potential of IoT. These companies often overlook the possibility of enabling maximum productivity through smart workforce accommodation facilities and services that provide much-needed rest and wellness.
With a singular focus on creating a smart ecosystem for accommodation facilities, Glyde presents an IoT solution that leverages the technology to improve safety, efficiency, and guest wellness for workforce accommodation. Catering primarily to workforce accommodation ventures, Glyde utilizes the IoT to understand and apply actions to not only improve workforce wellness but also enable efficient use of resources. In doing so, it captures data at the edge to analyze guest behaviour and their interaction with the facility and then apply automation to optimize their experience. “The more we can understand guests behavior and needs the better we can provide solutions to meet them. Use of IoT allows us to do this better and quicker than ever before,” says Steve Wallis, CTO, Glyde. Adding to that, Dominic Letts, COO, states, “Our vision is to empower our clients with unparalleled insight into how guests interact with facilities and services.
Our vision is to empower our clients with unparalleled insight into how guests interact with facilities and services. This knowledge provides a competitive advantage to the design, development and operation of these facilities
A Holistic View for Driving Gust Experience, Safety and Security and Operations Efficiency
Keeping the pain-points of customers in mind, Glyde equips its clients with a full suite of proprietary hardware and software inclusive of smart nodes, backend applications, and the customer-facing Glyde mobile app. At the core, Glyde acts as a smart city solution for workforce accommodation facilities that are like towns within themselves. It has open APIs enabling integration with clients’ systems, such as property management systems. This collaboration of data across the value chain provides a holistic view of the environment to create value in three main areas: guest experience, safety and security, and operations efficiency.
Guest Experience: Glyde caters to guests that work at mines or energy processing plants for long hours. The real currency of the guest is their free time and comfort. Glyde maximizes both. It has transformed the check-in and check-out experience from physical interaction with administration staff at a reception building to a digital experience that enables guests to go straight to their room and access it by the Glyde Smart Phone App. Glyde also learns the guest usage patterns of accommodation and controls in-room appliances such as air conditioners to deliver comfortable conditions in the room upon guests return from work.
Safety and Security: Glyde provides unparalleled capabilities for safety and security. By removing physical check-in and check-out, Glyde avoids social contact at the crowded reception building. This withdrew a significant risk point for Covid-19 transmission. Moreover, the ability of Glyde to control the air conditioner in accommodation means air quality can more effectively be maintained, thereby promoting the health and wellbeing of the occupant.
The app can provide insight into trends in the activity of guests during rest hours. This can inform the mining and resources companies that use the accommodation of potential fatigue levels of their workforce allowing them to take preventative actions to enhance safety and productivity on their sites. Glyde also captures access to accommodation in real-time to provide real-time insight into a guest location, which can support safety and security. The fact that the app eliminates physical keys is highly beneficial from a security standpoint as it provides specific to person digital access authority for rooms. This removes the risk of unauthorized access to the room.
Operations Efficiency: Glyde has enabled labour savings in the operation of workforce accommodation facilities. The transition to digital check-in and check-out eradicates the need for labour for this process. Authorities can see the movement and activity of staff throughout the accommodation facility. By analyzing this data, optimization of operations can occur, leading to improved efficiency.
Moreover, operational efficacy reaches the next level with Glyde as it allows mitigating energy wastage by controlling the appliances, such as air conditioners, when guests are not in the room. Glyde can turn these appliances off after the guest has left for work and turn them on before guests returning to ensure the room is comfortable on their entry. As Glyde learns the work patterns of each guest, this can be done in the most optimized manner for each guest.
The key component powering these capabilities is the node that consists of both sensors and actuators. Each node is connected to the local area network and exchanges communications in real-time to the edge server. Data from the edge server is sent to the cloud from which data is extracted to provide data insights and visualizations.
“There remains nothing on the market that can do what Glyde does. Sure, there are smart locks and sensors. Yet there is nothing conceived by, designed by and implemented by someone who owns and operates workforce accommodation that is a smart lock, sensor suite and actuator that exists to solve the specific issues of workforce accommodation facilities,” extols Wallis, while touching upon the winning differentiator of Glyde’s end to end transformative solution.
Faring Well amid Pandemic Crisis
At a time when COVID-19 is taking the world by storm, Glyde takes pride in supporting business continuity at Fleetwood’s Searipple Village Workforce Accommodation Facility in northwest Australia. Besides mitigating the risk of COVID transmission through digitalized check-in and check-out, Glyde also provided enhanced situation awareness of guests’ location at the facility for contact tracing. Glyde’s straight to room digital check in using the Glyde Smart Phone app meant that guests did not need to congregate in the reception building for check in and check out. This effectively eliminated a significant transmission risk point for the virus. Moreover, Glyde provided for enhanced situation awareness of guests’ location at the facility, meaning, should there be a potential case of Covid, then contact tracing for those that may have had exposure was made easier.
"There remains nothing on the market that can do what Glyde does. Sure, there are smart locks and sensors. Yet there is nothing conceived by, designed by and implemented by someone who owns and operates workforce accommodation that is a smart lock, sensor suite and actuator that exists to solve the specific issues of workforce accommodation facilities"
The value that Glyde delivered in these circumstances was considerable and appreciated by the individual guest, the workforce accommodation employees, and the mining and resources companies whose workforce stayed at the facility as it contributed to ongoing wellness of the crew and, therefore, business continuity.
The Inception and the Prosperous Future
In a nutshell, Glyde is a great story of the creation and use of a local technology ecosystem. “Our design and manufacturing has all been done locally. Although Perth is known for its high cost of labor, we have been able to harness the skills, knowledge and experience of our ecosystem to produce an innovative, high quality and cost-effective solution,” adds Letts.
At the outset, Glyde started as a passion project of Wallis, who was committed to making a difference. Glyde was established as an R&D project for its parent company Fleetwood. Fleetwood owns and operates a workforce accommodation facility, and the R&D project examined how to harness the internet of things to improve outcomes at this facility. The project not only identified opportunities, it envisioned solutions that could provide value to both Fleetwood and its customers. “We are born of the business of our customers. Fleetwood owns a Mining Accommodation Village, which gives us firsthand understanding of the pain points of our customers and as importantly provides us a real-life innovation hub. If we have an idea or want to test something or roll out a new MVP then we have our own real-life situation to do this. If it works, great, we move forward, if not we move to the next idea. This also means that we can continue to experiment, develop, and iterate in real conditions. This is invaluable,” informs Letts. “The benefit of this is that the risk of failure is mitigated because we own the real-life test site. Consequently, our risk appetite is higher as is our speed of execution.”
Moving ahead, a prosperous future awaits Glyde, a company that continues to iterate and develop, intending to integrate more data sets into its solution to provide a clearer holistic view of workforce accommodation. “I know success is hard won and is the result of effort and resolve. It is also achieved only through the contribution and commitment of each team member. We are all committed to our purpose, we are keen to push the edge and ready to risk failure on the road to success,” concludes Letts on an inspiring and optimistic note.
Faring Well amid Pandemic Crisis
At a time when COVID-19 is taking the world by storm, Glyde takes pride in supporting business continuity at Fleetwood’s Searipple Village Workforce Accommodation Facility in northwest Australia. Besides mitigating the risk of COVID transmission through digitalized check-in and check-out, Glyde also provided enhanced situation awareness of guests’ location at the facility for contact tracing. Glyde’s straight to room digital check in using the Glyde Smart Phone app meant that guests did not need to congregate in the reception building for check in and check out. This effectively eliminated a significant transmission risk point for the virus. Moreover, Glyde provided for enhanced situation awareness of guests’ location at the facility, meaning, should there be a potential case of Covid, then contact tracing for those that may have had exposure was made easier.
"There remains nothing on the market that can do what Glyde does. Sure, there are smart locks and sensors. Yet there is nothing conceived by, designed by and implemented by someone who owns and operates workforce accommodation that is a smart lock, sensor suite and actuator that exists to solve the specific issues of workforce accommodation facilities"
The value that Glyde delivered in these circumstances was considerable and appreciated by the individual guest, the workforce accommodation employees, and the mining and resources companies whose workforce stayed at the facility as it contributed to ongoing wellness of the crew and, therefore, business continuity.
The Inception and the Prosperous Future
In a nutshell, Glyde is a great story of the creation and use of a local technology ecosystem. “Our design and manufacturing has all been done locally. Although Perth is known for its high cost of labor, we have been able to harness the skills, knowledge and experience of our ecosystem to produce an innovative, high quality and cost-effective solution,” adds Letts.
At the outset, Glyde started as a passion project of Wallis, who was committed to making a difference. Glyde was established as an R&D project for its parent company Fleetwood. Fleetwood owns and operates a workforce accommodation facility, and the R&D project examined how to harness the internet of things to improve outcomes at this facility. The project not only identified opportunities, it envisioned solutions that could provide value to both Fleetwood and its customers. “We are born of the business of our customers. Fleetwood owns a Mining Accommodation Village, which gives us firsthand understanding of the pain points of our customers and as importantly provides us a real-life innovation hub. If we have an idea or want to test something or roll out a new MVP then we have our own real-life situation to do this. If it works, great, we move forward, if not we move to the next idea. This also means that we can continue to experiment, develop, and iterate in real conditions. This is invaluable,” informs Letts. “The benefit of this is that the risk of failure is mitigated because we own the real-life test site. Consequently, our risk appetite is higher as is our speed of execution.”
Moving ahead, a prosperous future awaits Glyde, a company that continues to iterate and develop, intending to integrate more data sets into its solution to provide a clearer holistic view of workforce accommodation. “I know success is hard won and is the result of effort and resolve. It is also achieved only through the contribution and commitment of each team member. We are all committed to our purpose, we are keen to push the edge and ready to risk failure on the road to success,” concludes Letts on an inspiring and optimistic note.
