ComplyFlow in BHP's Fast Track Site Access Challenge

This is a piece of company history from 2019, kept on the record because the problem it describes has not gone anywhere.

What the Fast Track Challenge Was.

In April 2019 BHP engaged the open innovation platform Unearthed to run an online crowdsourcing competition to improve the site access experience for workers across its Australian operations.¹ The competition ran from 15 April to 12 May 2019.²

BHP set out the problem in its own terms. Everyone who accesses a site, including employees, contractors and visitors, has to be compliant and competent before being allowed on, and the way its compliance management and physical site access systems fitted together was producing delays and administrative intervention.¹ That is the same problem a head contractor has at a gate on a Monday morning, at a different scale. Our mining page covers what it looks like now.

In all, 27 companies submitted solutions, ranging from startups and small to medium enterprises to professionals from mining equipment, technology and services companies and other members of the Unearthed community. The entries covered compliance management software, site access hardware, data integration platforms, badge and beacon solutions, wearables and facial recognition, among others.¹

How ComplyFlow Was Selected.

Seven companies were selected for a discovery session with BHP in the first week of June 2019, where each presented to BHP’s technology, operations and HSE teams.¹

Unearthed reported the outcome:

“Following the discovery session and deeper assessment of the teams, it was unanimously agreed by the BHP judges that ComplyFlow offered a platform solution that could support the integration of the various workforce compliance management software solutions, including SAP, SuccessFactors, RightCrowd and Medgate, with their Site Access solution.”¹

Unearthed added that, if effective, that platform would create the foundation to permit other technologies to be trialled and tested as part of the technology stack.¹

What Happened Next.

In mid-July 2019 ComplyFlow met the broader BHP team in Brisbane and visited several BMA mine sites to see the access experience first-hand. BHP’s then Head of Technology, Fernando De Mattos, said BHP and ComplyFlow would then look to collectively define the scope of a potential pilot and commercial contract.¹

That is where the published record stops, and this post does not go further than it. Nothing here should be read as a statement about a current commercial arrangement.

Time Your Own Gate Before You Change Anything.

The competition was about one thing: making sure the person at the gate is the person who is cleared to be there, without a queue and without an administrator in the middle. That is what our site access and prequalification pages are built around, and it is still the part of contractor compliance that costs the most when it is slow.

If that is the problem in front of you, book a demo and bring your own gate.