Ask yourself this. Have you ever had a fatigue event behind the wheel? Your eyes have started to shut, and you can feel yourself getting tired as you drive home after shift, or even before? You are probably lying to yourself if you haven’t.

Fatigue can affect anyone, but it is most prevalent for those working in the mining sector where operations are 24/7 and shifts are 12 hours long, day and night.

Trent Watson has been working in fatigue management for decades and these days works for Ethos Health who have developed an app called Fatigue-Tech that supports workers and frontline leaders to manage fatigue risks in the workplace.

“Fatigue-Tech came about because a lot of people were after an app to help manage fatigue. There was a lot of technology focused on identifying fatigue like in-cab cameras and wearables, but what do you do with a fatigued worker?

“So, Fatigue-Tech is an application to try and automate or help people once the fatigue is identified. It is designed to address individual factors; it has a knowledge centre with a huge number of resources. If the resources aren’t enough, you can do a self-assessment and find out what your risk factors are and that then takes you through some self-guided help or you can ‘ask an expert’.

“From there the more serious cases get referred to health professionals like us, who can support their specific needs,” explains Trent.

Fatigue-Tech helps employees stay on top of their fatigue management, and employers can also use the app to monitor fatigue management.

The app plugs into a workplace’s time and attendance system to notify a worker and their supervisor if they have worked beyond their work hours. If they have, they’ll be prompted to do a fatigue check through the app.

Employers can also keep a log of fatigue events from in-cab cameras and monitor how they’ve responded to those events through the app.

“If we work in an environment where fatigue is reported that transparency leads to more people being aware of actions taken to manage fatigue. Consequently, people feel more supported, and the fatigue risk management continuously improves.

“Workers want to be healthy, happy, safe and productive in life and at work. Fatigue is something that is ubiquitous across 24/7 operations, it’s going to happen regardless of the roster arrangement. So, what we’re trying to do is give people the information, resources and skills for them to manage their own personal risk factors to the best of their ability.

“Good fatigue risk management is a shared responsibility to prevent and to manage fatigue if and when it presents.

“If you’re driving opposite someone and they’re travelling at 100km/hr and they are starting to get sleepy, what would you want them to do?

“You want them to pull over.

“If you’re a passenger and you see your driver is getting tired you’d want them to pull over too.

“Good fatigue risk management looks like our actions meeting our own expectations. It’s what we expect of others, our family, colleagues, community and it’s what they expect of us.”

Trent said the app has been rolled out to a few mine sites and he goes around to sites chatting to the workers and their employers about fatigue and how they can better manage it.

“When we as humans are involved, fatigue will not be able to be eliminated, but it can be managed.

“I think the important thing with fatigue is, yes, it’s a potentially fatal human risk in mining environments that needs to be managed. There’s lots of tools out there and no one tool is going to solve all problems. We’re never going to profess that Fatigue-Tech is the only solution either. It’s part of an ecosystem. Fatigue-Tech is one tool that can help.”