How Energy Safe Victoria realised transformative improvements in their safety audit processes and regulatory compliance reporting.
Energy Safe Victoria (ESV) is responsible for the safe generation, supply and use of electricity, gas and pipelines across the state. Safety audits and inspections are central to ESV's role as the technical and safety regulator. One of its priority areas is ensuring safety audits and inspections are thorough to meet its responsibility as an energy technical and safety regulator. With thorough audits playing a critical role in safety oversight for approximately seven million people in Victoria, ESV needed a modern, efficient solution to streamline compliance auditing, enhance operational transparency and meet its responsibility as a technical and safety regulator.
As a regulator our role is to ensure energy safety audits and inspections meet all technical and safety regulatory requirements.
The Challenge
Key challenges included.
Inefficient data collection: Field teams manually recorded audit data across multiple devices, leading to inconsistencies and delays.
Limited visibility: Audit results, trends, status, actions and systemic issues were difficult to track, impacting risk assessments and regulatory compliance.
Outdated data structures: Regulatory requirements had evolved, but existing data hierarchies and reporting methods had not kept pace.
Time consuming report generation: Manual processes made compiling accurate and auditable reports labour intensive.
Inconsistent historical data: Disparate formats and structures made year-over-year comparisons and trend analysis challenging.
It's more about being able to have the flexibility [of the data] to continue to mature that systematic approach and that representation of effective regulation.
Our Solution
To enhance ESV's safety audit process, the SafetyInsights team implemented SafetyCulture with SafetyInsights integration as a core operational tool. Transforming a manual, paper-based auditing and Excel-based analysis into a modern digital solution. Leveraging our expertise in electricity regulation and audit management, we worked closely with ESV's auditors to develop and implement custom SafetyCulture audit templates. Using our breadth of experience, we applied a critical business lens to create dashboards that adhered to the needs of the ESV Operations and Management Teams. These dashboards streamlined workflows, optimised audit question sequencing, integrated logic for improved responses, and ensured seamless data capture.
As part of the regulator's broader digital transformation, ESV transitioned to a fully integrated, real time auditing and reporting system. The new solution enabled field teams to capture data using voice-to-text functionality, with the ability to refine inputs later. A streamlined audit workflow ensured seamless processes, while intuitive dashboards provided real-time insights into data trends, high risk areas, and audit program performance. The system also offered automated anomaly detection, secure and auditable data governance, and one click report generation.
By replacing manual processes with an integrated digital platform, ESV significantly improved data accuracy, operational efficiency, and compliance monitoring. Teams could now capture data effortlessly through digital dashboards with drop-down functions, geo-tag images and videos for precise identification, and automate key audit actions. The new system reduced multi-step tasks to a single action, enabling timely issue resolution and the rapid generation of measurable recommendations. With this end-to-end solution, ESV strengthened its ability to track compliance trends, enhance regulatory oversight, and drive proactive safety measures.
The solution has made staff out in the field much more efficient, as much of the manual entry has been eliminated and users can select via drop-down lists or use the built-in voice-to-text feature. This means they can complete gathering and documenting information about a job before they go back to the office.
The Impact
Through the adoption of a modern digital solution, SafetyInsights integrated with SafetyCulture delivered significant improvements in ESV's safety audit process, enhancing efficiency, accuracy, and data-driven decision-making.
Operational Management
Field teams benefited from efficient, paperless data capture, eliminating manual re-entry and ensuring real time insights with built-in quality assurance. Smart capture tools minimized workload both in the field and during report creation.
Audit and Reporting Management
The solution also streamlined data filtering and categorisation, leveraging advanced analytics, geospatial tools, and Python scripting for immediate access to critical insights. With automated anomaly detection and historical data comparison, ESV gained a more effective and efficient approach to data analysis and reporting. Per audit end-to-end completion time was reduced from 3-5 days to just ½ day. Over the course of a year, that results in a substantial time savings of 150 hours down to just 50, significantly cutting resource requirements and associated costs.
Quality and Verification Management
By eliminating human errors and data discrepancies—achieving a 60% improvement in accuracy—the system enhanced overall business processes, improving quality, efficiency, and time to insight. Real time dashboards provided automated performance tracking and industry benchmarking, allowing ESV to identify trends and focus audit efforts more strategically and proactively. What once took five manual steps has now been streamlined into a single, automated process, making audits faster, more reliable, and easier to manage. With a data-driven, streamlined approach, ESV now has greater confidence in its regulatory oversight and safety compliance.
Key Results
Overall estimated savings from improved efficiencies
Improvement in data quality and integrity
Increase in operational efficiency
Reduction in time spent on reporting
Testimonial
“SafetyInsights is a one-stop-shop, you've got your dashboard reporting, your workflow, your proactive analysis, your link to templates and letters. It's all in one place. The team at SafetyInsights bring fresh perspective. They work with diverse entities delivering this solution and as a result bring different approaches without getting up in status quo thinking.The relationship between ESV and the SafetyInsights team has been fulfilling and successful. The SafetyInsights team worked collaboratively with ESV, and this positive partnership has meant that they have been able to support and strengthen ESV's team of data scientists, technicians, and engineers - some of whom bring over 30 years of specialised expertise.”
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